Devouring Founder’s Biographies, Self-Belief, and the Power of Podcasting with David Senra of Founders Podcast
“We don’t have an epidemic of arrogance. We have an epidemic of people that don’t believe in themselves.”
Meet David Senra. His name may sound familiar. David is the host of the incredible Founders podcast, where he studies the greatest entrepreneurs in history. He’s been a sponsor of my podcast for the last few months.
David is using the Founders podcast to train for life, and you can too. David is a biography reading machine. On Founders, he shares what he learns from history’s greatest entrepreneurs. Through their stories, we learn about creating a successful business and better life.
During our chat, David goes off the cuff about things he’s learned reading. He talks about how the lives of others can inform and inspire our own. Plus, we explore the evolving business of podcasting.
Here’s what I learned from the episode:
Repetition is persuasive.
Repetition is persuasive.
Repetition is persuasive.
Great entrepreneurs pick out a handful of ideas and drill down on them for decades.
Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Marc Andreesen read biographies. If they can still learn from biographies, you can too. If they can find the time to read, you can too.
David found a key piece of his podcast’s business model from Masters of Doom. Founders offered “shareware” – the first 15 levels of the game for free, players had to pay for the rest.
David learned a key mindset from Arnold Schwarzenegger: He doesn’t have to do this work, he gets to do it.
Podcasting is a major technological revolution, on part with the printing press. Many people can read, but even more can listen. This is still underappreciated.
Jim Clark said diversification and mediocrity are the same thing. David is putting his everything into Founders. Like Edwin Land did with Polaroid.
See how he accumulates lessons and mindsets from all these different people?
A few more:
Successful entrepreneurs have Kanye West levels of self-belief and Kobe Bryant levels of work ethic.
Great entrepreneurs take ideas from others. You don’t have to be (can’t be?) 100% original to be successful.
David’s favorite maxim: Actions express priority. It doesn’t matter what you say. It matters what you do.
Learn more about David Senra
Additional episodes if you enjoyed:
Self-reinvention & building leverage in podcasts with Chris Williamson
Chris Powers: Starting A Real Estate Empire at 17, Focus, Podcast Flywheels
Andrew Wilkinson: De-risking Leverage, Investing vs. Operating, and the Best Part About Business
Introducing "Track Zach" with Former Navy SEAL Zach Marshall
Episode Transcript:
David Senra: We don't have an epidemic of arrogance. We have an epidemic of people that don't believe in themselves. And so, all those unrealized dreams are never even going to make it out because if you believe you can't do something, then you won't do it. That is step number one. And so, I heard Kanye West say something. He's like, man, he goes, listen, he goes, if you're a Kanye West fan, he goes, go listen to my music. It's the blueprint to how to believe in yourself. He goes, if you're a Kanye West fan, you're not a fan of me, you're a fan of yourself. I'm just the espresso shot that gets you going in the morning. And so literally I go, if you're a fan of Founders, you're not a fan of me. You're a fan of yourself. You will believe in yourself. And I go, I'm just the espresso shot. I'm the person you're going to listen to maybe an hour, two hours a week, whatever the case is, and you're going to put that down and be like that dude went from shitting in a bucket in eating tree bark to building Hyundai. I have no fucking excuses. Let's go.
Eric Jorgenson: Hello again, my friends, and welcome. I'm Eric Jorgenson, and I just bought a new podcast mic. I hope you can tell the difference because it was irresponsibly expensive. This show explores technology, investing, entrepreneurship, and personal growth that will help you and the rest of humanity create a brighter, more abundant future. This podcast is one of a few projects I work on. If you want to read my book, blog, newsletter, or invest alongside us in early-stage tech companies, please visit ejorgenson.com. Today, my guest is David Senra. He's the creator of the incredible Founders podcast, which profiles history's greatest entrepreneurs. David has read hundreds of biographies and shares his highlights and insights in his podcast. If that sounds familiar, he's been a sponsor of this podcast for the past two months or so, so I hope it sounds familiar. I have been stuffing his podcast into my ears this whole year, and I am giddy to finally chat with him. He's an absolute encyclopedia of knowledge and maxims and stories from entrepreneurs throughout history. We share a ton of them in this episode. You will hear him just off the cuff over and over again bring up these incredible ideas and frameworks that he's got baked into his brain. And my deepest hope is that you learn something today that you can apply in your business or your life immediately. Please check out David's podcast. You can go to founderspodcast.com or search Founders in your podcast app, and it's the white script across the black background. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
In other news, starting this year, you can invest alongside me and my partners in today's great founders building early-stage tech companies. I started an early-stage investment fund this year called Rolling Fun with two of my most talented and trusted friends. We have been angel investing for years, and we've managed to fund a few billion-dollar companies together. And now this fund lets us invest your money alongside ours into some of these companies as well. We continue to search for the most promising founders that we can find around the world and help them fund the creation and distribution of new tech that's going to change the world and improve everyone's lives. If you love this episode, these conversations, and these lessons, you will love the companies that we invest in. You can check out some of the podcast episodes that I've done with Al and Bo, my two partners in the fund, to learn more about Rolling Fun. And I'm honored that many of you have already joined the fund so that we're all investing together. You can learn more at rolling.fun, which is linked in the show notes below. We talk about some of the companies that we invest in. You can see some of the portfolio already there. Accredited investors can invest with us through Angel List today. If you have questions or you'd like to chat about this with me, feel free to reach out. But right now, lay back, relax, and enjoy this conversation arriving at your ears in three, two, one.
David Senra: So, if you don't mind me hijacking your podcast real quick?
Eric Jorgenson: Let's do it. Hijack away. 10 seconds in, let’s do it.
David Senra: Who are your heroes?
Eric Jorgenson: Oh, my heroes. Okay, Charlie Munger is like the first person who comes to mind for sure. I really adore Richard Feynman, but I very much recognize that like I am not him and cannot emulate him. Naval obviously, I’ve spent years kind of studying him. Steve Jurvetson on like the venture capital side of things. Both of my parents are heroes in their own way for sure, to me personally, like I look up to both of them in different ways. But yeah, I think Munger very much intellectually, like for the polymath and the discipline and the long-term orientation is probably like the person that I- I have the most of his mental models in my head.
David Senra: Yeah, I always say- so I'm up to like 250 biographies for the podcast so far. And there's a lot of different ways to classify. It's like who's your favorite entrepreneur? Who's the one that you would most want to emulate? Who's the one that you would want to avoid? And for me, the way I classify him is like he's the wisest person I've ever come across. Doesn't mean he's the richest. I mean, he's still obviously a billionaire or whatever. Just like if you just listen to him. And it's hilarious because I've also gone back and read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography and then the biography on Franklin by Isaacson. And you're like, oh, Charlie Munger is doing- it just gave me confidence is not the right word, but it was like somewhat kind of like a soothing sensation. It's like, oh, a lot of the ideas Charlie is taking, he's taking somebody else's ideas, because we all learn from somebody else, and then repackaging them in a very memorable way. Like in another life, Charlie would've been a great copywriter, not nearly as lucrative, but just the way he can compress an idea and it just sticks in your brain. And so, a lot of- the reason I was excited to talk to you is because the book, this book legitimately, is the one I give the most as gifts. Like it is absolutely incredible. I just sent you an email a few weeks ago where I was like, I had a friend, we were talking, and he's like, man, I feel lost in my career. Immediately went to Amazon, ordered it, sent it his way. I was like, just read this. He's like- don't worry about what's going on. Just download it. You can do it easily in a weekend. And then just keep going back to it. It's a book that you don't have to read chronologically. I would recommend reading it chronologically first, but then just highlight and tag. And I always do that. I'll just pick up- I did this yesterday when I was thinking about what I was going to talk to you and like that's the way, I don't know if you can see it, but like that's-
Eric Jorgenson: He is holding up the Almanac of Naval by the way.
David Senra: Oh yeah, I should have said that. Sorry, I forgot we're- I can see you, but most people can't see us. So, and then what I realized is just like the important way of how Charlie compresses a thought, just like Naval does, and a ton of other people. David Ogilvy is another person, an example of that. But I think that's really important because you're going to be deluged with a ton of information. Think about all the books you've read, all the podcasts you've listened to, all the videos you watch. How much have you remembered? Like 99.99% you're not going to remember.
Eric Jorgenson: It takes that amazing hook, that synthesis to like actually hang the whole idea on. I think that's what Munger did really well with some of the mental models. He's like, here's the model, here's the story, and here's why it's important. Jeff Bezos did that same thing, those Eugene Wei blog posts about the defining ideas of each chapter of Amazon. Did you read this? It was a little bit- I want kind of collect them all. He's like there was a season of the company where every decision we made was around getting bigger faster, and then there was a decision around like operationalize everything. And it's so like- but he had like a tag, like get big fast, or like get our house in order. It's like four words to guide all the decisions in the whole company for 18 months at a time, I thought was so, so smart.
David Senra: They're called Jeffisms.
Eric Jorgenson: Really?
David Senra: Within Amazon, they're called Jeffisms. And that's what I've noticed. People think, oh, if you're really smart, if you're really successful, you have to know a bunch of things. It's like what I've realized by studying hundreds of history’s greatest entrepreneurs is like they find maybe a handful of ideas that are extremely important to them, and then they drill down on them for multiple decades. They repeat themselves over and over again. So, something I say on the podcast that has resonated with other people is that repetition is persuasive. Like you have to get used to maybe identify five different ideas, and then you just repeat them, and it applies to different situations. So, the reason I was excited to talk to you is because I took Charlie's advice where he's like, take a simple idea and take it seriously. So, I reformat that to find a simple idea and take it really seriously. And then, so I took that idea and then Naval's basic- like his outline on how to build a business in the age of infinite leverage, which you discuss obviously at length in this book, you expound on his Twitter thread that obviously went viral and you just, you start collecting these ideas and you combine them into something that is unique to you, and it just works.
Eric Jorgenson: So, tell us the structure of your business and like how that came together.
David Senra: So, I've always been obsessed with reading. And it's the only habit, hobby that I've ever had that I've never quit. Like I've been interested in other things, and they appear for like a season in my life. But even like when I was a kid, like my mom passed away a few years ago from breast cancer and before, we had a lot of conversations as that was taking place. And she was telling me like, because she has memories of my childhood that no one else does because no one else was around. And so, she's like, David, the way you've read, you were like that since you were like 6 years old, like you'd sit at the breakfast table, and you'd read the box of Total. She used to feed us Total cereal, which is disgusting by the way. And I didn't know, she's like, you were just obsessed. Like every minute of time, you were just grabbed. You'd go, and like at a doctor's office, you'd read the magazines and all the other stuff. And so, I've always been obsessed with reading. I was trying to figure out like a business to build around that. So, I had like an email newsletter that would like take- it would collect book recommendations for entrepreneurs and other interesting people. And then what I would do is I would buy the Kindle and take the popular highlights. So, if you were on the email list, you'd get a list saying, hey, Elon Musk recommends this book. Here are the top 10 highlights. Here's a link to buy. And so that, it was like- one of the best descriptions of that I ever got was like, oh, I love your no fluff, non bullshit newsletter. I was like, oh, that's exactly what I was going for. And so anyways, I was just messing around in that area. I was like, man, I wish I could figure out a way to combine my passion with what I want to do for a living. And 10 years ago, I was listening to- do you know who Kevin Rose is? He was the person that actually got me interested in tech for the first time because I used to watch- he had like a video podcast before there was such a thing. It was called Diggnation. And it was like content marketing for his company. Well, after he did Diggnation, he did this high-quality interview podcast called Foundation. It's still online. It's amazing. And so, in 2012, he winds up interviewing Elon Musk on the Tesla factory floor. And Elon, you got to go back and watch the video, it's fantastic because Elon doesn't even look the same. Like he looks much younger. Like all imagine the stress that the guy’s had to endure in the last 10 years. And so, Kevin's asking, he's like, Elon, like this is crazy, you started your company in your early twenties. You immigrated from South Africa to Canada, then from Canada to Northern California. Like how did you learn how to build companies at such a young age? Did you have a lot of mentors? Did you read a lot of business books? And what Elon's said always stuck with my mind. He's like, no, I didn't read a lot of business books. I read biographies and autobiographies. I thought they were helpful. And then he went on to explain. He's like, I didn't have mentors around me, didn't have resources. He goes, reading biographies and autobiographies lets you develop mentors in historical context. And I was like, oh shit, that's really smart. Because I didn't have mentors. I didn't have really smart, successful people around me. So, books would serve as that. And so, I started- I was like, man, I should stop reading business books and start reading more biographies. And I had read biographies, but they were of like CEOs of banks, like Jamie Dimon or something like that. No disrespect to him, but like I like founders. And so, I start reading founder biographies. Elon talked about reading Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Nicola Tesla. He's read every single biography of anybody that's ever built a rocket. And that's why also, let me go on tangent, people are like, oh, I don't have time to read. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have time to read biographies. They talk about it over and over again. Are you busier than them? No, you're not, so shut the hell up. And Elon gave me the idea and I've done this before. He goes, I read entire books on the Kindle app on my iPhone. It's always with me. Instead of pulling up something else, I'll just read the book. And so that idea sat there a while. I started reading books, I said oh, this is interesting. Then, I discovered this podcast in 2015 called Jocko Podcast. And he went on like Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan and everything else.
Eric Jorgenson: This is Jocko Willink?
David Senra: Yep. Which now fast forward many years later, it's a top 10 business podcast. He's got millions of listeners. But he gave me the format for Founders, for my podcast, where I start watching or listening to him, and it's just Jocko sitting there reading highlights from books that he loves. And he did first person accounts. So, he only does autobiographies of people that served in like crazy experiences, like war, stuff like that. And so, I was like, man, I've never seen a podcast like this. And so, let's say I listen to a hundred episodes. I might order 12 or 15 of the books, and then, so I'm discovering books I've never heard of before and I wouldn't have discovered if it wasn’t for him. I'm reading them and I'm learning about like the war in Chechnya. I'm learning about the famine in North Korea. I'm learning about what it’s like leading a group in Vietnam. Like just all these extreme experiences. And then, so those are the books that I read. And then the podcast that I listen to where I don't read the book, I'm still learning a ton. And I'm like- and then he said something that was real smart. So, somebody on Twitter was like, hey, Jocko, when are you going to teach a course? Why don't you go to a college and teach a course on the military history? And he goes, the podcast is my military history course. And I was like, yep, I should do that, but I should do biographies. It started out just interesting people in history. Then I narrowed the focus down to founders, entrepreneurs, people that build companies, stuff like that. Now, I'll still read the occasional like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Abraham Lincoln, I got a book coming up about him. But mainly, it's founding. And usually using that term in the company, but founding could also be founding a country. If you think about what Abraham Lincoln did, he kind of re-founded America, founding an idea, whatever the case is. And then I just didn't know anything about doing a podcast. I would record one every like six months just for fun. And I did that for like a year and a half, and I started getting crazy messages. People would just find it through Apple Podcasts, like searching it. And I've always been obsessed with podcasts. I've been listening to them. I was obsessed, fully obsessed, for like 6 or 7 years before I started my own podcast. But even back then, before there was even such thing as a podcast, I just loved listening to talk radio. I listened to sports talk radio. I listened to political news talk radio. I’d listen to advice, like people writing into radio hosts and giving advice. I was just obsessed with the spoken word.
Eric Jorgenson: That was formative for me too. Like I remember growing up, a lot of audio books, like car talk radio with my dad, just like driving around for hours. Like it just like seeps into you in really interesting ways. It's an amazing medium. And so, when did it become a business and like your full time dedicated job?
David Senra: So, I started in 2016, and then I did it intermittently. I didn't have- I don't think I had- I remember lying in bed. And at the time, I was working on a different project and the project was making money, but it's just like- it's like a clever hack as opposed to something I would actually give a shit about. And I had quite a bit of savings. So, I was like- I remember laying in bed. I couldn't sleep one night, and I reread Paul Graham's essay, How To Do What You Love. And I think I might wind up printing out all of Paul Graham's essays and doing a podcast on him. They should be bound as a book. Yeah, they should be bound as a book.
Eric Jorgenson: People bring up him all the time as like you should do an Almanac of Paul. And like, man, there's no remixing those essays. Like they are incredible craft and-
David Senra: Dude, I got a lot of ideas I want to talk to you about too, because I love what you do. I loved your solo podcast. Like we just- I have a list of stuff I want to talk to you about. I want to make sure we hit though. And interrupt me as much as you want to. Keep in mind, my podcast is a monologue. So, like I just sit in this booth and talk for two and a half hours or two hours. So just be like, David, shut the hell up. So anyways, I remember just reading, like reading that essay and just being like, man, I really love podcasting. And at the time, it had no business model. I would do it infrequently, but I had already got to the point where like I could use affiliates, so I would sell- I saw people buying the book because I use Amazon affiliates. So, I saw like- I was a Blinkist affiliate at their very early days. Audible, like stuff around reading. And so, it got to the point where every time I put a podcast out, somebody and multiple people would buy whatever. I’d say, hey, if you like what I'm doing, support this. Just, if you buy these links, it sends me a little bit of cash. And so, this is just part-time, and I'm like- and then, it really hit me one day. It was like somebody bought something from what they heard on my podcast, and they live in Japan and I live in Miami. What the hell is happening here? Like, this is crazy. And so, it's just something I like thought about. I was somewhat obsessed, but I didn't think it was possible for some reason to do full time. And so, reading that essay, I was like, all right, I got enough savings. It’ll last for a few years. I was like, do you really think, David, that if you dedicate a hundred percent of your time- like I work seven days a week on Founders. Like if you actually- because it's the Naval idea. It's like find work that feels like play. So, it's like you're impossible to compete with. And so, if you added up all the time I dedicate to the podcast, it's probably like 70 hours a week. Like right now. Like I am obsessed. Everybody I meet through the podcast, and I meet some of the smartest, craziest people in the world, and I'm sure you do too through your work, and that's another superpower, they're always like, man, I love what you do, you should run a VC fund. Or I love what you do, you should start a software company. Or I love what you do. And it's like, everything you just said, I love what you do, now stop dedicating all your time to that and do something else. I was like, I'm not doing anything. They're going to have to pry my microphone from my cold, dead hands. Like, no, I'm doing this till I fucking die. My exit strategy: death. That is my exit strategy. I can read books. As long as I have eyes, and if my eyes get- if something happens and I lose my vision, I'll take notes on audio books. I don't give a shit. I will make it work. So anyways, I just decided that time in bed, I was like, fuck it. You got enough savings for a couple years. Go all in. And so, I started doing it every week. I still didn't have a business model. And I got to tell you about Masters of Doom because they gave me my business model, which is John Carmack and the guy- It's amazing. I think it's Founders 20, somewhere in the 20s, if you guys want to hear that. But so what really caused me to get traction is I had- you've marketed a podcast. It's really hard to give somebody-
Eric Jorgenson: Podcasts are very difficult to grow. Very, very difficult.
David Senra: But once you get people, they stick with you because like you just said, what we were talking about I think before we started recording. This is easy to talk to you because I've heard your voice for hundreds of hours, maybe not hundreds of hours, but hours. I've read your book, I've read your blog. It's just, it's like, oh, we already know each other, even if we've never met in person. And so, what happened is I was using Marco Arment’s, in my opinion, the best podcast app, which is Overcast. And what I like about Marco is he's got like 5% of the podcast player market, and it's one dude competing against like Apple and Spotify, but it's one dude that gives a fuck. You use his product, and you're like, oh, he loves audio. He loves it. And you could tell – your personality is imbibed in your product. There is no separation. That's why I hate when people are like, oh, this isn't personal, it's just business. No, it is personal. Because my business is me. And whether it's a company, a podcast, whatever case is, it's like no, I completely reject that notion. So, he did the best thing for podcast discovery ever. At the time, use Overcast, I think 5% would upgrade so they don't see ads, and he was using like Google ads, but you'd see- you'd be listening to a podcast, and it'd be like a Google ad for, I don't know, like the pizza place or a software company or something like that. And he's like, these ads suck. He's like, why don't I just design them out? So, he ripped it out and he blogged about this. It's on his blog if you ever want to read it. And he's like, I'm just going to make ads for podcasts. Because I mean, I'm a podcaster, I know discovery is a pain in the ass. I would love to have the attention of somebody that’s already listening to a podcast. And so, what happens is even to this day, when you open Overcast, like when I was listening to your podcast this morning when I was at the gym, and on the bottom, it plays- just a little, you see a banner and it says a short description, 10 word description of a podcast. If you like it, you could tap it and immediately subscribe or follow. I guess they're calling it follow now. And I was like, oh, this is genius. And so, I started buying Overcast ads immediately. Back then, I was getting subscribers, but they're called follows now, follows at a dollar a pop. I got a couple thousand. I got a couple- Now it's $23. Like everybody rushed in there.
Eric Jorgenson: How did you decide to go with the subscription model? Because that is an uncommon thing in the world of podcasts. I feel like there's a lot- I don't know what it is, 90/10 or 80/20 or something, but like way more are ad based then subscription.
David Senra: Okay so, I was just talking to a friend about this last night, because he's like, man, I wish I could figure out, like you have a really simple business model. I wish I could figure it out. I was like, dude, it didn't all come at once. It was years of not working, nothing's working and me just constantly experimenting. So, I didn't want- to give you some context, and I didn't understand that I thought this way at the time, but now having read biographies of people like Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas, I realized that's exactly how I thought about it. I think the best analogy to how I think about podcasting is the way people think about being a filmmaker. And so, my favorite filmmaker is Quentin Tarantino. When Quentin Tarantino puts on a movie, no one tells him, hey man, you should put ads in your movie. Hey man, I love your movie, but go make merch. Hey man, go build a product that's unrelated to making- They're like, no, just make more movies. Because that's what he loves to do. And when you read the biographies of filmmakers, just like entrepreneurs, they have something inside of them, it has to come out. It is like this uncontrollable urge. This has to come out of me. Steven Spielberg knew from the time he was in seventh grade, he's like, oh, he starts making little movies. He's like, oh, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. He's 60 something years old. He's still doing it. So that's the way I thought about podcasting, where I was like, man, I don't know if there's anybody on the planet, and I don't mean to sound arrogant by any means, that has thought more about the business of podcasting than me, because I've thought about it every day for, let's see, we're in 2000- for 6 years. And so, I was like, okay, I did some ads. I did affiliate. But I love this idea, and I actually learned it from a socialist podcast called Chapo Trap House. And so, Chapo Trap House is crazy. I copied their model first where every other podcast, so they put out one, it has no ads. It's free. Then the next one that they upload, you'll see like a five minute teaser. They don't even read anything. There's nothing on the podcast to know this. They put out like a five minute teaser. And then it says, hey, if you want to listen- in show notes, it's like, if you want to listen to every other- if you don't subscribe, you're missing every other episode. So, I tried that and that worked really well. I was like, oh, then I don't need to do it. So, then I yanked out all the affiliate ads. I was like, oh, I'll just do this. And then I realized the problem with that is when you do that, you'll have- if you compare your public download numbers and your public episodes to how many people convert, it's like 5%. And it's still around 5% because I talked to the founder of the company that does my subscription podcasting, it's called Supercast. And he's like, yeah, across the board, it's 5% of- like when we- our customers give us their public download numbers, we see their conversions. It's about 5%. So, I was like, well for small podcasts, that's not good enough. Me and you are not going to be Joe Rogan level, Call Her Daddy level. The way I think about this, Eric is if you're a giant podcast, you're stupid if you don't do ads because of how much, how profitable it is. But there's that long tail on podcasting. There's all kinds of people like you and I that feel like we have something to say that's valuable to our listeners, so we need other business models. At the same time, I thinking about that, I read Masters of Doom. And so, John Carmack and John Romero were partners. And they're in their early 20s. And they just, all they want to do is make computer games. That's all they care about. And John has this great- Carmack has this great line in the book, which talks about why him and his co-founder broke up is he feels like I feel. He goes, Romero wants to build- He goes, I just want to make great games, Romero wants to build an empire. And so, they went off separately. So, what they did is they started copying this phenomenon called shareware. In the 80s, business software was distributed in like little Ziploc bags and stuff. There's literally- like you can read a history. This is incredible to me. There was like a married couple making $10 million a year selling business software in Ziploc bags. Like it's just crazy how you can figure that out. And so, they were approached by the guy. They were like, hey, I'm making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year selling games using shareware. And so, John Romero and Carmack were like, yo, we should do that because it cuts out everything. It's like we can make them, we can distribute them ourselves, the profit margins are 90%. And so, they try to do it. They realized, okay, well, here you have the game for free. If you like it, send us a check. No one sends checks. And they're like, oh, this only works for business. It doesn't work for games. And so, I'm going to give you the truncated version of the story. What they hit on is like, okay, we made 45 levels of the game Doom. You can play the first 15 for free. If you want the other 30, you can buy it from us directly. And they make the point in the book that that business model doesn't just work for games, it works for software. It turns out, it works fantastically for podcasts. And so that's how I do. You want to listen to the first 30 minutes of my episode? Most of them are 60 to 90 minutes. You get 30 minutes for free. I'm not putting ads there. You just listen to it. It's like a demo, a free trial you never have to sign up for. If you want the rest, that link, you can set it up in less than 29 seconds, and people do it. And my conversion rate is 10 times higher than the other model. Like it's insane how well that idea that I got from Masters of Doom works in this format.
Eric Jorgenson: Your format is like addictive too, man. Like the more- I started listening to kind of like- I listened to the freemium stuff, and then our mutual friend Mitchell got us like the- bought me I think the lifetime subscription as a gift. So, thank you, Mitchell.
David Senra: He just texted me right now, literally.
Eric Jorgenson: Oh, really? Mitchell was on the podcast too previously, Mitchell Baldridge.
David Senra: I listened to it yesterday. I listened to it yesterday.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, brilliant dude. Like the more I listen to your podcast, the more it sets apart, like the lessI want to bother listening to almost any other podcast. Like it raises the bar for the time I spend with audio just because it's so dense and nutritious and like high value time. So, I've just been like flying the last month. I just kind of- which it doesn't surprise me why your conversion is so high. Because as soon as you kind of get a taste of that sweet knowledge nectar, you're just like, I want more. I want more. I want more of this episode. I want all of the back episodes. Like David just saved me, I don't know, 20 hours of reading and distilled all this and synthesized it. I don’t know, it's just such a great product. And I love the analogy to the filmmakers because I've listened to a bunch of those too because I love that biography of George Lucas. And so now like, oh I want the contemporary like Steven Spielberg. I want to learn about Francis Ford Coppola who's a mentor to both of them. It's an amazing little like pocket of creativity and business knowledge. And it’s an amazing analogy actually. And I appreciate the, I don’t know, the craftsmanship. Like I texted Mitchell about you when I was going to interview you, and he was like, just know that he's a craftsman. Like David made this podcast when nobody listened to it. He'll be doing it when he dies. Like he just wants to be a great podcaster. Which is an amazing level of focus. I have a lot of respect for that level of focus. It's something I'm still kind of trying to like build up myself. Do you feel tempted to do this other stuff at all? Or are you just- how did you ingrain this level of focus in your discipline in yourself?
David Senra: A lot of the- again, I think what you and I like about Charlie Munger, what you realize, and he hits on this, is like I can have a completely successful life and I never have to come up with one original idea ever because there's thousands of years of smart people in history, running all kinds of experiments. Like if you look at the description of Founders, it's a quote from Mark Andreessen. Like Mark Andreessen is a billionaire, and he reads hundreds of biographies. He's probably read more biographies than I. I will eventually catch him though. And like the perfect example of that is like, you would see when the pandemic hit, he would give interviews, and this guy just bought a $170 million house in California. He just broke the record in California. And you see where he's recording this stuff and it's just Mark sitting in a room and the books are just everywhere. Not even on bookshelves, they're just like on floors and stuff. So that tells you, like these people tell you with their actions how valuable it is. So, the focus is if you study at all the greatest entrepreneurs in history, it just pops out at you. There's a lot of advice they give, and I talk about this on the podcast quite a bit, it’s just like the reason I call it the Misfit Feed, the premium feed of podcasts, is because like the way entrepreneurs and founders think and high achievers in general, it's like the stuff they say is almost 180 degrees directionally opposite than what conventional wisdom is. Oh, diversify. I know you- I saw your- I was listening to your podcast with Andrew Wilkinson where you guys both have the busts of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet. You're a savage, dude. I can't believe you guys spent $2,000 on that.
Eric Jorgenson: That was my fiancé’s engagement present to me. Like I would've had a hard time writing that check, but as a gift, it is beautiful.
David Senra: Well, when you said that, I was like, oh, I want one. Then I saw the price. I was like, I don't want it anymore. But I mean, I've read all their shareholders. I've read probably 10 books about them combined. And they just say- I'm not- diversification makes no sense if you know what you're doing. Naval says the more you know, the less you diversify. My entrepreneurial heroes, Steve Jobs, Edwin Land, Enzo Ferrari, David Olgivy, Ed Thorp, there's no diversification. It's like I found one thing and I'm pulling all of my attention and energy behind this thing. The crazy thing, and you hit this in your book, and that's why I give it to so many people, is that we're in a war right now. People, first of all, don't understand how valuable your attention is. And so, they give it away for free to all kinds of things. And there's no- like, what I would say is like, I want, if I'm giving you my attention, the benefit has to accrue to me. And I take that to an extreme because in your book, it says in the age of infinite leverage, being at the extreme of your art is super important. I'm paraphrasing, but that's how I remembered it. And so, somebody texted me last night, they're like, hey, do you ever get burned out with your books? Are you unmotivated to read? And I was like, no, I'm obsessed. Like I don't believe in burnout. Like I understand- people say, oh, you're a creator. I'm not, I'm a podcaster. I don't give a shit about anything else. I do other stuff for marketing. I make TikTok videos, do all this other stuff. All of that stuff goes back because I just want to make- I more people aware of what I do. And so, this idea we're like- and that's how people are like, oh, are you worried creators get burned out? I was like, if you're burned out by reading books, working in an office, typing on a computer, then you lack historical context. We have it better than 99.99% of people that have ever lived. There are literally people that subscribe to my podcast, email me, they dig fucking ditches and they're hoping to learn to get a better life. Like put it in context. Step outside of yourself, dude. You are unbelievably lucky. You're stressed, that's fine. Everybody's stressed. Take a half a day off and then you get back on it. But this idea like, oh, I can't read a book, I can't make a podcast. It is a privilege that I get to do this. The best, the single best mindset that I've ever heard comes from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I've read two of his books from. He's talking about this time, this scene is in his books, but it's also in that documentary Pumping Iron. And so, he is being followed around by a documentary crew, and him and all the people he's competing with. And they're in a zero-sum game. Me and you don't operate in zero sum games. It's all positive sum. And so, there's only one Mr. Olympia. They all have the same goal. They're all working out 5, 6 hours a day. And the person watching this is like, wait a minute, I don't get this. Like, how is Arnold different than other people? Arnold, you're working out five, six hours a day. You have a big smile on your face. Your competitors, they're also working out 5, 6 hours a day. He goes, and they're frowning, they're sour in the face. And he said something that is perfect because he flips I think the normal human interaction, he goes- they're like, why is that? He goes, it's because I have a goal. I have a vision in my mind that I'm trying to see- I already see it in my mind. I want to see it in person. So, every rep that I do gets me one step closer to that goal. So, I couldn't wait to do another 500-pound bench press. I couldn't wait to do another 500-pound deadlift. I couldn't wait to do another 2000 reps of sit ups. Because every rep gets me closer to that goal. It takes him something oh- his competitors are, oh, I have to do this. Arnold was like, I get to do this. And then you apply it to whatever you do. So that's how I apply it to what I'm doing. And I always think about like Buffet's idea. Naval talks about it in that book too. It's like people get confused when they use the word like moat. And to me it's like, no, all moat means is like why are you difficult to compete with? Why can somebody not come along and do exactly what you're doing? And so, the way I think about it, the reason I cannot allow any other distraction in my life is because like what you said, the more time I spend reading, the more podcasts I create; the more podcasts I create, the more value it gets to my customer, the deeper they go. So, let's say, you say, okay, David, I love your format. I'm going to do exactly what you're doing. And they start today. They have to- I've read 255 books for the podcast. Some of these podcasts have done two books in one episode. So, let's say 260 books. You’ve got to make that up. That's over a hundred thousand pages. That's like 8,000 of work. So, you start today, good. You got to- good luck catching me. And the idea that I'm ever going to let my foot off the gas, I'm too far ahead. It's game, set, match already. And then what happens? So, the podcast right now is growing like crazy, subscriber growth is growing like crazy. The public downloads are going crazy. But it's also there's un- what I try to explain to people is like, when they say David, be an investor, which I like investing, I just don't think I'd be good at it, is because there's non-monetary benefits to the podcast. Now I get to be friends with people like you. I get to be friends with like Mitchell. I'm not going to name some of these people, but it's just unbelievable the people that I get to talk to. I have billionaires that literally pay for the podcast and email me. What the fuck is happening? What the fuck. I record this by myself in my apartment in Miami. What the fuck is happening? This is insane. That is a non-monetary benefit. And the reason I know this is important because I read, I literally study dead people for a living. And you realize like, yes, money's important. I'm not- I would love to be a billionaire. I'm not saying that. But I've read tons of stories of unhappy billionaires. What makes a complete content, contented human today is the same thing that made it 2000 years ago. Human nature is constant. And so, what I realized, this comes from Charlie Munger and Benjamin Franklin, life, or excuse me, time is the stuff that life is made of. And if I'm spending time chasing a dollar, doing things I don't like, I will get that dollar and I will still be unhappy.
Eric Jorgenson: That is- I've listened to your episode on Ed Thorp, which I absolutely loved and a really interesting guy. I think this is a reasonable quote, but I think you said like of all the people I have ever read or studied, he is the one that you most want to emulate. Is that accurate?
David Senra: So, in my opinion, the greatest entrepreneur of all time, Steve Jobs hands down. So, he's the clearest thinker. I love his products. I love the way he went around it. I love that he was so dedicated from the time- Apple's first sale, think about this, Apple's first sale was made barefoot. It's a, what, 2 or 3 trillion, whatever it is right now, 2 trillion. I don't know what the market is right now, but that's crazy to me. Like he made great products in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010 right before he died. So, I love that. I don't want to be him as a person. Like I have a daughter, he had a daughter, it's widely known. You can be- My point is, is like, what I would say in the podcast is like we're here to learn. You and I are here to learn from these people. We're not idolizing them. There is no such thing as a perfect human being. I just read Jay-Z's autobiography. He made it perfectly. I think you’ll under- like anybody hears this line will agree. And that's why I try to like not criticize other people. I try to just mind own business because like you're throwing stones and I'm an imperfect human being. But Jay-Z said in his biography. This is his autobiography 10, 12 years ago. And he's like, I do things that even I have a hard time explaining why. That's the human condition. And so, I'm not going to get on my podcast and be like, oh, he's a shit father or whatever the case is. Like, you can read between the lines. So, all the people I've learned from, Ed Thorp is the only one- Ed Thorp is the person that came closest to, in my opinion, mastering life, understanding what actually makes a happy, complete human at the end of their life and is not going to look back with regret, which is the thing I'm most terrified of. Because when you're 80 on your deathbed and you're looking back and you're like it's too late. Game, set- like it's over. So, this is why I like Ed Thorp, this is why he's who I emulate. He's like, listen, you can't do everything in life. You got to pick the things, like the handful of things that are most important to you. So, he took care of his health, step one. Which I think is the most important thing. So, when I wake up every morning, I go straight to the gym, some kind of physical activity. I took an idea from him. Because you can Google Ed Thorpe. Go watch his YouTube videos or interviews. He's 85 in these videos; he looks like he's 60. So, he said something in that book, and I'll run down and answer your question. But he said something in the book that was fantastic. He's like, every day, I've spent at least seven hours a week for decades exercising. And he's like, I look at one hour spent in the gym as one less day that I'll spend in the hospital when I'm older. And then I took his idea because you see this because like everybody looks good when they're like 20, but then 15 years later, they've gained two pounds a year. Now they're 30 pounds heavier. So, what Ed Thorp does, I do the same thing. I wake up, I weigh myself. I put it in my app. And it's that tight feedback loop. Because if you go back and look at the data that I've collected for years, it's like my weight hovers in this four or five pound- like it's impossible for me to gain weight because I immediately know, oh, I step on the scale, oh, I'm like two pounds heavier than I was last week. I'll just eat a little less. Maybe do a little bit more cardio, whatever the case is. He just has smart feedback loops for everything. So, the health, first of all, he says, take care of his health. Second of all, he treated life like the adventure that it should be. The guy literally- like not only is he the inventor of the quantitative hedge fund, which is insane, he's the first LP in Citadel. Like that's insane. He met Warren Buffet when Warren Buffet was 30 years old. He bought into Berkshire at $900 a share. He still owns that stock today. That's insane. He invented the first wearable computer with Claude Shannon. What the fuck is- like, I could not believe what I'm reading. Then he figures out he's the person that invented an easy way to count cards to increase the player's percentage of win percentage in blackjack. He writes a book in the 1960s called Beat the Dealer about this very simple system that he uses. He publishes it and he sells millions of copies of the book
Eric Jorgenson: Still, I think.
David Senra: Yes. And so, it's like- so that's the adventure part. Then the business part, he has a growth mindset. He's like, okay, how did I learn about how to gamble? Because he's also a mathematician. He's like, I just read as much, all the information that's out there. Then I put it in practice. He's like, well now, there's a bigger casino and it's called Wall Street. How do I learn how to invest? And so that's what he said. He goes, I just read every single thing on the subject. Reading, that's what I tell people. Reading is part of the job. Like that is table- Like the bare minimum. It's not even something that should be celebrated; it's just standard. And so he goes, listen, I read everything, and just like a whale filters 99% of the – he uses this example in the book – just like a whale filters 99% of sea water in its mouth to get krill, like the actual nutrients, he goes, it's the same thing when you read. So, then he comes up with a way to start realizing, hey, like we should be applying- Like you should take math and apply it to investing as opposed to back then it was like, oh, I have some feeling in my gut or you have some inside information or some like crazy illegal stuff that you were doing or whatever the case is. And so, then he starts the first quantitative hedge fund. His partner winds up- it gets raided by Rudy Giuliani 20 years later. But in I think his 19 year record, he compounded like 19% a year. For the first 5 or 10 years, he was still a professor at I think UC Irvine. Like it's just insane. And then he's- so he's like, okay, he didn't get in trouble. He didn't do anything wrong. The charges wound up getting dropped. It was because he was running the data on the west coast, that's why it's called Princeton Newport, and his partner was the one doing all the actual trades on the east coast. So then he has a decision. Okay. I'm already rich. I'm healthy. I've had a life of adventure. I have more money than I could ever spend. Do I go and chase another 2 billion that I'll never spend at the expense of my relationship with my wife and my kids? I am married. I have two kids. It is non fucking negotiable that I'm going to be a bad dad. It's just not going to happen. My family tree up and down, both sides on my mom's side and my dad's side of the family is full of shitty parents, parents that sexually abused their kids, parents that physically abuse their kids, parents that fucking abandon their kids, parents that were alcoholics, parents that chose a new wife over their children. Unacceptable. That stops now. Right here. No fucking way. Because when you grow up in that environment, you're like this is terrible. Like when I met my wife, I met her in my last year of college, I was like I'm never getting married, never having kids. Fast forward seven years, I'm married and have kids. But part of that was because I met her family. And so, I remember riding in the car on a date when we were in college, and I'm like, why are you talking to your grandmother again? She's like, I talk to her every day. Why would you want to do that? Like the whole concept that you would voluntarily spend time with family was fucking crazy to me. And so then, we traveled to her family and my wife's family is from Columbia. And South America just get- like, they're really smart about multi-generation households. So, my wife grew up in this like castle and it's like a bunch of houses connected to each other where it's like the grandparents are next door, the cousins are there, the uncles, the aunts. And I'm like, oh, you could have a good family. I want that. I want that. Like, what do I do to do that? I want to do that. So, a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs that I study, it's like they get to the end of their life, they're like, I fucked up. The founder of Ikea is a perfect example. He's like, listen, he didn't want to write the autobiography. He started Ikea when he was 17, worked on it until he died in his 80s. He wrote it right before he died. He's like the only reason I'm writing this is because I think future generations of entrepreneurs can benefit. And I consider myself an entrepreneur in my soul. And he goes, don't do what I did. He goes, I spent every spare minute building Ikea. He goes, I missed my three sons growing up. And then he said a line in that book that gives me fucking goosebumps. And he goes, anybody that has children knows childhood does not allow itself to be reconquered, just beautiful language. And so, Ed Thorp avoided that. It's just really working backwards, Eric, from like all the- because humans just make the same mistakes over and over again. So, it's like Charlie Munger, it's like invert. You talk about that in the Naval book over and over again. So it's like, okay, I want to be healthy and be able to move around when I'm at the end of my life. I want to have fun because we only get one- life isn't a green room for something else. Like go for it. I want to have a good relationship with my wife. I want to have good relationship with my kids. I want to be intellectually stimulated. And I want to really enjoy my work. So, Ed Thorp, his hedge fund grows up. He's like, all right, how do I do what I was doing, but with less people? And so, he winds up running more money. At the time, I think they were running 200 million. Then he starts another one that's almost all like automated and they're running like 400 million with like five people, and he's working nine to five. This why I'm so excited to talk to you because you're like the master of leverage. I laugh every time I see your tweets because it's all- it's essentially just telling people to get leverage over and over again in different ways.
Eric Jorgenson: I'm trying to hit that repetition is persuasive, and there's so- I feel like I'm still only articulating that point 25% eloquently. Like there's just so much nuance and power in it that I feel like that just I need to keep rephrasing it and keep rephrasing it and keep working on it. Because it's so mysterious and counterintuitive and confusing. And your business is a wonderful example of it. And it sounds like that took some lessons from that book that helped kind of give you even more motivation and context for like this thing just keeps scaling. I'm reaching people all over the world. It's not- I can serve orders of magnitude more people without changing your daily routine. Like that is an amazing trait to have in a business that is entirely sort of, I don't know, emerged in the last 50 years, 20 years maybe.
David Senra: Yeah. I'm about to give a talk because my daughter is like, can you please do career day? And she's in fourth grade. And I'm like, yeah, I'll talk about the podcast. But really what I’m going to talk about is like just be a lifelong learner because it's highly likely that the job you're going to have isn't invented yet. When I was your age, there was no such thing as podcasts. That's why like I take this seriously. I'm not going to give into anything else because like podcasting is a miracle. It lets anybody have an on-demand radio station to talk about whatever they want that can be accessible in an asynchronous way to people all over the world. That is- I'm going to read something to you, dude. I just sent it to- I was just talking, you know Patrick from Invest like the Best? Yeah, so I was just talking to him, and I sent this to him because I love what he's doing and he's building out like this crazy audio empire. It's like super impressive. And I was like, dude, you're building an empire. I'm like Jiro dreams of sushi here in my little train station. You know what I mean? That's all I want to do. Like I'm not-
Eric Jorgenson: Patrick O’Shaughnessy is just cranking out podcasts. I mean, Invest Like the Best was super successful. Then started Founders Field Guide, Web3 Breakdowns, Business Breakdowns, like all of these and just kind of like parallelizing multiple shows.
David Senra: Dude, he is not stopping. He's not stopping either. I just read Mark Leonard's- I got to talk to Patrick about this, but I've just read Mark Leonard’s Shareholder letters and I don't know shit about investing. But Mark Leonard's interesting to me, not only because he looks like Rick Rubin, but he's like this guy that's super private.
Eric Jorgenson: Does he really? That is not what I was envisioning.
David Senra: There's only one- You can Google him. There's only one picture online of him. But what I like about him is that he identified like an earned secret and then just tackled that earned secret multiple decades. He's like, I was a venture capitalist. What I realized is like vertical market software businesses are not venture scaled, but they're fantastic businesses. So, I'll just buy 500 of them and keep them forever. And it just- so there's a lot of what I learned from Mark, I'm like, oh, Patrick's doing the same thing because like his investment fund and everything else. And it's like, it's crazy. So, I want to read this to you about podcasting. And this is a note I took in 2018 and it's just fantastic. And it says, one of the things coming out of podcasting is these long form discussions in front of enormous groups of people. So, he’s talking about live podcasts where you go over very complex issues. It's a new thing. It's something greatly we received by the public. This is the punchline. This is how I feel about podcasts, and I have felt this way for a very long time. There is a technological revolution. It is a deep one. The technological revolution is in online video and audio immediately accessible to everyone all over the world. What that's done is turned the spoken word into a tool that has the same reach as the printed word. It is a Gutenberg revolution in the domain of video and audio. It might be even deeper than the original Gutenberg revolution because it isn't obvious how many people can read, but lots of people can listen. And so, if you believe that to your soul, which I do, you would laugh. It's not hard for me to be focused because it's like the wave is not me. I'm riding a technological wave and people are like- dude, we're going to have to do like seven parts of this podcast. But when people laugh like, oh, people shouldn't make any podcasts. There's too many of them. Should people stop writing books? Should they stop making new music? Oh, we have enough movies. Let's not make more of those either. Yes, there's a lot of shitty podcasts. There's a lot of shitty anything. So, fucking what? It's like, this is a medium. It is not- this is what I- everybody contacts me like, hey, I want to start a podcast. And it's like the same format. This is why I wanted to- I have some ideas for you if you you're curious or not. But like I loved your solo cast. And whether you do it on this podcast or another one, like I know you're building out the Balminack or whatever you're going to call it, the Balajiac. Dude, I think you should work in public and I think your podcast should do it. I think you should do like these maybe 10, 20, 30 minute episodes. Like you don't need- again, like we had to coordinate, figure out a time to get together. Sometimes it takes a few weeks. That's kind of like a pain in the ass. But I can just make- I made 66 new podcasts last year. I don't have to coordinate with anybody. And so, what I was thinking, I was like, dude, and they're valuable distribution channels. Cause you're- if I subscribe to your podcast where you're literally talking about- imagine like you said, you spent a couple years making the Almanac of Naval. Imagine if you were given 5 minutes of value every three days or 10 minutes of value, and that subscriber page just keeps going and going and going. I'm not saying make an hour and a half podcast. I think that's the wrong move on what I'm describing to you. But I would love to see the behind the scenes of what- just your thoughts. Oh, shit, I read this about Balaji. This is the idea that has spawned in my mind, just like you did on the solo cast with that book, I think it was on nuclear-
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it was Where's My Flying Car; it was about like nuclear, nanotech, and AI. That was great book.
David Senra: Yeah. And I was just like- not that you're going to have a problem selling that book when you're done with it, but people will discover and reach it that aren't on Twitter, that don't know who Balaji is and everything else. And that's what- I was just like it's a medium. We're in the early days. We're at the very bottom of a giant exponential curve. Right now, the shows are either like scripted, like Gimlet, nothing wrong with that, their interview podcasts, some people are doing- but we have no idea what the final form of podcasting's going to be because it's so far off. And I have the benefit of knowing this because I've read dozens of books about the beginning of industries. I did like a 13 part series on all the founders of the American car industry. I just did a bunch of- just did a book on the very beginning of the aviation, like the airplane industry. I've done a bunch of podcasts on the beginning of the movie industry. It's the same idea over and over again just applied to different domains. So, it's just like, of course, I'm going to listen to this podcast. I'm going to listen to the- read the books and I'm going to apply that to podcasting.
Eric Jorgenson: Like one of my favorite ideas from Munger is like great brands minimize or maximize just one or two variables. Like that's the formula. And the example he uses is Ikea that like maximizes inconvenience, minimizes price. Costco is another great one. And I'm just like very self-aware that this- if I consult myself on my podcast, it is not unique enough. Like I have not maximized or minimized variables. It's kind of like there's a lot of interview shows and I probably won't be the greatest interviewer in the world, and I probably won't be able to get the biggest guests in the world. And I just haven't dialed the knobs enough to do something as super unique and super valuable as you have. But also, the podcast is kind of like, I don't know, this is much more of a hobby for me. Like I love the excuse to go talk to people like you and share it with everybody that I know and just kind of like scale up my learning from other people and writing to me, like working on these books is so, I don't know, it's just not very social. Like I could just sit there for eight hours and stare at a computer screen, and just like this is so much more engaging, and it's all one big feedback loop too. Like learning and then taking that to investing and then using the podcast to talk about what we're investing in. Like all of that is kind of one big feedback loop. And so, I struggle; I think about like your level of focus is so much more intense. I feel like I'm focused, but on a slightly larger set of things. But it is an interesting thing that I oscillate on.
David Senra: That is a good segue. I think it's a good segue because I have a bunch of ideas and notes that I want to talk to you about. So, if you don't mind me turning the tables on you for a minute. So, you write in the book I think a Naval quote, he's like, fortune requires leverage. And so, I have two questions, and maybe they're in reverse order. How do you see your personal leverage? No, let's not start there. What is your main goal? If you could only do one thing – I know you invest, you do the podcast, you write books, you write your blog, you do the course. Is there anything else, or no? No, that's it. So, in a world-
Eric Jorgenson: I had to think about it, which is not a good sign.
David Senra: Well here, like because what I realize, like there's a tweet that I love, and it says most apps, this is an app developer, he says, most apps don't have a clear primary action. And I go, most people don't either. And this is my whole thing, I don't want to diversify. I am crazy. Like I hope people understand that. Like there's a line, there's advice that Warren Buffet gives in his shareholder letters where he's like, this is my advice for the founders that are running the businesses that we own. He's like, act, make your decisions on a three part formula. He's like, as if you own a hundred percent of the business, number one. Number two, you can't sell- or no, number two is it's the only asset you have or your family has or will ever have. And number three, you can't sell it for at least a century. And I was like that's the best- business is not formulaic. Business is not formulaic at all. And I was like people think I'm crazy. It's like I would literally be comfortable putting a hundred percent of my net worth into Founders. Like literally saying you cannot put a dollar in an index fund for God's sake. Like nothing. I was like, I don't give a shit. I don't care. Because like the goal- if your goal is to maximize money, that's not a bad goal. It's just, I think if I pursued that goal, I know I would because it's I think natural to most humans, it's what you think you want, but then you get there and you're deeply dissatisfied.
Eric Jorgenson: And it welcomes a lack of focus. I think as soon as you start pursuing money, then you kind of look at a broader set of opportunities. You're like, oh, that would go make money. Like maybe I should do that, or maybe I should do that also, and then you split focus from your main obsessive focused thing that might actually, if you use that Warren Buffet test, be the best thing if you poured yourself into it totally.
David Senra: And what I was telling my friend through text last night is, because he's like, oh, you should do this. You should add transcripts. You should do- these things are very well meaning. So, I understand why they're saying that, but they're like, yeah, but you're- like you should have a customer- like basically saying you should cater to your customers, your desires and you should definitely focus on your customer. And I called him, I go, my obsessive focus on just making the best podcast possible is exactly that. It's obsession on the customer. And the point being that I've learned from studying the history of entrepreneurship is that people that are obsessed about the customer experience get the money anyways. But you do that first. You don't say, I want to make money, let me make a product, how most people do it. It's like, no, like what unique thing, what unique value do I bring to the world, make that as best as possible, and that will get you the money. So, let's go back to the notes I took before because I want to talk to you about this. So, if you can only do one thing that you do- I know you have to promote it using the podcast, newsletter, all that, but you can only work on one thing. What is that one thing?
Eric Jorgenson: It would be books. And not just almanacs, but I would keep writing and publishing books I think.
David Senra: So, your podcast or newsletter, everything else obviously can serve that. So, my little sister, I have a younger sister who that's her dream in life. She's not- she has a normal job now, but she really wants to be a writer. And people think I read a lot. She reads like a book a day. She reads like fiction and horror stuff and anime stuff. So, it's completely different than what I read. But I was telling her, I was like, Rebecca, you've been writing this book for like four years. It is still not done; you’ve got to get it out. I go, but you've got to start building your distribution channel for the book right now because the most heartbreaking thing that's going to happen is you're going to work on this book for five years. You're going to release it and to crickets. So, I started explaining to her, I was like book talk on TikTok and other short form video. The number of books people are buying has actually gone up for the first time in a long time. And a lot of that's directly attributed to the fact that you have book- communities online. And so I go, listen, dude, I was like, listen, you're already reading books. Just make a video, 20 second, 30 second video and be like, hey, I just want to read you this highlight from this book that I really love. And so, she started putting it out and now she's growing a following. I go, just do that every day. It might take you another two years to finish the book, but once you're attracting like minds. So now the people that like the same books you like will probably like the book that you're writing. So now two years from now, you might have a hundred thousand followers or whatever case is. Hey guys, I finally finished the book. You've seen me work on it for several years. If you listen to the podcast, I talk about- I talk openly, like I got to figure out the business model. I'm working on this for advertising. I tell you the behind the scenes shit because I know my audience is full of really smart people and all they do is send me smart things. So, what I would do if I was you is like- nterviews is fine, if you want to talk to smart people, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think you hit on that. It's just, I told- a lot of people come to me and they're like, I'm going to start a podcast, and like, I'm going to interview founders. I'm going to interview investors. And I'm like, are you going to be better at that than Patrick O’Shaughnessy? Because he's been doing it for years and he's really fucking good at it. And like he's building-, he's got a CEO of his podcast for God's sake. Like think of all the infrastructure and the resources he has. Are you going to be better at that than Tim Ferriss? Are you going to be better at that, interviewing people, than like Joe Rogan? People look at Joe Rogan, and they're like, oh, he's just, he's sitting in a room drinking and smoking and talking shit for three hours. I could do that. No, you can't. No, you can't. You think being interesting to 11 million people for multiple hours is not hard. You're out of your fucking mind. You're out of your- you're fucking crazy. And so, my thing is like I love interview podcasts. Don't get me wrong. I'm very happy you invited me on to this. I'll talk to you every day if you want. But what I realize is like that's already done. By the time I start this today, and that's why I've resisted raising money and offers to join investors and everything else, because I'm like, dude, if I start doing this now, there's like 5,000 people that are better at that than me. Like, even if I'm personally interested in it. And I talk to one of them who's now a good friend of mine. And he's like, I think about this all the time. I think about this every day. And I'm like, exactly, I'm not going to be able to compete like you, with people like you. You're going to kick my ass up and down the court. Like why would I do that? And so, I think that's what podcasting is missing. They think it's a fucking show and not a medium. And it's just like, no dude, there's a ton of things you could do. And I think more people should do exactly- I loved the podcast you did about your book. I would even like it even more if it's about the book you're making. And then when I get- when you get to the end of that cycle, you have, 20,000, 50,000, whatever it is, people listening and they're all going to buy the book. There's just so many fascinating things. But the reason I bring that up is because I do think what that guy hit on is like most apps don't have a primary action and most people don't either. And I think because people don't have a primary action, they spread their resources thin. And so, they're not- like it's just arrogant to think that you can be great at something and you're going to do it part-time.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Or they take that kind of common knowledge of diversification very seriously. I'm curious in the historical context, how many entrepreneurs that you have studied are actually serial entrepreneurs? It just seems like a very recent thing. And I'm wondering if- you have a much better data set than I do.
David Senra: Okay. So, rule number two, I have family rules that I've come up with. And rule number two, I tell my kids and our entire family, mind your own business. And so, I almost said I hate serial entrepreneurs. I don't hate, like I don't really care what other people do at all, but it's just completely opposite. It's going to answer your question. Like almost none. There is one guy that came to mind, and I actually had this conversation this morning through text with somebody who listens to my podcast, and it's like Jim Clark. Jim Clark was the first person in history to found three separate billion dollar technology companies. And so, he looked at himself, he's like, I don't want to manage people. I don't want to- I'm not going to be in an office. He looked at himself as like, I'm creating the story. I'm the author of the story. I find this- like building a movie. I pick out the cast, I pick out the script, and I pick out the props and then you go. So, he's the guy that recruited a 23-year-old Mark Andreessen to start Netscape. And Jim Clark at that time that he recruited Mark Andreessen was a legend. I think already a billionaire at that point. But he also didn't believe in diversification. So, he's like this, kind of like an Elon character where they'd be like, you're super rich, you have $2 billion. And he's like, oh, okay, put 50% of my net worth in that company and 50% of my net worth in that company. No other investments. No stocks. No nothing. He's like- he thought- he said diversification and mediocrity are the same thing. And he's like, I'm not interested in being mediocre. But to answer your question, almost none of them, man. If we can go through the list of the people, Edwin Land only worked on Polaroid. Not only did he only work on Polaroid, first of all, if you don't know who Edwin Land is, not you, I know you do, but the people listening, I'm not- one of my goals in life is for more- like every entrepreneur that I ever run into, to encourage them to study Edwin Land. If he was alive today, he'd be kicking most of today's entrepreneurs’ ass up and down the fucking court. He ran his company longer than almost any other entrepreneur in history. Steve Jobs met Edwin Land when he was 20, Edwin Land was 70, and Steve Jobs said it was like visiting a shrine. Steve Jobs took ideas from a lot of people. He talks about that over and over again, founder of Sony, founder of Intel, founders of HP, all types of people. He didn't- there's not another person ever that he took more ideas from than Edwin Land. When you start studying Edwin Land, and it gives me goosebumps thinking about this, you're like, oh, what I thought, because we came up on Steve Jobs. I thought those were his ideas. No, they're Edwin Land's ideas. So, Edwin Land invented instant photography, the Polaroid camera. He would get pissed when he was older because they're like, hey, we should start a copy machine. We should start a printer. And he's like Xerox already does that. There's a million companies. He goes, we're not diversifying anything. And his idea gave me the idea. I dropped one of my other products where he said, he goes, I have an extremely personal motto that might not work for anybody else. And he goes, it is if- he goes, don't do anything that somebody else can do. And so, at the time I was making money, trying to make money on the podcast. I had this thing called David's Notes. They were podcast notes for entrepreneurs. So, every podcast I listened to, I would just jot down things that I wanted to remember. And if you want my notes, you pay me a hundred bucks a year and I would email them to you. It's a good business. If you don't have a business and you're hearing that, go do it, it works. Be super narrow focused because entrepreneurs want to know what other entrepreneurs are thinking, and they don't have time to listen to everything that's out there. But I realized when I heard Edwin Land say that, I go, anybody can do that, but I can only do Founders the way it's being done. So, I was like, oh, got to go. And I dropped a- it was a good amount of money. I was like, oh fuck it. I'm closing it down. So, to answer your question, there is not a lot of serial-
Eric Jorgenson: Not a lot of serial entrepreneurs. It is so invigorating to see those patterns. When you see one of those ideas like that, so when you said, I don't remember the exact phrasing of the motto, don't do anything that anyone else can do, I immediately also thought of Peter Thiel’s like every great company is unique, and every failing or struggling company is in a perfect competition. I also thought of the Jack Welsh cutting any product that they're not- in any category that they're not number one or two in the category. And I also thought of like one of the laws of leverage that we teach in the course is like do only the stuff that you can do or do the things only you can do. Everything else should be either outsourced or not done, just as a touchdown like it is so, I think you used the word reassuring before, but to like see those threads that go deep and that a bunch of different people have independently discovered and used as principles and proven over and over again as like almost a law of physics of entrepreneurship.
David Senra: It is funny that you said that because I just- I don't like taking days off. But I just did. I spent 48 hours in LA this past weekend. And I only did that because I don't pay attention to any private companies. I really don't even know what day it is. I don't know what the stock market's doing. I don't care. Like I just work 24/7 on Founders. Because if I just do that, everything else will take care of itself. I don't like- I literally don't pay attention to anything. But one thing that came across my radar a couple years ago was this private company called Cover. I think the website is like buildcover.com or whatever. They're essentially trying to figure out a way to mass produce housing to make it cheaper, which in my opinion, like obviously in our age group, it's extreme, it's a big problem, and it's going to be a gigantic problem if we don't fix it for our kids. And so, I love that company forever. I got a DM from the founder like months ago, and he's like, David, I love your podcast. It's amazing. If you're ever in LA, come out and I'll give you a tour of the factory. I was like, dude, I'll probably be there this summer on vacation with my family. I'll take you up on that. Then he emailed me a couple- like last week and he is like, I just finished listening to your episode on the founder of Hyundai. It was incredible. I'm having an event at my company. Will you come out? And it was like four days or five days advance notice. And I'm like, all right, this is a second invitation. If I keep saying no or pushing it off, I might not get another invitation. And I've watched videos of him. I was like, oh, this guy, like he gives me like spider senses, running it through everything I've read about. And so like, yeah. So, I wind up going out there on like a couple days’ notice and having breakfast with him, and he said something, what you just said, and I've heard this from a lot of other people. And he's like, I am comforted – I wrote it down – I am comforted by listening to the stories of others that came before me, that they have experienced the same things I have. So, I think that is why you hit on like it's really hard to listen to other things once I found your podcast because founders, like being a founder is kind of lonely. It's not something that many people understand. We think- that's why it's the Misfit Feed. It's just like, you don't- I can meet another entrepreneur and we're going to click immediately. But it's not- like, I meet some normal person, no disrespect, but just like, I don't- I have to get up and leave. I have no idea what I'm doing here. And so that comes up over and over again. And that was unintentional. But I feel the same way. I literally use that word. I'm like what reading biographies does for me is it makes me comfort- Like it comforts me. Because if you study history, you see, constantly see some of the smartest, most productive people ever live struggle, make mistakes. Like they're not perfect people. There is no, hey, you know what, I'm going to start a company right now, and 10 years later, I'm a billionaire. No, there is like multiple points where it's like, I fucked up. I felt this with the podcast. There’re so many times like this is never going to work. Like it's too hard. No one gives a shit about what I'm doing. We all have the same internal monologue. And so, listening to that podcast, like, oh, that dude did too. The founder of Hyundai, it's like he was so poor. He grew up, he was the son of a poor farmer, he was so poor he grew up eating tree bark. That's not a fucking exaggeration. He died the richest person in Korea. He had two or three of his other businesses confiscated by the Japanese imperialists that had invaded Korea. The story is wild. I think it's episode 117 of Founders if you haven't listened to it. It's the single episode I get the most feedback on by far. He was so poor, check this out. He was so poor. We're kids, you go down the street, you would play at your friend's house. Oh, I got to go to the bathroom. Chung, his name's Chung Ju-yung. Chung, you're not allowed to go to the bathroom at your friend's house. You got to come home. You got to shit in the bucket because we have to all shit in the bucket because that is our manure for our crops. That's a different level struggle. So, when people are like, oh, are you burned out from reading books, David? No, at all. Ever. Like I have that historical context. That dude literally- am I going to need to eat tree bark for lunch? Dude, put your problems in perspective.
Eric Jorgenson: I think that was- there was another on Arnold. Where I thought you were going when you said the Arnold Schwarzenegger quote was he had that historical perspective too. He's like, one, I have visited like Liberian diamond mines, and I've seen people who spend 18 hours a day in the dark getting stabbed by rocks and they get to go home and see their family like one week per year, and they get paid a dollar a day. Like if you're doing better than that, that is my bar for misery. And he was in the Austrian military when he was younger. So like just constant gratitude helps you- I think this is another, I can't remember which entrepreneur it came from, but another phrase that you'd like- positive mental attitude and forward progress in any circumstance is just like also another, a common thread that I feel like has come out of many, many episodes that I've listened to.
David Senra: Pessimists don't make anything. They don't make great companies. They don't make great company. I don't want to hang out with you. Like take your negative ass over there. I'm just not interested in getting to know you at all. It's all- And it's delusional optimism. So, if I had to put down every single thing, remember, I've read over a hundred thousand pages in the history of entrepreneurship. Let's say I have to distill that down to something that has to fit in a tweet about what these people have in common, is they combine Kanye West levels of self-belief with Kobe Bryant level work ethic. They have beliefs in themselves that everybody thinks they are fucking ridiculous for doing. And they work all the time, and they're not just like working like loafing around. They are so smart and efficient, you won't even believe it. You take some of these people in history, you put them next to a person, they're not even the same species. They're just not. And again, I'm not encouraging people to be workaholics. I have a benefit of being able to work like I record my podcasts at my house. I spend an insane amount of time with my kids. I spend an insane- because it's just me saying, hey, what's important to me is my work, my health, my family, and my close friends. Anything that doesn't fit into that, it's gone. I don't watch fucking TV. I like movies. I really like movies. Like I watch Quentin Tarantino over and over again. But other than that, I haven't seen shows in years. I don't have any abundance of time. Like that's all, that's my entire life. And that makes me happy.
Eric Jorgenson: And you have found it. Like you searched it and then you had the discipline to cut away the unnecessary. I'm very- Can we do like a Tim Ferriss style deep dive on your reading habits? Like how much time do you spend? Where do you sit? What do you have? What is the format? When do you do it? I don't know if I know anybody who reads as much as you, and I'm just very curious.
David Senra: Okay. So, I love Tim. I read his 4-Hour Work Week. I found it on MySpace. That's how long ago it was. I love that. But I just don't- I don't- I think people overemphasize tactics. How do I read? I pick up a book and stare at it, and I do that every day for – no, I'm dead serious – I do that every day for hours and hours, seven days a week, period. I'm not a fan of shortcuts. I'm not saying I want to take more time than is necessary, but I just read that- Let me give an example. And I think people are fucking up looking for shortcuts. I read the biography of Mozart, which I had no idea. I knew he was like famous and we're still listening to his work hundreds of years later or whatever. But he was like a child prodigy, starts composing at like 3 years old or whatever it is, dies in his 30s, and he leaves behind the body of work that no one's ever going to rival. And there was something in that, like another thing that pops up in the history of entrepreneurship is importance of practice. Michael Jordan would rather miss a game than miss practice. He's like, I'm a practice player, I believe in it. Jay-Z says, before he is learning how to rap, he's like, I practice from the time I woke up until the time I went to sleep. Like there is no shortcut. So, Arnold Schwarzenegger says everything's reps, reps, reps. So let me give you perfect example of this. Mozart has a lot of competitors. There's a lot of other people that are playing instruments and composing and everything else. There is this instrument called the viola. And I was like, is that a word for violin? What the hell are you talking about? And the viola requires excessive hand strength to get it to perform at its best. And so, because Mozart didn't look for a hack or a tactic or any kind of shortcut, he just threw hours at it and practiced more than anybody else, he had one of the strongest left hands of anybody on the planet. And so, as a result, years later, that opportunity presents itself. People start getting interested in viola, he starts playing it, and because practice gave him a skill everybody else lacked, now his hand is stronger, he can make that instrument do things that no one else can. So how do I read? I read every day for several hours. And it's like I'm fucking doing arts and crafts over here. I like physical books. I take a ruler, a pen, and post-it notes and scissors, and anything that pops out, I just underline it. Whatever comes to my mind, I try not to think too much. It's like, there's something going on in there that I don't understand, hey, I read that sentence, it made me think of this, write it down. And then, so I'll go through that, do the entire book doing that. And then when I get ready for the podcast, a few hours before or the day before, I will reread all the highlights. And then I was talking to my friend, he kind of does what I do for- his name's Frederik, his company's neckar.substack, I think. And he profiles, instead of history's greatest entrepreneurs, he profiles history's greatest investors because he's an investor. He's like into the New York and everything. And so, he's- and I told him, I use this app called Readwise, which is- I said, I have 20,000 highlights in Readwise. And that is a searchable database. Tristan, one of the founders, actually subscribes to the podcast and he has for years; I think that's how I found the app. But anyways, so now I have this over time, I have like this second brain. So, let's say I want to know something, let me type in inflation, let me type in marketing, let me type in whatever, let me type in Warren Buffet, whatever. And so, then he's like, how the hell did you get all of your- he goes, I know you read physical books. Like how did you get all the highlights in Readwise? Because usually you just do from Kindle. I go, the hard way. After I’m done reading, I take a picture on the Readwise app. It recognizes text. You still have to figure it out. And then you type the note. He's like, are you kidding me? Like, no. Like that's- and everybody's like, oh, you have a great memory. No, I don't. Ask my wife if she thinks I have a great memory. She'd be like, you are fucking crazy. It's I read. So not only do I read over and over again, but then I got this idea from Michael Jordan, from Mozart, from Jay-Z. I spend maybe an hour, two hours a day rereading past highlights in Readwise. So, like Readwise app on your phone is fantastic because it'll essentially turn the Readwise app into like a Twitter feed. But all it is stuff that you- notes that you left yourself and highlights. So, I don't have tactics. If I read on Kindle, it'd be faster. I'm not trying to take the easy way. Like I love the interview Jerry Seinfeld did with Harvard Business Review. It's the most Harvard Business Review fucking interview you could ever find. And they're like, hey, you were famous for being a micromanager, but after nine years, you got burned out and that's why the show had to end. Him and Larry David wrote everything. And they're like, could you have found a better- like an efficient, more efficient way to do that? Could you have hired McKinsey? And Jerry's like, who's McKinsey? He's like, they're consultants. And he's like, are they funny? And they're like, no. And he was like, then I don't need them. He's like, if you're trying to be efficient, you're doing it wrong. The hard way is the right way. And that's the way I live my life. The reason the show was successful is because I micromanaged every word, every cut, every script, every person, everything. That is the way I do things. And so, I was like, well, Jerry Seinfeld, arguably, if you think about what you and I are doing, maybe the most successful content creator that has ever lived. If you really think about it, he's just reselling his show over and over again for like, he's going to wind up collecting billions of dollars in his lifetime.
Eric Jorgenson: Still, yeah. And then that's back to, one, the craftsmanship attitude, two, the filmmakers approach. I feel the same way about the books actually. Like there is absolutely a more efficient way to do it than what I do, but it is almost- it is just brute force hours of finding every little transition and every little cut and every little connection and putting everything in the right order. And it wouldn't look efficient, if you looked at me doing it, you wouldn't think I'm working hard, but you just have to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours marinating in that content in order to- one, it's good for me. But two, that is why the end product is good. That is why people can sit down and read it in four hours straight in one sitting is because that single thread of ideas goes all the way through. And that is just sitting there sanding and sanding and sanding and moving stuff around. It also reminds me of the copy work that Benjamin Franklin used to do. Like there's a huge benefit to what looks like the unnecessary “step” of transferring information from book to computer, but like that act of copywriting and rewriting and rereading is what instills this stuff in your head, which is why, now that we're just talking about it, you can come up with stories and quotes and lists that you probably read years ago, which is incredible. And that's how you bake that into your head and actually change who you are with this work.
David Senra: Yeah, and I always say like, so Stephen King has a great example of that. He's like, it's really important for you to actually make things that you like, because he's like, I'm not- when Stephen King says, he goes, I'm not just the writer, I'm the first reader. And so, that's the way I think of it. I’m not just a creator, I'm the first listener. And so, everybody- I talk to a fucking ton of other podcasters. First of all, what I love is they all tell me I'm stupid. They're like, you need to do ads, dude, ads for founders and investors. The CPMs are so crazy. You'll make a ton of money. And I'm like, I appreciate that, and if you're making millions of dollars, that's fantastic. He goes- I'm not- I like what I'm doing. It's just clean. It's just makes sense for me. And then the second thing they always say is, why the fuck are you doing your own editing? They're like- everybody tells me this. Like, you're so stupid, don't do that. And again, these now have become my friends and they're well meaning, but I'm like because of that. It's like me being forced to listen to it again. I'm not just reading these books to make a show so I can sell that show to anybody else. I want- I'd be doing this shit even if I didn't make a podcast. You know what I mean? So, like the way I would describe this is I think the first two episodes of the Kanye West documentary called I think Genius or something like that, that's the best description, the best thing I've ever seen of founder mentality. Like what I reference all the- like founders, their mentality is completely different than anybody else that's not a founder. If you're founder, you get it immediately. You recognize it in other people immediately. And it has to do with the growth mindset too, where there's this time where people that know- like he starts making beats when he's in seventh grade. By the time the documentary starts, he's like in his early 20s. He's been doing this for years. So, then you see, okay, he has a great line. He's like, you can't catch my hustle. Like he goes, and he talks about it, he's like, I deserve this because I locked myself- I'm killing the line in the song. But he is like, lock yourself in a room, doing five beats a day for three summers. He goes, I deserve to do these numbers. He's like, you didn't see. So, there is this fantastic guy I want to talk to you about too. His name's Russ, he's an independent rapper. And he says something that I repeat over and over again on the podcast, because he's using Naval's ideas even if he doesn't know who Naval is. And he says, the public praises people for what they practice in private. I had to repeat that twice because it's so good. The public praises people for what they practice in private. We only see the end goal. No one sees- before I sit down, I may make a 90-minute podcast, I've spent like 25 or 30 hours of research before I sit down to talk to anybody. So that's how I know I'm comfortable recommending it to my family and friends because I know I put my whole ass into this. So, you see the same thing with Kanye where it's like, oh, we see him. He's in a studio with Jay-Z. He's with Talib Kweli. He's with Mos Def. He's with all these other rappers. They're buying his beats. They didn't realize his true intention. He's like, I only made beats so I could rap on them. I just realized they're so good, this is my in to the industry. And now guess what? That just like your work is your calling card, my podcast is my calling card, it opens up relationships and opportunities that you can't even predict. And people that don't do this, don't even know what they're missing, and you know exactly what I'm talking about. So, he's like, I just use my beats to get in the same room as Jay-Z. And then I got signed with Jay-Z. But he says something that is fantastic. He's like, don't compare me to no other fucking producers. He's like- because he hated that. He's like, I'm rhyming now. He goes, and he said the perfect thing, because people are like, oh, you're not going to be able to rap. You're just a producer. He's like, he says something fantastic. He goes, at one time, my beats sucked. I wasn't always having hot beats. I taught myself. And he grabbed his head. He did the- he like touched his hand to his brain. He goes, I taught myself how to make hot beats. And he goes, now I'm focused on rhyming now. And he goes, I'm going to fucking chart. Meaning I'm going to like make rap and I'm going to get to the top of the charts. And he goes, I'm going to come out number one. If it doesn't happen the first album, then it'll happen the second album. If it doesn't come out- if it doesn't happen the second album, it'll come out the third album. That's founder mentality. That is, hey, I taught myself how to do one thing. I could teach myself how to do another thing. And his whole point is just like, this is the punchline, and then I'll shut up. He goes, I have an advantage. He goes, I hear my beats first. And so that's what I think of is like, what I'm doing is like, I think I have advantage over every- like, that's kind of my moat is like I have an advantage. I read these books first. I'm glad that people like my podcast and it helps their work, and I've heard from people making millions of dollars from the ideas, starting companies, all this other stuff. But it helps me too. Like I'm literally taking the ideas that I'm learning and applying it to my own business.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. The biggest question I had for you, probably when I was like 10 episodes in, I was like, what is David training for? Like, what is he preparing himself? And I was trying to figure out, and I couldn't tell from- are you doing like a self-education process in order to like go found Apple and become Steve Jobs? Like, is this a chapter of your life that you are doing very- with like great intention? Or is this the business that you are trying to start and dedicate your life to? I feel like I'm learning that it's the latter.
David Senra: No, it's actually bigger than that. What am I training for? Life. Life, man. Like, this is what I've- and said this on a couple episodes. You'll hear me say this. This is like, it starts out, like you start out wanting to learn from entrepreneurs because they have ideas that they built their companies that are super valuable to us, and then you read so many stories where they had a successful company and not a successful life. And if you would have went back and told 21 year old David, dude, I know you want to be a billionaire or whatever, you want to make a lot of money, like that may not be the actual end goal. If 21-year-old David could hear how I talk, he'd slapped the shit out of him. Because I didn't have a lot of money. Like I'm the first person- people are like, I'm the first- people are like, oh, I'm the first person to graduate college. I'm the first person in my family to graduate high school. I'm the first male in three generations to not go to fucking prison. Like I didn't have- the books are legitimately, like they saved my fucking life. The ability to learn, like to teach yourself to like be able to improve, like that skill saved my life, man.
Eric Jorgenson: Was there like a moment where that happened?
David Senra: No, I've always- no, I don't even know if it was a choice. Like if you go back to my mom saying when I was 6 years old, I was constantly obsessed with it. My own interpretation is probably wrong. It's just like, I think I sensed from a very young age, like, oh shit, I'm in a situation that can get real dangerous. Like this is not good. So, it's like, I remember like I was always a person obsessed with the map. Like I wanted to know what was happening, where are we going? Like I just think I sensed, I was like I'm around some unstable people. And I don't- all I could see is every experience, every example I see in front of me is, I don't want that. But to answer your question, like what are you training for? It is like the main goal of the podcast, why I'm making it and why I hope people listen to it, is like, it's how do we have a good life? And for a certain personality, I think me and you fit into this, it's impossible to have a satisfied, good life if we're not really good at our profession. Like there is just- like Steve Jobs could have a good life. I don't think he obviously did. But he could not have had a good life if he wasn't really great at his profession. It doesn't mean he has to take the scale of Apple. I think actually it's counterintuitive, but the people that get that high, like I don't know how much Mark Zuckerberg enjoys his life. I just don't. I don't know how-there's just, it's more common than not-
Eric Jorgenson: I would not want his job. That sounds like a terrible way to live.
David Senra: If you think about it, Jeff Bezos didn't want his own job. Because you know- I said that when I read the new biography on Brad Stone, I've read both of them, but the Amazon Unbound. And you get to the end of the book, and one of the notes that left myself is like Jeff at the time was the richest person in the world, has unlimited assets. He gave up that job. What does that tell you? Being the CEO of Amazon is not fun. It's not fun. It's not enjoyable. Because if it was, he would still be doing it.
Eric Jorgenson: Warren Buffet is still doing it.
David Senra: So, this is- that's why I say the only- like I used to think, oh yeah, there's a ton of people that really love what they do. And I was having pizza, it might have been with my wife, it might have been with friends. This happened like a few months ago. I remember this feeling like it was yesterday, and it just hit me like mid bite. I'm like, oh, that's how you could tell if they really love what they do. Because there is a dollar, I'm sure there's a dollar amount for a lot of people. It's like, okay, if I give you a billion dollars, will you stop doing what you're doing? And most people that have ever lived said yes. How much would you have to pay Warren Buffet to not work on Berkshire? How much would you have to pay Steve Jobs to not work on Apple? The answer is there's not a fucking dollar. There's not all the money in the world. They just have something inside of them they have to get out. That's my son. I don't know if you can hear him. I'm in a soundproof booth. But he's really adorable. He's like running around out there. So yeah, what am I training for? I'm training for life, man, because I have never had a personal example of somebody that lived a good life. And like, my mom was so sweet and such a nice person. Everybody loved her when she was alive. But the biggest thing I learned from her life was that the default life experience is one of- it's like the Thoreau quote, like most people live quiet lives of desperation. Like she was raised by terrible parents. Her father and mother, terrible fucking people. They never- like, she never graduated high school. She married my dad. My dad's a good dude. He's got some issues obviously, but he's real good to his kids, but they were never in love. They just, they got pregnant. My dad's Cuban. His dad made him marry her. Like, oh, okay, you got her pregnant. Like you have no choice. You're going to marry her. So, she had a terrible upbringing. Then she was in a long marriage. She got divorced and remarried. They should have never been together. They were not in love. They were not compatible. They went, even if you have a bunch of kids, they just stayed together for that. And then when she's in her mid-50s, she gets the shittiest roll of the dice ever. And there was metastatic breast cancer. And so, she dies at 60, but her last few years, that's not living, dude. That was fucking torture. And so, when I see that, I was just like, that's the biggest lesson that is like, dude, whatever you want, like what do you want out of life? Write it down and then go after it like your life depends on it because it does. Because there is a chance that you have this one shot at life and you're not going to get anything that you want out of it. I know she wanted- who doesn't want a loving relationship? I know she wished she had a better parent. I'm sure she wished she found a better job. All this stuff. The only thing she actually got out of life was her kids, which is good, but that's also like they're going to leave, and then you're just left alone. So, when I'm reading these books, yes, I want to pick up all the good ideas from their business that I can apply to my business, that the people listening can apply to theirs, but I want to avoid- it's more important than that. It's like I want to avoid the mistakes that just appear over and over again. The alcoholism- Charlie Munger talks about this, alcoholism, drug abuse, unhappy relationships, no friends, poor health. So, it's life. I'm training for life.
Eric Jorgenson: Have you heard of the Great Books Program?
David Senra: I think Mitchell has actually told me about that. He sent me the link if I'm not mistaken. But tell me about it.
Eric Jorgenson: So, there's like- it's like a major, like you can go to some specific colleges, like some of the most historic liberal arts colleges, like St. John's is famous for it and Notre Dame is famous for it. And you basically start at I think it's like the Iliad and the Odyssey and you just read the entire “great books.” It's like a specific list. It's like the cannon of the whole history of Western literature, like from the ancient Greeks up through modern time. And they're like small seminar classes, and you spend a few hours a week, I think in college it's like 10 or 20 hours a week to read these texts, take notes on them, and then you show up and discuss. It's kind of, on the one hand, it's like, oh, liberal arts education. On the other hand, it is like this deep, deep thing of historical context. And there's somebody now who does it, the online Great Books Program, and I'm contemplating doing it. And I'm interested in talking to the guy and having him on the podcast. But it strikes me listening to your podcast and kind of like hearing you talk, that you are basically creating the Great Books Program for entrepreneurship of founders. And it's a full education in itself. Like you say, you're not just learning how to start a company, you're learning business, you're learning the foibles of humans and their relationships. You learn- you study Ed Thorp or Warren Buffet, and you learn about concepts, like the mathematical concepts. I was just listening to your episode with the Rothschilds, and I learned all about history and the other one you were describing, The Fish That Ate the Whale is like a history lesson and a geopolitical lesson. I love that book so much. And you have a great episode on it. But it is an education in so many disciplines just by taking this one simple path really seriously. And I actually think, I mean, you have self-assigned what is maybe one of the greatest learning methods, not just for entrepreneurship, but as you say, for life. And one, it's incredible. But two, I wonder how much- like do you recommend other people do what you're doing? Are you like, hey, you should go read all of these books and like walk in my footsteps? Or are you kind of like, let me just filter what you can? I mean, I guess it's just like a level of engagement question. But how strongly are you kind of like other people should do what I'm doing, or you're just like let me do it for you and bring you along for the ride?
David Senra: I think about that. To answer your question is what Charlie Munger says, like you should follow your own natural drift. I'm just following my natural drift. And it just happens to be like a podcast is a good medium to put my thoughts out there. And guess what? It's going to attract a bunch of people there just like me. That's why I hate- I appreciate what people say. They're like, oh my God, you're amazing. Dude, there's a- what Tim Urban said when he writes a post, he's like, I just picture there's a hundred thousand other Tims out there. And so, I write for him because I write for me. I was like, I'm not like unique in any case. It's just there's a million other people that are interested in the same things I am interested in.
Eric Jorgenson: What do you think the value is – we can speculate wildly on this – the value of, say, me just listening to your podcast versus the value that you get for living your own life from reading the book versus the value you get from reading the book and then teaching the book back to us?
David Senra: Well, the best way to- so the way I think about it is like there's some people that are like experts in the subject, and so they can teach it over and over again. Like I'm not- there's no such thing as an expert in entrepreneurship. Like it just doesn't exist. It's a complex adaptive system. So, what I like, what I prefer is I just, I learn something and then I immediately turn around and teach it to somebody else because that helps me understand it more. Because there's a difference between reading a book and then reading a book and taking notes and then like, think about it. So, most people just read the book, maybe have a couple highlights, whatever. So that's step one. But what I'm doing is like I read the book, I take notes, then a couple- like a day later, whatever, I reread it, then I record a podcast. Then I hear the whole podcast back. And then I take notes on that podcast because my show notes are usually like little blurbs that stick out to me. And then I put those in Readwise and then three months from now, that thing I just read is now popped up into it. Like that's a different- It's just so much deeper. And so maybe I like, I don't- I'm not trying to be humble by any means saying I don't have a good memory. It's you just- I'm just pushing it deeper into my brain where it's just I don't think about it. And that's why anybody's having a conversation with me, and I've met a ton of listeners for dinner, calls, everything else, they're like, this is like having a- talking to you is like hearing a podcast. I was like that's it. I can't put on a show, dude. That's why I don't have intro music. That's why I don't have anything. Like it's just literally audio because my whole thing is like the Lindy effect. Think about that. Like what is- people are like, think about what Jeff Bezo said. The best way to build a business is you build a business around things that won't change 10 years from now. So, when he starts Amazon, he's like, I know 10 years from now, people are not going to be asking for higher prices. I know 10 years from now, they're not going to say, I wish you had less selection. And 10 years from now, I wish you got my packages slower. So he said, I invested in those. And so, people are like, podcasting is going to change so much. What do you think is going to change? And I go, I'm not worried about what's going to change. I'm worried about what's not going to change. And one human talking to another is as old as language. And that is why my podcast is structured like that. People are always like, oh, I love how you- I feel like you're talking directly to me. I am. That's not a feeling. I never understood when YouTubers were like, hey guys. I'm watching the video. I’m by myself, what the fuck are you talking about? You didn't even understand the medium. Understand how to have a conversation with another individual at scale. Like I'm not- there's no guys here. I'm by myself watching your video. What are you talking about? And so that's why people- and I get a lot of feedback. They are like, I love how you say it's like you- remember when you and I talked about this. Because I also think it's like there's a guy I like watching his YouTube videos. It's called Biographics. He does like short 20-minute videos on all these people. And what I never understood is like, dude, you've done like 300 of these videos. You only talk about that person. You don't talk about how they relate to all the other people you've studied. And so, Founders is- people are like, how should I listen to it? However you want. It's just one giant conversation about the history of entrepreneurship. And so, if I do- like, I just did a podcast, hopefully it'll be out later on today, depends on how long you and I talk. Like I just did one on Henry Flagler, the co-founder of Standard Oil. In that podcast, I haven't listened to it back yet, I've probably referenced five or six other founders because some shit that Henry Flagler did, I don't know why, for whatever reason, I read about it, I'm like, oh, that sounds like X, Y, Z. And so that's why it's like, dude, you can't- people are like, oh, will you sell me individual episodes, go fuck yourself. Like, I mean that as nice as possible. Like I'm not- this podcast is for the extreme people. I'm not interested if you only want to listen to one or two episodes. I'm just not interested because that's completely opposite about all the people we're studying. They're not like, oh, I'm just going to dip my toe. No, they go all in. That's what I love is like, when I hear people like, I've listened to every single episode, or I've listened to 20 episodes or I've listened to 50. Think about it, even if you listen to 20 or 50, that's still like spending 75 hours with me or 50. Like it's an ex- the way I think about it is like think about your very best friend and then add up how long you talk to them in a year. I think you use the word parasocial or whatever the case is. That's why I think podcasting is so powerful because in many cases, people have heard me speak more to them than their best friend. It's extremely powerful, man. Especially if you don't abuse their time. When I say it's like, listen, man, before- I'm not afraid of many things. I'm terrified of wasting people's time. So, the way I figure out how do I not waste your time, I spend 20 or 30 hours for every hour of recorded content.
Eric Jorgenson: I don't want to waste time. And also, I have such deep respect for- I feel like it's just so easy to abuse attention and psychology and hooks, and everything is just so like dialed up to the max of click bait and anxiety inducing context switching. And it's this weird like arms race of we are so far past value created in a lot of cases, and a lot of people are just going for like I need a hook, I need attention, bright colors, fast cuts, quick moving. And it's like you're no longer serving the person who's listening to you. You're no longer helping them. You're actually making their life and their brain chemistry worse because you're caught up in this arms race where like more attention, more views, more whatever. And I sense it also in you and I try to hold tight to it also. I want to serve them and I want to filter very intentionally for the people who have a sense of what improves them, not just delivers dopamine. We want to improve their life in a holistic, long term, focused way.
David Senra: Well, so to go back to your original question, because I don't think I answered it, is like, it is not- I'm very happy if people obviously subscribe to the podcast, it's fantastic. They listen to it. Entrepreneurs and investors read, and they read all the time and there's no shortcut. I don't care if it's an audio book, whatever the case is. So, like, I was talking to this other guy last night, because he's like, hey man, I hear this all the time, like I'd pay more. Like why don't you just do transcripts and then like upcharge? First of all, I'm not adding products. It's one product that gets better over time. And then relentless on it. I'm not adding any features. But I go read the book. I'm not going to say who this is, but there's a guy that has a successful podcast where he interviews entrepreneurs. I know who he is. I listened to his episodes. He emailed me the other day, and he's like, dude, he goes, I discovered your podcast. He goes, I've been ripping through your episodes on Estee Lauder and Michael Jordan and all these other people. He like, can I get transcripts? And this is the email I sent back to him: Thanks for the kind words. I've listened to several of your episodes too. I don't have any transcript, but Estee Lauder's autobiography is short is zero fluff. You could read it in a weekend. She was an amazing entrepreneur. Like that's my answer. If you're going to ask me for a transcript, it's like read the book. That is a transcript, and it's better than any podcast I could ever do because if you spend- I did a podcast on your book. It might be an hour long, but it took me like 10 hours to really- Don't be afraid of spending the time. You are going to learn more. Use the podcast as like a- you can't- I mean, dude, it's going to be insane. How many people have read 250 biographies? Like tiny percentage, in general because it's just like, that's a weird thing to do. So, I understand. I'm not expecting you to be able to follow my footsteps and to read every book. But you can read a book a month. You could listen- Like what if you- this is the way I think of it, like how do I use Founders? I go listen to two episodes a week. That means in one year, you would've downloaded key ideas from a hundred of history’s greatest entrepreneurs. And then pick out the episodes you like, read one book a month. At the end of the year, you've downloaded key ideas from a hundred entrepreneurs into your brain while you're doing other stuff. You're at the gym, driving your car, washing dishes, going for a walk, whatever it is. And then you've read 12 books. And then you do that over 10 fucking years. And you just have a base of knowledge that no one else does.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. You'll be a completely different person. I actually would love to hear your- what is the snapshot of you pre-Founders 2015 and the snapshot of you now in 2022, 260 biographies in?
David Senra: It's not even the same person. That's why you'll see me constantly go back. Like I'm about to reread- The reason I read Flagler’s biography is because I'm rereading Titan right now. And Titan, it's too important. It was episode 16. First of all, I didn't know shit. And you realize the more you learn, the more you know nothing. I love Charles Kettering, who they call him like the 19th century Ben Franklin. I did a podcast on him. His family said that- one of the smartest people that ever lived, and they said, what we should put on your tombstone is what you said the most frequently – I don't know. He's smarter than me. He's smarter than I'll ever be. And he's like, I don't know. Like the world is extreme- more complex than we can ever deal with. So, I'm rereading these books, and the reason I'm doing this, one, I don't like- I've obviously, if you do something 250 times, you're going to be better than if you do it 16. Well, not only that, like now the reason I'm rereading books and will always reread books, and then when I reread a book, I'll always make another podcast on it is because the words on the page do not change. I am changed drastically. I reread Ed Thorp’s. Ed Thorp was episode 93. Then I reread it. And I think it's episode 222. So that means in between that, I read, I don't want to do public math, but it's, what, 130 books, whatever, it has completely different meaning. I didn't even understand what I didn't understand. And so, a lot of times I try to buy just a brand new copy of the book because I don't want to be influenced with my past highlights. I don't do this all the time, but like I just think- yeah, it's just like, no, I got to redo it the whole time. And then if you want to listen to both, you can listen to both. But if you're going to listen to one, I would always listen to the latest one because now I've filtered that through so much information. And just like if we had this conversation a year from now, we're going to talk about completely different things. There would be different ideas. We're going to be different people. Like I know one thing won't change, like I'll be working on the same thing. But I'll have different insights and I'll have- some of this, what might not change though, I'd be disappointed. Let me flip your question. What would I be disappointed if it was different a year from now? My priorities. I'd be very disappointed in myself if like being a good health was still not a top priority, being a good to my family, my wife, my kids, being a good friend, being good at my work, and then having fun. I don't think those things should ever change.
Eric Jorgenson: What's your vision for the Founder- the mature version of Founders? Mature is not a good word choice there, but I was struggling to come up with something else. Because I know it's going to keep evolving. I know it's going to keep growing and improving. I mean, is it possible to envision that? Like, do you have an Arnold Schwarzenegger like specific vision that you're driving toward each time? Or do you just know that every rep is progress?
David Senra: So, I think the format's down. If I make a podcast that's longer than 90 minutes, I screw it up somehow. So, I like 60 to 90 minutes about one like very focused, with a ton of research done before I sit down. I'm not like- it's just doing more of that forever. And I don't- people are like, oh, you should do a live show. You should do this- It's just constantly saying no. Really what it is is just like I truly believe in my soul, in my bones, that a person, an entrepreneur's career and life will be better with Founders than without. And so, the way I think about that is I stole this idea from Steve Jobs. He says, my first goal was to make an insanely great product that benefited somebody else's life. So, he says computers are a bicycle for the mind, they are tools for thought. So, you having one of my devices is making your life better. And he goes, so my goal is for every single – this is Steve talking – my goal is for every single person on the planet to have an Apple device, and to do that, we can't just be great at making products, we have to learn how to become a great marketing company. And so, I feel I'm in the same position he was there. And he took that to the extreme. Like people don't realize, think about how busy Steve Jobs was. He met with his marketing team every Wednesday. He approved every single ad before it went out. It could be a billboard in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It doesn't matter. It's not fucking leaving until I see it. He showed with his actions. Because my favorite maxim of all time is probably actions express priority. It doesn't matter what you say, it matters what you do. And so, I have friends, I have one of my oldest friends, we go back and forth because he's like, oh, I want to lose weight. I was like, no, you don't; you want to sit on the couch, you want to drink alcohol and you want to stay 30 pounds over weight because you've been like that for 5 years. And then he'll make all these other excuses. He's like, oh, you're not like that because like he works a job, and he's like, you're not like that because you have- it's easier for you because you have control over your time. And then I pull up, this is pre pandemic, and I pull up the Barry's Bootcamp app and showed 350 times I went at 6 in the morning, which means I woke up at 5:30 in the morning. I was like, oh, it's because of that, I go, no it's because my actions show you what I want to do. No one has to tell me stay in shape, read books, make podcasts. Like you have a problem if somebody has to tell you to motivate you. And so, Steve Jobs is showing us with his actions, not his words. He said it with his words too. But his actions are saying, I'm showing up here every Wednesday. We're going to go through this. This is a top priority. I am at that time a multi-billionaire, in his case, two hours of my time is unbelievably valuable and I'm dedicating it to this. So that is- I don't think Founders is going to change. Because I don't- I think it's relatively simple. It's like, hey, the original idea is what would it be like if you met up with your friend once a week and he told you about this book he read. Like that's interesting now; it will be interesting in the future. All my focus is, when I'm not reading and not making the podcast, is marketing. It's just, and what I mean by that is just finding creative ways to make more people aware of its existence. Because what you just said, like, I don't know if it was recorded or if we were talking about this before this, what that email said is like, oh, once I discovered it, I got it immediately, and now my life is better because of that. So, I want that millions of times over. And yes, I will benefit; obviously that's incentive. But legitimately, like it may- I love this shit. I love when people send me emails and they always say, like, oh, your podcast changed my life. No, you changed your life. I didn't do anything. We don't even- we never even met. You chose to listen to it. You chose to invest in it. You chose to apply those lessons. You chose to get out of bed in the morning. You chose to get in shape. You chose to be a fucking better husband and father. Like, and it's not even husband and father, mother and daughter. There's also- and I like these messages because all the messages just push me even harder. Because like I just got an email from a lady, she's like, I listen to your podcast with my daughter. I have fathers and sons listening to it, co-founders listening to it, people in entire offices listening to it. I'm like that's insane. I went to a freaking birthday party. This is getting crazy now. I went to a birthday party for my daughter's- It was a birthday party for my daughter's friend. We're at the house. I knew the dad. We're cool. He just started a startup. He raised money. I knew he listened to the podcast. I met people there that listen to the podcast I didn't know. And one's like a stay-at-home mom, one's an attorney. I'm like, what the fuck is happening? This is freaky. And I'm like an introverted person. This is not comfortable for me by any means. Like I just went to that company event I was telling you about in LA and I wound up meeting people inside Cover that listen to the podcast. But he's like, hey, I'm going to introduce you to somebody else. I’m like, please don't. I can't talk to people I don't know. I'm only here because I find you guys interesting, but I can't, I'm not a networker. People invite me to- let's say you remind me, and you're like, David, I'm throwing an event. I'm not coming. I won't. But if you say, hey, you want to have dinner? I'm showing up. I like one-on-one interactions. I am completely shy and introverted. And people think, oh, because I have like an intensity on the podcast, they're like, oh, this guy's- No, I'm not comfortable at all. I love one-on-one. I will never go to an event, network, any of that stuff. So, it was kind of, I appreciate what they were saying, but it made me a little- like I started sweating, like right here, like in mustache and beard. I was like, oh shit. It was an overall good thing. But I was like, oh man, this is not comfortable.
Eric Jorgenson: It is amazing. I felt that same momentum kind of a few months into that book coming out. And I think it's hard to appreciate or trust that it's there until you feel it. But when you have that craftsmanship mindset and you create- like that is the proof that something truly stands out and is quality and is serving your audience when they start sharing it on your behalf and all these like unexplained good things come from it. I mean, that's like the product market fit as market Mark Andreessen talks about it. Which you're kind of like, just how was it- like finding out that people are doing like podcasts or TikToks or whatever about the book or finding out that your podcast episodes are making the rounds inside of a company or inside of a Slack group or inside of your own PTA or whatever. I feel like that's how you- I mean, that is how you can know that you're in like the right- you say, I think the format is set. Like that's I feel like how you know.
David Senra: Yeah, I don't need to change anything. What I am interested though and experimenting with, and I want to talk to you about, is like the business model of podcasts, because in my heart of hearts, I still think- so right now, you have ad based, you have some content marketing for a company, like they're owning their own media channels, you have subscription. But I still think if I was starting brand new, I like the idea of one time, lifetime payments for things. I just do. And right now, it's actually increased a lot in the last like three weeks, which is kind of weird, but it's like about 10% of the people that sign up choose to do lifetime. And I was like, man, I wish I had more courage, because I would just say that's the only option. And so, one thing I believe is we don't know the optimal business model for podcasts, and I don't think it's going to be applicable to all of them. Obviously, it depends on the situation. But I would love to see more examples of people selling podcasts because people buy books. This is what pisses- It doesn’t piss me off. This is what just doesn't make sense to me, when people are like no one's going to pay for a podcast. Well, can you go to graphtreon.com right now, the patreon API data is public. There’re private podcasts that have 50,000 paying members. That exists. I know of other podcasts that have more than that. So that's clearly a lie. Like of course they will. Then I have a friend who's been teaching me how to use TikTok and everything. He's a young kid. And he's like, David, he goes, I pay for your podcast. He's 21. And he's like, but man, your podcast should be free. People my age aren't going to pay for it. I was like, I will show you all the .edu addresses I have, like email address. Like that's just not true. Like entrepreneurs and investors clearly understand that knowledge is profit. And like I can- this is an investment. It's not an expense. But the reason I said when we started and we weren't even recording yet, that you have one of the best voices that I've ever heard for podcasts, legitimately, I would love to see like a private podcast, separate from whatever you're doing. But I just think there's an unlimited number of applications to private podcasting where it makes sense to sell for like $99, maybe $199, depending on what you're doing. Maybe you change your, or not change, but you convert your leverage course to complete audio and like you price it because-
Eric Jorgenson: Oh, that's a really interesting idea, actually.
David Senra: There's a business idea I have that I wanted to do, and I start thinking about it. I was like, David stop. You just said you're not working on anything else. Stop. So, I found this YouTube channel recently, and it's just like this great voice, kind of like yours. And it's just quotes. Like I'm a sucker for aphorisms and maxims, you are too, obviously, because you like Munger and Naval and Franklin and everything else. And so, at night, I play this and they're like 10 minutes long, very calm. And it's just like Pythagoras is the one I listened to last night. And it's just a maxim from him. So, they're maxims from great people in history. And they're about 10 minutes long, sometimes some shorter, and it's very relaxing. And so, it's like they say the maxim, they give you about five seconds to think about it, then they say another one, and then they say another one. Dude, I have notebooks and notebooks. I have a thousand quotes. I could do this for everybody. And I was like fuck a YouTube channel that's ad based. This should be a private podcast. It should be a onetime fee, 99 bucks. And you update it, like you can update it once a month, whatever you want to do. Because this is where I think people are incorrect. People are saying, David, you have to do subscription model or you have to do the ad model. You can't do the onetime payment because subscriptions or ads pays for the ongoing production. Okay, I know that's what you think. But when you put- when I put out new things on my private- on my public feed, when I put out a 30-minute preview, that- the podcast is an ad for itself. And again, I don't even- to some degree, you have to say you're a bit of a hypocrite and why don't you just not do subscriptions and do one time. But I do think anybody that's out there that wants to do something unique, like based on my own experience, human beings, when you find something you like, when you like a book, when you like a movie, we have a hard time keeping that to ourselves. Like when you find a great podcast, people will talk about it all the time. And so, my point is just like- what I'm saying is like the onetime fee is just really clean to me. And I thought about pitching. It's like, listen, I have 250 something episodes. It's like paying admission to hear ideas from the greatest entrepreneurs. Let me ask this question, if Steve Jobs were resurrected from the dead and he shows up in our town tonight and he's just going to- we can go and listen to him to talk for two hours, do you know how much people would pay for that?
Eric Jorgenson: The hologram Steve Jobs Ted Talk.
David Senra: No, but I mean, literally in the flesh. That might be a new business model in the future. But I don't know, man, there's just- I think there's a ton of experiments. There's a ton of audio only products because I do think podcast is a course. Like you could argue that I'm creating a course on the history of entrepreneurship.
Eric Jorgenson: The whole Calm app. I mean, that's like a, I don't know if it's a billion dollar company now. It's a huge company, but it's basically all that meditation stuff is an audio product.
David Senra: Yes. So, this, Patrick put me onto that from Invest like the Best. He's like dude, he goes, I did a podcast, he did a business breakdown on Calm. We should include it in the show notes. People should listen to it. I listened to it last week. It's 50 minutes long. I have like, I don't know, 500 words of notes. And what I said, I was like, I'm glad I listened to this because I might be the most bullish person on the planet for subscription audio, and listening to that made me more bullish. Like their business is fantastic. It is insane how fast it's growing, how lucrative it is. And again, it goes back to creating high quality audio content does not have the cost associated with it as high-quality video content. Think about how much Netflix has to pay for- or Apple plus, and all these people have to pay to get high quality video content. Calm, they're paying Matthew McConaughey a lot of money. LeBron James for sure has some kind of equity in the company, whatever the case is. And it lasts forever. That's what I like about what I'm doing is like people send me books all the time. Like I got a book recommendation, like, hey, do the biography of the guy that started Spotify. No, I want to focus on dead entrepreneurs because he can go on podcasts, and he can be interviewed. I want, when I do an episode, you can listen to it today or you can listen to it 10 years from now. So, I just had this, I got a guy email me. He's like, I was reading about-
Eric Jorgenson: Its evergreen content, baby. I love evergreen.
David Senra: It's almost complete. So, and I saw your blog that says that. So I got to- let give you an example. This guy- because you only get my email once you sign up. I give everybody my email that signs up because I get book recommendations, I make friends, all this other stuff. And when you make content online, you get a lot of like hate. When you put a paywall on it, that disappears like because they don't even know like anything about it. And so, it's also nice for your mental health. But he's like, I was studying Milton Hershey. I got intrigued. So, I searched Apple podcast. I found your preview. I listened to it. I liked it. I subscribed. And he goes, thanks for what you're doing, et cetera, et cetera, and I've listened to a bunch of other episodes. I went and looked up the day, the difference between the day that he emailed me and the day I published that podcast was like almost 600 days. So, the podcast does the work for you. Like you just have to wait. I have no idea how many customers my past catalog is going to get me. But go back to your, and I'll shut up, I'm sorry, about serial entrepreneurship. You know how Charlie Munger says that like, if you get the big- if you get the handful of really important ideas and it carries most of the freight. The more- I can't explain why I believe this other than it's just something intuitive from reading all those biographies. I think time does that for success, an individual and a business success. And I think time, just surviving, does most of the work and the people that jump around are the people that say, I have an idea, I want to start it, scale it, sell it, and then jump to the next are foreclosing so many opportunities because those opportunities aren't going to show up 5 or 10 years from now. The podcast is growing like crazy right now, but it wasn't doing that at all in 2016 or 2017 or 2018. Like, I was happy when I had a 1000 or 2000 people listening or whatever the case is. You know what I mean? Like what if I would've stopped then? Oh, this is so hard. I'll just give up. This is impossible. And for some reason, I was just like, I burned the boats. I said, I refuse to work on anything else, and I will spend my last dollar. And the only way I'll fail is if I go through my entire fucking savings and the podcast isn't working. And it went through a lot of money, but then it started paying my bills and then growing and growing and growing. So, I burned the boats, kind of like almost crash. And then now it's like starting to go down my nose dive.
Eric Jorgenson: Which you see, I mean, people chart that out, that like trough of despair, disillusionment, and then coming back through. It is just like part of the entrepreneurial hero’s journey. I heard two of my most referenced mental models in that description. One, I mean, the Charlie Munger idea of like compounding – never interrupt compounding unnecessarily. And the second is, what I preach, like add leverage, continually add leverage, think in terms of leverage. And every week, sometimes multiple times a week, you are adding a new episode. And every one of those episodes, to your point exactly, 600 days later adds to your net leverage. Every episode that you add is like a new pathway towards you. It's a new value add for the people who are already subscribing. It's a new opportunity for you to learn new lessons that you can apply. And every day, the levers around you are getting longer and you're adding new ones. And over time, those continue to compound. And just I know that I can't- like it is too counterintuitive and too extreme to imagine where this is going to end up over decades if, as I have no doubt hearing you talk about it, you stay on these rails for the rest of your life. It's unfathomable where this ends up.
David Senra: But I have to thank you for that because you amplified Naval’s work. I'm not bullshitting you when I told you when we first started talking to DMs, like your work has had a profound impact on my work. And then my work in turn will have a profound impact on other people's work. That's the biggest thing, man. Like also learning too, because like I think that's where people- like, I hate to see people arguing with other people or disparaging other people on Twitter or anywhere else. It's just like, dude, life is too short to go around collecting enemies. First of all, it's dangerous and stupid because humans are extremely violent and that could come back to you in ways you have no pronounced. I go collect friends, not enemies. And the world is positive sum. If you get yourself in a zero-sum game, get the fuck out of it right now. And so, I just give credit to every- I don't feel any type of way, like bad about myself, if I say, hey, I learned this idea from Eric Jorgenson or I learned this idea from this book. Who cares? I don't know shit. I think of- the way I think of it, people are like what's your own personal philosophy? I think Thomas Edison summed it up when he said, he's like, we know- we don't know one one thousandth about anything. That's one of the world's most prolific inventors. I am extremely- I just had two conversations. So, the guy that's making Cover, he was explaining some of the biggest problems he has to solve for his business. He used the term, I've never scaled gigantic construction problems or construction business. I've never made a house. I was like- he's like, do you know what this is? No, I don't. Can you please explain it to me? There’re so many people like, oh yeah, yeah, don't worry, I understand what you're saying. And then I was talking to somebody else because I couldn't understand why like Founders keeps getting acquisition offers. Like people keep trying to buy the podcast, which is like what- I had never even thought that would happen. And obviously I would- no, I like being a lone wolf. I like working alone. I like having- like optimize for independence, like Naval says in your book. But what I couldn't understand is like a lot of people were trying to like recruit to- like essentially David turn into an investor. And I don't know anything about venture investing. I'm interested in entrepreneurship. But if I had a question, I'd ask you or I'd ask somebody else. And so, I could not understand why this kept happening to me until I had somebody that does that for a trade, that is a fan of the podcast that now I'm friends with because of the podcast. I go, hey, break down what's happening and talk to me like I'm stupid because in this subject I am. I literally know nothing. I don't think that person's going to be like, oh, David's an idiot. No, he's going to be like, oh, I'd be happy people. People like teaching you. The worst thing you could do is like that term, I don't know what that term means, and then just sit there and act like you do.
Eric Jorgenson: And it is, to go back to the word reassuring, it's reassuring to hear that is basically what many of the great entrepreneurs in history have done. Like Sam Walton would, I think says in his own book Made in America, which is an amazing book. He's like, I never invented anything. I patch worked together every idea. I ran into every retail store I could possibly find in my entire life. I was on a family road trip and I saw a store that I hadn't been to. And I pulled over and I ran in and I talked to the- and then I got an idea and I applied it to my own store. And he did the same thing over and over and over again. And then Jeff Bezos stole a bunch of ideas from Sam Walton.
David Senra: And then they all stole ideas from Sol Price. And that's where- like Sol Price is by far the most influential retailer that ever lived. And I would never have ever heard of him if I didn't do the podcast. I'm sure most people haven't. But he influenced Jim Senegal, billionaire. How many billionaires does Sol Price make? His mentor was Jim Senegal, founder of Costco. Sam Walton says in that book, I stole more ideas from Sol Price than anybody else. That's where he got the idea for Sam's Club. Jim Senegal told Jeff Bezos Sol's ideas when they met at Starbucks. And then Jeff started doing Amazon Prime and figuring out his flywheel and everything else. Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, before he started Home Depot was walking around with Sol Price. He's literally birthed like multiple billionaires. And so, you think like, oh, I have everything figured out, like, I don't know anything. I told you at the beginning of the conversation, I can go my entire life without ever coming up with one original idea, and it doesn't matter. I will get everything I want out of my life because there's been, what, a hundred billion people on this earth. There's probably been 10 million geniuses, a hundred million geniuses, whatever the number is, in the long scope of history. I can just say, hey, you teach me.
Eric Jorgenson: I love finding especially those unique ones. Like there's one I listened to from you. I think it was called the Invisible Billionaire. There is one book that exists on this guy that most people have never heard of. Even when he was alive, he like kept his career a deep secret. He protected his assets and his story and his business model from everyone. Those are such- they feel like a treasure hunt. They're like fascinating stories. And you do a great job I think of balancing. Like there's a ton of episodes on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos but finding those really esoteric ones that have really interesting lessons and tracing it back. I think I would love to have you unpack books are the original links, which I hear you say in a bunch of episodes, but like the process of working backwards to find these daisy chains of influence.
David Senra: So, the books are the original links I'm pretty sure I heard from- I don't know her name. I know her blog. Brain Pickings. I don't know.
Eric Jorgenson: Oh, Maria Papo-
David Senra: I heard her say that on a podcast one time. I'm almost positive I heard her say it on Tim Ferriss's podcast. And she just talked about like books are made of books. You go to the end of any book and you're going to see a bibliography. And that's how, where- because everybody's like David, aren't you worried that you're going to run out of books? Right now, my queue- And again, I get a ton. I get book recommendations from everybody from the audience that I've never heard of. And let's say I could do 60 a year comfortably or whatever case is. I have a 5 year queue. I don't take them in order. Obviously, I look at what I have and then say, what am I most excited to learn about right now? But no, I will never run out books because every book gives me two more books. And so I don't know if she said like- I don't know. I'm pretty sure she said books are the original links. Maybe I paraphrased what she was saying.
Eric Jorgenson: I love that, that books are made of books. I mean, lives are made of books, in this case. Like you're studying a life and you see all the influences on that person.
David Senra: It's just like- and I'm envious when I talk to young people that have the ability- they did this in- like, they understood how to do that automatically. So, I read a book about- Evan Spiegel from Snapchat just seems like a real interesting dude. Like the more I read about him, it's just like, oh, he's like- how many people were trying to make social networks and they were very similar and he's like, oh, I'll do that, but I'll spin it. And then I'm not a social network, I'm a network and I'm a camera company. But what was remarkable is like how young he was when he figured it out. And he's like, okay here, Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger talk about all the time, like who your heroes are, are extremely important. The most important thing is picking the right heroes. That's why I asked the very first thing we talked about is who are your heroes. Evan Spiegel says when he was 21, he's like my two entrepreneurial heroes are Steve Jobs and Edwin Land. And so, if you see Edwin Land's playbook from Polaroid and you see him saying Snapchat is just, if you made a camera company today, this is what you did. This is very similar to if you made an instant camera company in the 1940s or 50s, whenever Edwin Land was doing it. I was like, that's remarkable to me. How many- most people don't know who Edwin Land is. How many 21-year-olds know who Edwin Land was? And how did he find him? Because if you truly love Steve Jobs and his work and you study him, they all tell you who they took their ideas from. That's where I discovered them. It's taking that next step. That is how books are the original links. Because Steve Jobs is going to link you to great people in history.
Eric Jorgenson: And that's another example of like Evan Spiegel sounds like this amazing innovator, but what he did was actually just combine two mentors. Like I have a visual photographic mentor and I have like this Steve Jobs mentor, and I take these two world views and I combine them in the appearance of like raw innovation, and true value creation comes from that. But it is a very simple process of melding sources. I think David Perell said on my podcast, like there is no such thing as originality, there's only obscure sources. And I thought that was a very like relaxing idea and a good line. And it just- people are like- I didn't write a book about Naval. Like there's no originality in it. And you realize like books are made of books, and whether there's one person or hundreds of books, it is very much the same process of mostly curation and assembly.
David Senra: But you added hella value because I heard you talk about, I think I heard you on Chris Williamson's podcast and you're talking about, like, man, I see all these tweets, these valuable tweets from Naval that are going into the ether. And so, there's a million people. How many people saw the same tweets? Millions. Those impressions got millions. And yet you're the only one that acted on it. That the drive, that initiative is extremely valuable.
Eric Jorgenson: Which goes back to your idea of like how few people are actually competing with you. Most people are just not going to do anything. Like, don't worry about competition. Just start working.
David Senra: Yeah. And this is what's kind of sad for me when I talk to people is just like, this is also the exact opposite of what normal people tell you. They're like, oh, don't be too arrogant. Like, don't be too full of yourself. I was like, we don't have an abundant- we don't have an epidemic of arrogance. We have an epidemic of people that don't believe in themselves. And so, all those unrealized dreams are never even going to make it out because if you can't, if you think, if you believe you can't do something, then you won't do it. That is step number one. And so, I heard Kanye West say something. He's like, man, he goes, listen. He goes, if you're a Kanye West fan, he goes, go listen to my music. It's the blueprint to how to believe in yourself. He goes, if you're a Kanye West fan, you're not a fan of me, you're a fan of yourself. I'm just the espresso shot that gets you going in the morning. And so literally I go, if you're a fan of Founders, you're not a fan of me. You're a fan of yourself. You will believe in yourself. And I go, I'm just the espresso shot. I'm the person you're going to listen to maybe an hour, two hours a week, whatever the case is, and you're going to put that down and be like that dude went from shitting in a bucket and eating tree bark to building Hyundai. I have no fucking excuses. Let's go.
Eric Jorgenson: I fucking love that. We could do this all day, but I don't think we're going to top that for a place to end. And I already want to have you come back and talk about this again. And I don't know. I feel like we could talk every week about what we're reading and what we're working on.
David Senra: Listen, we're friends now, you have no choice. You're going to be talking to me all the time.
Eric Jorgenson: No, I hope to be like texting you about shit immediately and referencing you for keeping me focused. I love how you end every podcast with 246 books down, a thousand to go.
David Senra: Yeah. It's my interpretation of Jeff Bezos's day one mentality. Worst thing you could do. It's like I've just begun.
Eric Jorgenson: It's beautiful. Love it. All right, I'm going to go listen to some more Founders podcast episodes. Dude, David, thank you so much for taking the time and showing up and talking us all through this. I learned a ton, and I look forward to our next conversation and my next episode.
David Senra: Thanks for having me. I'm telling you right now, like your book is the best. I cannot wait to buy the next one. I just love the fact that you just found, like I'm going to harp on leverage because you really picked like that is the most important thing to work on. You said it in the book. It's like not blue collar versus white collar. It's leveraged and unleveraged. So, I don't know, I'm a fan of your gospel.
Eric Jorgenson: It's the biggest idea in the world. It's hidden in plain sight. It affects your life and it'll change your life if you can wrap your head around it and reorganize your life around it. You've done it intuitively and then picked up the ball and ran with it once you saw this all together. I think your life and your business is going to continue to be an incredible example of leverage. So, I'm honored. I'm honored to have you.
David Senra: I appreciate that, dude.
Eric Jorgenson: Cool. All right, man. Talk to you later.
David Senra: I'll talk to you soon.
I appreciate you hanging out with us today. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, you also love Andrew Wilkinson, which David mentioned in the episode. You’ll probably also like the Track Zach series, where my friend Zach Marshall is founding a company and we do an interview with him every quarter. We've done three so far and just take a snapshot of his journey through being a modern founder and some of the struggles and some of the victories that he has as he builds his company. You will maybe also appreciate, if you enjoyed the leverage aspects of this conversation, my interview with the Athena CEO and COO. It's a two hour deep dive into advanced delegation, all of the benefits that come from having an executive assistant, the playbooks, what people are using it for, and how to start investing in the corporation of you, getting some scale, getting some leverage so that you can continue to grow your impact and live your life the way you want to. Please check out founderspodcast.com. To invest with me and my partners at Rolling Fun, you can check out rolling.fun. The links to both of those are in the show notes. If you're looking for a free way to support the show, please just leave a quick review or text this episode to a friend or coworker you think would enjoy it. Those are basically the only two ways that podcasts grow. So, if you enjoyed what you just heard, I’d really appreciate you taking 30 seconds to do that. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. And let's go be founders.