David Senra + Mitchell Baldridge #3: Recap Capital Camp, Lunch with Sam Zell
“There exists no fulfilling destination, only a fulfilling journey“ is my favorite quote from this episode.
David "The Maniac" Senra and Mitchell "The Emperor" Baldridge have returned for a third time to shoot the breeze, share their lessons, and poke each other on Smart Friends.
David Senra is a biography reading machine powered by espresso and Jocko GO. His boundless energy is channeled into the Founders Podcast (where we learn from history’s greatest entrepreneurs).
Mitchell Baldridge is the Tax Emperor, and creator of the Baldridge Financial Empire. The man cannot stop starting companies and we are loving being along for the ride.
This conversation was right after we hung out at Capital Camp, a small conference for investors and business nerds. We recap our amazing experience at Capital Camp (shout out to Patrick O’Shaughnessy and Brent Beshore for putting it on!), chat about the journey of being creators and entrepreneurs, and wrap up with some of the most valuable learnings from the late Sam Zell.
Links to Platforms:
Here’s what I learned from the episode:
A Podcaster started an energy drink, and it seems to be working. Jocko GO has gained a dedicated customer–David Senra.
Capital Camp is first class. The organizers thought of everything. The food was amazing. Waters were everywhere. The swag was awesome. They even had a throat lozenge guy.
Capital Camp also provides a unique crowed, with some implicit trust amongst the attendees.
David continues hammering the idea that focus is an underrated superpower. He dedicates all his efforts to the Founders podcast and implores that we do the same.
Mitchell and I waffle and qualify about our “focus.”
David got to have lunch with Sam Zell. Sam Zell told David over and over to optimize for freedom. If you do that, you can work on what you love and ultimately money will come as a result of that.
We wrap up with the idea of liking the climb of life and not caring what the summit is. There exists no fulfilling destination, only a fulfilling journey.
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Learn more about David Senra:
Learn more about Mitchell Baldridge:
Additional episodes if you enjoyed:
The Synthesis of Media and Ecommerce with Kevin Espiritu of Epic Gardening
Meeting Charlie Munger and Starting RE Costseg with David Senra and Mitchell Baldridge
Growing Podcasts, Bookkeeping Biz, and Creator-Led Companies with David Senra and Mitchell Baldridge
Episode Transcript:
Hello again and welcome. I’m Eric Jorgenson. I still don’t know much, but I still have some very smart friends. And if you listen to this podcast, then no matter who, where, or when you are, you do too. Together, we will all explore how technology, investing, and entrepreneurship will create a brighter, more abundant future. This podcast is one of a handful of projects that I work on. To read my book, blog, or newsletter or invest alongside us in early stage tech companies, please visit ejorgenson.com. Today, I’m to you from a log cabin on the shores of Lake Michigan with my good friends David Senra and Mitchell Baldridge. David is a biography reading maniac and the mastermind behind the extremely excellent Founders podcast which is simply the easiest way to learn all of the lessons of history’s greatest entrepreneurs. Mitchell is the founder and emperor of the Baldridge Financial Empire which includes tax and accounting services, Better Book Keeping, cost segregation, Tax Credit Hunter and more. The man cannot stop starting companies. This is the third episode I’ve done with David and Mitchell. And if for some insane reason, you haven’t already heard my previous podcasts with them, cue those up next. They are episodes number 50 and 62 of this podcast, just a short scroll back. Today, we are recapping our amazing experience at Capital Camp. We talk about where David was a full on nerd celebrity. We talk about the things we’ve learned from Berkshire, from Jocko Willink as a creator and an entrepreneur, and from Sam Zell, rest in peace, Sam. David, predicably, yells at Mitchell and I to focus more. And we talk generally about the journeys, the highs, the lows, the peaks, the chase of being founders and creators. I hope you find some fun and some comradery in this conversation. We have a great time doing these. And Capital Camp, for those unaware, is a small, extremely fun conference put on by Patrick O’Shaughnessy and Brent Beshore in Columbia, Missouri. It’s mostly investors, limited partners, it’s business nerds of all stripes and flavors. This is a really fun episode sharing what we learned at the conference. This year at Capital Camp, I was there meeting investors and partners for Rolling Fun, the early stage tech fund I manage with two of my partners, Al and Bo. You can invest your money alongside ours in today’s great founders. These early stage startups often fundraise quickly and quietly. We are lucky enough to get access to some of these great companies, and we welcome you to join us. In the past year, we’ve invested in 22 companies including Alo which is building nuclear fission micro reactors, Gently which is the Amazon of second hand shopping, and recently a next generation battery company that you’ll learn more about on the next episode of this podcast, so please subscribe and keep an eye out for that. If you love these conversations and supporting the next generation of founders building transformative companies, you’ll love the companies we invest in. You can check out some of the podcast episodes with Bo and Al to learn more about Rolling Fun. I’m honored that over 50 of you listeners have already joined the fund as investors. You can learn more at rolling.fun which is linked in the show note below. Accredited investors can join through Angel List today. And with the Rolling Fun, the sooner you invest, the more deals you get exposure to. If you have questions or you’d like to learn more, hear more, reach out. I’d love to sit down with you. Now with both ears and everything in between, please enjoy this conversation arriving in three, two, one.
David Senra: The funny thing is I just did an episode of Robert Caro or Caro, and I was listening to it back, and like I'm talking obviously by myself in a little booth, and there was just some parts of the book that got me so fired up that you can hear on the podcast me like pounding my fingers and my hands on the book. And I listened to the podcast back, and I said I don't know if you can hear that, and you can definitely hear it. So, I guess I’m forceful when I put cans down or have books in my hands. I apologize.
Eric Jorgenson: No, I mean, your whole life is sponsored by Jocko Go. I underestimated the extent. It was a pleasure to meet you for the first time at Capital Camp, and four seconds later, we were in the car going to pick you up a pallet of Jocko GO because you just couldn't function for a week without like a fat stack of energy drinks.
Mitchell Baldridge: This podcast is brought to you by Jocko GO.
Eric Jorgenson: Very literally. David's whole personality is brought to you by Jocko Go. You told me- I actually wanted to see if you could recap for us to the extent that you're comfortable sharing publicly the like story of Jocko GO because that was one, like podcaster starting energy drink just as a headline seems like a business disaster story waiting to happen and they're crushing.
David Senra: Okay, so I couldn't understand because like Jocko has got one of the top business podcasts in the world. Like if you look at the charts, he just like sits up there, and he sat up there for years. He's probably got millions of people listening to him. And for the longest time, I was like, I don't understand. I mean, he's got- we talked about this. When we do the Capital- I guess we'll get to the Capital Camp recap too. But the day before we showed up at Capital Camp, me and Mitchell met up in Fort Worth, Texas, to hang out with our friend Chris Powers. And so, this is one of the things I talked to Mitchell and Chris about is that I'm obsessed with the business model of podcasts. And so, I'm always constantly paying attention to like what people are doing. And Jocko’s got such an interesting- He's got one of the most interesting business models because he's got one of the most successful podcasts in the world. And they are these like three, four, or five hour long podcasts. And then there's no ads at all. And then you get to the very end, and it's like 30 minutes of what most people consider ads. But it's really him and his co host Echo just talking about all the different ways you can support the podcast. And there's like- I wrote down- I actually took notes in a recent episode. It's like 20 different businesses that he started off the back of his podcast. And one of them was- A ton. I mean, you can't believe how many. And one of them was this thing called Jocko GO. And I've never drank energy drinks in my life, like not Red Bull, nothing, not Monster, none of them. And I was like that's a weird like way to monetize a business audience. He's got a lot of like business and people that want to learn more about like leadership that are listening to his podcast. And I've been obsessed with like espresso forever. I would drink, I don't know, like three or four a day. This also comes because like my dad's Cuban, and they do this really weird thing where like they give coffee to like kids. So, I was like five years old and drinking this stuff called cafe con leche, which is like the way I would describe it if anybody’s never had it, it's like a warm milkshake full of sugar and caffeine. It's like probably the worst thing you could give to a five year old. So, I have a high tolerance for caffeine. And I love it. And I'm clearly addicted to it. And I would drink espressos all day long. And I'm coming back because you actually hooked us up Eric, where your friend Chris Williamson invited me on his podcast because you recommended that he do so. And he's like oh, I trust Eric’s judgement.
Eric Jorgenson: I knew that'd be a slam dunk audience and podcast for you. Like Chris is a great interviewer. He's got a great audience that should be totally dialed into Founders.
David Senra: And what I like about him, he's one of the hardest working podcasters because we can talk about the conversation me and Patrick had on stage that wasn't- a lot of people- Hey, they saw it. they are like, did you record this? Is it going to be like released on Invest Like the Best? It's like, no, it's just for Capital Camp. And one of the things I said is like podcasts is a market full of second rate products. And even the people who have first rate products have second rate work ethics. Chris doesn't have- Chris has a first rate work ethic. He works incredibly hard on his podcast, and I really respect it. So anyways, him being from England, he's like, hey, I got this date. Can you do it on this day? It was Thanksgiving Day. So, I was like, dude, I can't do it that day. But I could do it like first thing the next morning. So, I'm driving back from my dad's place, which is like four hours north of where I live. And it's on Thanksgiving, because I was like I got to leave early because I got to wake up early in the morning and be on this podcast. So, I'm driving down on Thanksgiving Day, like everything's closed, even like the Starbucks. Every single thing is closed except the gas stations. And I was like, man, this is a four hour drive, I’m going to need some caffeine. And I remember hearing on Jocko’s podcast that he had- he's like default aggressive, which I really respect about on him. But he had massively expanded his distribution network for his energy drink. And he's- I remember him saying, oh, it's in the Wawas, and I was like, oh, there's a Wawa. And so I think the reason you want me to tell the story is because I go inside, and I find the energy drink aisle or where all the energy drinks are. It's like not for a second did I like oh, like maybe I'll get a Monster. Maybe I’ll get a Red Bull. It's like no, they didn't make a podcast that has added an unbelievable amount of value to my life. I've found probably 15, 20, 30 different books from Jocko’s podcasts that I've read. And so, I didn't even look at them. I was like, okay, I'll just get this because I know who Jocko is. And I started drinking it. I was like, oh, wow, they work. They work really, really well. And so, if I'm traveling, and I don't know if I'm going to have like a steady supply of espresso, then I'll just get like- The first thing, I see you, I say, hey, what's up? And you said you had a car. I was like, oh, you mind driving me up to the corner? Like I went on the site, the store locator, like where can I find them and just bought an entire case, so I had them for the entire week.
Eric Jorgenson: And they built a big business in there really quickly, like shockingly quickly.
David Senra: So, I have- this is something I can't talk about publicly. But I have- not the actual numbers. I can talk about what I know, just random, is I happen to be good friends- A friend of mine saw that I drink them. And he's like, oh, yeah, I manufacture those. And I was like, what? Like, no, like you resell them or something? He's like, no, I make them. I'm not like a retailer, like I make those energy drinks and a bunch of other energy drinks. And then he broke down cost of production, how many cans certain brands would hypothetically sell, all this other stuff, and I just could not believe like the size and the scale. And it makes sense too because if you see the guy that does like Rockstar, his dad, the guy that owns Rockstar, I think he owns 100% of it. This information is like a couple years old, so it could be wrong. It could be changed in the interim. But the guy that owns Rockstar, he has like one of the largest collections of luxury homes in the United States. He’s got like a $40 million house in like Colorado, like $40 million house in like Miami. Like it's just crazy. So obviously if you can succeed at them, beverages in general, but energy drinks in particular because they are addictive, you can build massive businesses off them. But there's also a lot of people that fail doing it as well, like anything else.
Mitchell Baldridge: The Five Hour Energy guy’s a billionaire as well. I mean, there's a long string of billionaires of Red Bull and Rock Star and Five Hour energy drink and all and all and all.
Eric Jorgenson: Monster is one of the best performing stocks of like the last 50 years. I think I was talking to a friend who put together a presentation on 100 baggers, and that was one of like the 50 that made the list. It is crazy.
Mitchell Baldridge: So this idea of energy drink times podcast creator is the nexus of David Senra. But so, then you take this- that seemed to be a constant theme. I mean, it's all over right now, and it's what we're talking about a lot. But it was a Capital Camp theme of we did this David Perell kind of breakout session about writing. And I was sitting next to Jeremy. And they say talk about the idea you're thinking about the most. And I'm like, I'm thinking about creator economy, the idea that you can kind of break out and have your own domain expertise, even though you may not be the most formally recognized expert. And Jeremy's just kind of like, yeah, I'm thinking about the same thing. And here's my extension of this idea. And it's just kind of like, well, did we just-
David Senra: So, for those people listening, he's talking about Jeremy Giffon. I call him Jeremy Giffen because I'm not going to pronounce his French name the proper way. He's one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. I think Eric had a great idea where he's like, I kind of just want to invite Jeremy on my podcast and pull up some of his tweets and just ask him to expand on them because they are- he's one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. He was at Capital Camp too. He has this idea. I think he's going to work on the name but he talks- he's basically, he's like, it's very clear that just like you have technical co founders, like there's just going to be a bunch of audience co founders related to the drink conversation that this- I wasn't expecting to talk about this right now. But my daughter is 11 years old. And she informed me that there is a black market at school for Prime energy drinks by Logan Paul and KSI where like literally, I swear to god, the kids- some kids’ parents won't buy it for their kid. It is in such high demand that a bunch of these like little boys and girls are paying up to $20 a bottle for a- like on the black market, on the secondary market for an unopened bottle of Prime. And I think they sell for like two or three bucks in the store. So that's a perfect example.
Mitchell Baldridge: Is she going to corner of the market?
David Senra: You know what, I've only been focused on Founders, so I didn't even think to think about her business. But yeah, I should. I'll just buy cases of it and be like, alright, go attack this.
Eric Jorgenson: That was my first business. It was like buying cases of Airheads at Costco and selling them, where you can get them for, I don't know, two cents each and sell them at school lunch for like 50 cents each to the kids who wouldn't- the parents wouldn't pack them like candy in their lunches. Best margins I'll ever have in my whole life.
David Senra: When I was in middle school, unfortunately, because I was raised by savages, I was buying like cigarettes and like little joints. So, I was like 12 or 13. They would hide them in like highlighters. It was not a good- looking back, because now my daughter is almost that age, I'm like you better not be doing this stuff. That's just insane.
Eric Jorgenson: Give me your highlighters. I love all those early like entrepreneurship stories. I actually think that's a really good heuristic for like when I'm meeting founders and stuff, is like what's your earliest recollection of entrepreneurship? Like, when did you start? When did you start hustling basically?
David Senra: You're always going to find something early.
Mitchell Baldridge: I like talking to my wife's family. My wife's mom is one of ten, and her dad's one of five, and she has this whole extended family. And we have like younger cousins or second cousins who are in high school, and talking to them, or just I like it when you talk to kids, and you're like, what is the hustle today? Bring me up on the hustle. Or young people you meet on Twitter, especially, you're just like, where's the action? Get it for me. Now that cryptos done, so they have to find different things to do. But it does just perpetuate forever. And which kind of like bleeds into this idea of the mix of people and the crowd at Capital Camp and just the idea of it seems like a lot of these people start doing these short, short, short term games in elementary school and middle school of an Airhead arbitrage. And then how does that become a long term game? How do you become a long term thinker from being a short term thinker?
Eric Jorgenson: You pick up all these skills and people along the way. I remember David standing sort of apart from the rest of Capital Camp with you and Chris Powers and just like looking around and being like this is a crazy crowd, and it's still early in this crazy crowd. Like half of these people may turn out to be billionaires over the course of like 40 years if this keeps happening, and these people keep coming together and keep like supporting each other. It is absolutely wild. I don't know. What was your impression? Yeah, let's do the- Let’s reset the Capital Camp recap.
David Senra: Okay, so yeah, we'll start with Capital Camp recap. For people that don't know what it is, so it's this event started by Brent Beshore and Patrick O’Shaughnessy, and it takes place in Columbia, Missouri, which is very difficult to get to, by the way.
Eric Jorgenson: Small college town like two hours from Kansas City.
David Senra: It's between, what, 3 to 400 people. Like essentially they call it like- it's like nerd, like finance and business and investing nerds talking business and investing in shorts and sandals, I think is like the tagline.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, something like that, like a food and wine festival mixed in because Brent likes nice food. And I'm not mad about that.
David Senra: I've never gone to a conference before. I went to one like in 2012. But it wasn't- it was nothing like Capital Camp. What I would say about- the thing about Capital Camp, even before I knew Patrick, even before I was invited to go, it has an excellent brand with entrepreneurs, investors. And now after going and then spending more time- I had emailed back and forth with Clayton. I actually met Clayton, who runs Capital Camp full time because I was on your podcast like for the first time like a year ago, and he reached out to me. This was before I was on Colossus and before everything else. And I had mentioned that I'm an introvert. I don't like events. He's like, no, I really think you should be there next year. I am super impressed by Clayton. Like just the way- who is in person, how thorough everything was. Do you remember, I texted you guys. It was super late, because like I hadn't- I planned on spending a lot more time- I wanted to spend time with Mitchell and Eric and Chris and all these other people. And there was like this other thing going on that we could talk about later. And so, I texted you guys. I was like, alright, fuck going to bed. Like where are you guys at? I feel bad because I haven't seen you all day. And it was like 11 o'clock, and I walked over to your hotel where you guys were staying in the same hotel. And we're just hanging out outside, talking, catching up. And out comes Clayton and like a bunch of the Capital Camp crew because you could tell because they're in like the brown shirts and everything. And I guess like 11 o'clock is when they're going home. So, they've been working all day. 11 pm, before they go out, with this like Midwest charm or whatever want to call it, like they checked on every single fucking person out there just to make sure, like do you have everything you need? Is there anything we can do? And I got to talk to- I talked to Brent and Patrick about this. I'm like, man, you guys, like your organization's first class. Like they had a throat lozenge guy. Like, did I tell you this story? Listen to this. So, we're at this dinner. And I'm sitting with the Positive Sum people, which is Patrick O'Shaughnessy’s investment firm, and that's just who I happened to sit next to dinner. And I was looking up and I was like going to call an Uber because I was really concerned because I was absolutely like roasting my voice. And the next day, I was supposed to be on the main stage with Patrick. And I was like, I got to go to like the pharmacy, like man, I'm like not going to be able to talk. Like, I'm going to get some throat lozenges or something. And I was like- So I said something like I'm going to leave dinner early. I’ve got to go to the pharmacy. Like, wait, what do you need? And I told Patrick, and he's like, oh, I have a guy for that. I was like, you have a throat lozenge guy? What are you talking about you have a guy for this? No exaggeration. Less than five minutes later, a hand- like I'm still sitting at the table. A hand just slides up. You don’t even see the face. I don't even see the guy's face. An entire thing of throat lozenges are there. Then I find out later, they are like we have throat soothing tea and all this other stuff where I'm like, oh, you guys have thought about literally everything. So I think the story there is just like Clayton- Obviously, Patrick and Brent are running like very serious businesses. They're the founders of the conference. But like it's Clayton and his team that are thinking about this thing all year long while Patrick and Brent are off building their empire. And just every interaction with Clayton, every email, everything, I've just been super, super impressed with that guy.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, he's such a nice guy. And he's so- he's unbelievably calm in the middle of what is basically like being solely responsible for like a three day long wedding with 400 like opinionated people who like flew from all over the world to come together and just want to be like focused and present and have everything taken care of for them. He's so good and his whole team honestly, like, yeah. And to your point, this is what they work on all year round, like these two and a half days and just making them amazing.
David Senra: And it shows. It shows.
Mitchell Baldridge: Like, David, you know a lot about hospitality from all of these books you've read, and like you read Daniel Meyer Setting the Table, or you read about even Trader Joe's or even In and Out Burger, and like how they- It is incredible how people think about this stuff in the sense that like I run a services based business, so I always kind of like look at things like this, and they touch on all of those things. So it's like a high touch boutique service business. And then they even have essentially a hotel or yeah, it's like Ritz and Escoffier on top of that. And I remember one time, somebody had written a thread or even just like checked Danny Meyer about how they had gone to like Gramercy Tavern in New York, and it had this amazing element of service, and they tagged him. And he came by, and he was like, I'm just really glad you enjoyed your meal, and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, oh, my gosh, Danny Meyer just like walked by your table and shook your hand. And like people who are wired that way are unbelievable. And yeah, Clayton, Clayton is that. Like those guys have really built an exceptional mousetrap. I say a mousetrap because- Yeah, you go on, Eric.
Eric Jorgenson: It’s the fourth one. So they've really- like I'm lucky to have been to all four, but they have dialed it in progressively each time. And it's really like, it's amazing. Now, exactly to your point, like everyone's talking constantly, so there's waters everywhere. There is like these parallel sessions going on. Because it's a really- like the mix of people is what's super interesting. Like, there's a whole enclave of like real estate folks. And then there's all the creators. And then there's the actual investors across all of these different things. And then there's family offices. And there's endowments. There's all these- I think what makes it so interesting is the mix of people who all sort of do business together but are all these different levels and all these different methods and different industries. And so, you never know sort of who you're going to be talking to. And you get this really interesting experience that's different from like, oh my god, I just met like five small value fund managers in a row, which is basically what happens in Omaha if you go to the right meetup. And Capital Camp is just so- feels so dynamic that way. And there’s places where everyone's collected to like speak about a particular topic like writing or AI or creator led businesses or whatever. But everybody's just kind of like thrown in the soup for mealtimes and stuff like that and shuttle rides and happy hours. And it all, just like the collisions, the randomness that happens, it feels like, honestly, months of networking or Zooming or whatever that happens two and a half days, just who you get to meet and who you get to hang out with and the conversations you get to have is unbelievable.
David Senra: I've had a couple of like lunches and dinners with founder friends since I got back and I was like, yeah, some of them have gone in the past and didn't go again, or some of them have never gone. If you have the chance to go, you should go. And once you go, you should just go every year. Like even if you don't stay for the full four days, go for two days, do whatever you can, but it's like you really should go.
Eric Jorgenson: I feel super inspired. I mean, we've talked a little bit more about doing an event or something together. First, we talked about doing a live podcast thing. We've seen the Acquired guys do it and a handful of other people, but like to do all the work for one night doesn't really pencil out. It doesn't seem to have like the same- It's not as meaningful economically for less work, but still a bunch of work. But like how many times have you had a one day event like change your trajectory of your life versus something like that that's immersive and multiple days and where you truly like leave with new lifelong friends or get to spend really, really quality like memorable time with the people that you already sort of built relationships with online.
David Senra: There's a line in one of Buffett's biographies, like earlier in his career, this was before the Berkshire AGM, where he was doing like these meet- I don't even know what you would call it. They're not meet ups. I forgot what they're called. But I remember this guy would spend like I think like 1500, let's say $1,500, which is at that point a lot of money. This is like probably 50 years ago. And his wife was just incredulous. She's just like you're spending $1,500 to go hang out with this guy or listen to him talk. And his response was great. She goes, or he goes, Buffet gives me energy. And I think that is the biggest thing, like the last day of Capital Camp, everybody the last night of Capital Camp, everybody kept saying the same thing. They're like, I cannot wait to get home and like hit the ground running. Like you cannot- People discount it. They think it's like this willy fufu shit. It's like no energy and passion and all these things are superpowers, and if somebody can fill you up, if going to an event makes you- gives you a little bit, little extra even if it's for the next few weeks or a few months, it's like worth the return on investment. Everybody there is trying to build an empire in their own way.
Eric Jorgenson: Dude, I'm sure you went home on fire because you were like a celebrity there. I think you said- you came up to me at the end of the first day and was like, I haven’t been able to eat a meal all day. As soon as I like sit down, someone's asking me questions, someone’s talking to me. Like I don't have time to put food in my mouth. I’m sure it's so rewarding to like feel that energy in person.
David Senra: I think I'm the only one. So, you mentioned earlier, it's like a food and wine fest disguised as an investing conference. And the food was incredible or so I heard. I didn't get to eat until the last night. Like it was crazy. So, the one weird thing was, one, I don't know how everybody knows what I look like. That was a surprise to me. Because like I clearly- after the first day, like I'm not wearing a nametag. This is like not- like I don't need to wear a nametag.
Eric Jorgenson: It’s like Steve Jobs, no license plate for me.
David Senra: No, no, because like people would read it and then like make the connection. And then also, I think this is unusual in the sense that like, usually, there's a ton of people at the conference that had listened or listen to the podcast. So that's not- this is the first time, I guess what I'm saying, it's the first time I've been in a physical location where other than like a meetup I did with Shane Parrish where every single person there listened to the podcast, where I'm around like a large concentration of people that listen. They're all nice. Like, that was the cool thing. Obviously, you know I don't do a podcast for any kind of fame. I would much rather be rich and anonymous, but I just so happened to be obsessed with podcasting is a medium and obviously the success of my podcast is correlated with like how much I'm willing to like put myself out there. And I will do whatever possible to get more people to listen because I truly do believe that I've created a really great product that will make your life and career better. So, I don't give a shit about that. And it is cool. It's like everybody just comes up to me. And they're like- oh, there is one guy, I got to tell you this hilarious story. I don't know if you guys were standing next to me or I forgot who, somebody was standing next to me. I'll get there in one second. So yeah, it was very cool to meet people in person. They kept thanking me. And all I kept saying to them was like, no, thank you. If you didn't listen, I'd be this weirdo sitting in this room reading books and talking to a microphone all day. So, like, I appreciate that you enjoy it. But I promise you the fact that like I love you more than you love me because you allow me to do this for a living. Like, I'll tell you this text I sent a friend, and I'm not going to say who it is. But I texted him the other day, literally yesterday. And I was like- he was talking about the fact that the best podcasters- you could tell who the best podcasters are because their podcast is them. It's him. And I go, I felt that today. I lost track of time reading Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man. That's what I was reading today. I was reading it for a second time. When I stopped, I said, I can't fucking believe I get to do this for a living. And so that's genuinely the way I feel. And people were like, man, I love your podcast. I'm like, no, I love you. Like thank you very much for it. There was one funny thing after. So I didn't talk until the last day. I got bumped. Can we talk about the fact that I was supposed to be the opening- The opening- me and Patrick were supposed to be the opening like presentation or talk. I got bumped by a billionaire, man. I got bumped by, is it Brad Gerstner? That's how you pronounce his name, right? And I found out, I was like, okay, this guy's got $20 billion of assets under management, he made one of the greatest venture investments of all time. Alright, that's fine. If the podcaster gets bumped for that guy, I understand. But I wound up giving the talk. The cool thing is I got to meet Brad and he listens to the podcast, which is also cool. But we should talk about the talks we like too. So I got to talk on the last day. Then we go to this- how it works, which I didn't know, you have this, the last presentation of the Capital Camp. I thought okay, I'm going to have time to go back to my hotel room and get more throat lozenges, get more like energy drinks. And they're like, no, we're going to the farm. I'm like, what the fuck, what farm? What are you talking about? I didn't know that like then the whole conference is like transported like, I don't know, 30 miles away to this like beautiful farm in the middle of nowhere that's just incredible. And then they have this like cookout and fireworks and all this crazy stuff. But I had a funny interaction with this one guy. He comes up to me. He's like, man, I loved your talk. He goes, I must confess. I hadn't heard of your podcast yet. And I haven't listened yet. And I was like, alright, well take out your phone and like let's install it on your podcast player right now. Like, that's what I do constantly. Like people say- it's like I don't want to wait around and you’re not going to remember, just take out your phone. And then something happened where we installed it on his phone or whatever. And then he's like, he said something. I can't remember his exact words, but he's just like kind of laughing that he hadn't heard it yet. I was like, listen, that's fine. But it's really important that you do listen to it because if you're competing head-to-head with someone that does listen to Founders and you don't, they're going to beat the fuck out of you. And he laughed and laughed and laughed. And I go I'm not kidding. Like I had a straight ass face. Like I'm dead serious. This is serious. Like you need to go home and listen to all 300 episodes twice. Like this is very important. And then like he- I don't think he was prepared for that because like his laugh is like, oh my god, I'm in a conversation with a psycho. But I do really mean that. I'm like, man, this is really important. Like you should really listen to this.
Eric Jorgenson: So there's this app for Capital Camp where you like find the people that you want to match up with and search around and connect with them or whatever. And David's like tagline for himself- everyone else is kind of like GP or whatever, I run a family office. And David's is maniac on a mission, which is I think how Mitchell describes him in his series of pitches of David Senra as a human being and Founders as a product, which is fantastic and amazing. I will say like I knew- I appreciate your energy in the podcast. I’ve listened to your podcast for years, we talk on the phone, the same energy. I feel like this week watching you operate in person, like one, that's all extremely authentic, not that I doubted it, but like for anybody who is curious, and two, I feel like I learned how to be a maniac. Like they see the intensity that you bring in real life is like having these like conversations exactly like the one you're describing that like shake people up where you're like that guy will remember that moment for months. Like not just in the fact that like, oh shit, I should go listen to this podcast, and oh shit, a competitor might be doing it, but like your willingness to like put on the table the fact that like you're in a knife fight, and your business could die, and your competitors are coming for you. And like you need to be awake and intense. And like let's get your shit together. You felt that from the stage. You felt that from the conversations. I could feel people reacting to you like sitting in the audience when you and Patrick were talking. And it's the same stuff you have said on this podcast. Like I'll be doing this till the day I fucking die. No one will ever beat me at this, like bring it on. I’m here forever. And you should all bring the same intensity to your work, or you should find some work that you can like bring the same intensity to. Shut up and get it done. People were just getting like riled up. It was awesome to see and feel and be a part of.
David Senra: And I feel that though, like I got a dose of that because this morning, I’ll put out the podcast in like a day or two. But I recorded- I read the Confessions- excuse me, I recorded the podcast on the second- my second reading of Confessions of an Advertising Man. And if you sit down, and it's incredible, Olgivy is incredible. But I think I said on the podcast, I hope I did because it's the way I feel, but like you have these one sided conversations with these people, and they just hold you to such a higher standard. And every time I get done with a wonderful book like that from a world- he's a world class founder, a world class entrepreneur. There are not many people alive that are better at their craft than he was at theirs, and you just get to the end of the book and you're completely fired up. Because he's just admonished you. He's like, the entire theme of the book is like I don't give a shit about being the biggest advertising agency in the world. I care about being the best. Like I have 19 clients, and he talks- And he's also really cocky, which makes it fun, where he's just like I wanted- when I grew up, I wanted to be the Prime Minister of England. And he's like now, the revenue of my 19 clients are bigger than the GDP of Her Majesty's Government. You know what I mean? He's just like, he's hilarious.
Mitchell Baldridge: It’s so great too because this is like at a point where, I mean, he does have 19 clients, and he does have 19 huge clients. But this is even before Ogilvy was like Ogilvy. I mean, this book is what really launched him. And I mean, just back to the like David Senra idea of you were cocky before anyone ever knew you, which is awesome. Everyone's like, I've always-
David Senra: It's a cockiness based on the fact that you know you've done the work. Like I wasn't cocky when I had four episodes, and they all suck because like you go back and listen to them. You know what I mean? But at this point, like I've thought- I've had enough practice- First of all, how many people in the world have done 300 episodes on a podcast? We know very few. But also, how many have thought about it every day for seven years? Like I'm- but he says in the beginning book, he's like, if you get a hint of conceit, it's a conceit about advertising. He's like, I don't know how to play golf. I don't know how to ski. I don't know how to read a balance sheet. I don't do any of this stuff. So I don't have conceit there. But he's like, when it comes to advertising, I clearly know- He's like, I clearly know what I'm talking about. Because he's done the work. I think that's the important part.
Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, for sure. It just is so- it was jarring the first time I ever met you and we sat down and we had coffee how- like your thesis has not changed, things that- your tactics have changed a little bit in the last year, but your thesis has not changed one bit except to just become- you’ve become more and more entrenched in your idea.
David Senra: There's a conversation we had on the last night because on the last night, I don't know, Eric had left. You had driven straight from the farm. You were going up to like Michigan, so you had like a 10 hour drive ahead of you. So that night, me, Mitchell, everybody else- I'm surprised how dead- like everybody went to bed. I'm like oh, it's the last night, we should go do something. So me, David Perell, Jeremy fucking Giffon, that's my nickname for him, and Mitchell went for this long walk. David wanted to give us like- he like took us on this walk around the campus of it's Missouri, University of Missouri.
Mitchell Baldridge: It’s Mizzou.
David Senra: And it was brought up that somebody like- they're like, but maybe David’s getting distracted or whatever the case is. And I kind of snapped. It was like midnight when I said this, I was like, listen, if people think that like I'm going to get distracted from my mission, or I'm going to like not take podcasting as seriously, or I'm not going to read every day, then like they're not as smart as I thought they were. And if you bet against me, you're going to fucking lose in this one domain. Because it's like go listen to- I don't even want to fucking admit this publicly because it's like it makes me feel like not the best. But I just did an episode. It's episode 305. It's on Robert Caro. And one, you never know when a podcast is going to resonate emotionally before you put it out. Whatever happened is like that thing came out, and the next morning, I woke up with a ton of text messages from really impressive people talking about how much- how they thought that episode was good. And then since then, there's just been a steady onslaught of emails, DMs. Something resonated in that episode. And it ends- I would just beg you, even if you don't listen to the episode, it’s fine, listen to the intro and listen to the outro. And technically it's about Lyndon Johnson, a young Lyndon Johnson. But it's not. What I texted my friend Sam Hinkie, because he's the one that put me on the Caro books, is Caro- let me pull up the exact text message. Because this is probably the greatest living biographer, one of the greatest biographers that has ever lived. He's one of the greatest writers. His books take 10 to 12 years to make. And I was like, Carlo is able to make you see other people so well that you start to see yourself. And what I realized while making that podcast is like I saw me in the hunger and desperation that young Lyndon Johnson had for political power, which I don't have at all, like I don't give a shit about power. I just want to make podcasts and make a lot of money. It's like I felt the same way. So the outro is him just like seeing for the first time in his life. And he came from like a fucked up situation. He had a bad relationship with his father. They were like super poor. They were so poor that you didn't even call it poor. Like he came from the hill country of Texas. And the outro- The intro is one of the best intros I’ve ever done for any podcast and the outro is like exactly how I feel because it's like this kid's 23. He's like this poor kid, gets to Washington. And every morning, his co workers see him running to work, like what is going on with this guy? And it's because he goes at sunrise, and the sun is shining on the Capitol building. And he realizes for the first time in his life, he's like, right in front of him is everything that he ever wanted. And for him, that was like he had a plan. He's going to be president. He's like, I'll be congressman. Like, he literally laid this out. He’s like I’ll be congressman first, and then I'll be Senator, then I'll be president. And that desperation and that just running towards his goal and not letting anything else in his life distract him from that, I was like that's exactly how I feel about building Founders. That's how I feel about podcasts. I really do feel, I know I say it a lot, like it is without a doubt, a fucking miracle. And people just get used to it. And that miracle has never- I'm not used to it. I still think it's a frickin’ miracle. The idea where like I sit in my room, read books, make a podcast, I fly to Missouri. First of all, I get a ride on a friend's private jet. And then like he likes the podcast, and then other guys I've never met, they were riding over with us, they liked the podcast. They wind up giving me like really thoughtful gifts, which I think I talked about earlier. Maybe that was before we started recording. Then I get there and everybody else is like- these super successful investors and founders are like, hey, I get a lot of value in you podcasts. It's fucking a miracle, man. That is a fucking miracle. There's nothing else to say. That is, and I'm sweating right now thinking about it.
Eric Jorgenson: It's a miracle. Leverage is a miracle of scale.
Mitchell Baldridge: Johnny was talking before the podcast with us about- producer, great producer Johnny. So, we are hanging out right before we leave to go to Missouri, and Johnny's like hey, David, I brought you this gift. And David goes oh, people always bring me gifts. Johnny’s like, oh, Mitchell, I didn't know you'd be here. I would have brought you something. I'm like, okay. And then Chris Powers is showing David this book about Trammell Crow, this old Texas Real Estate dynasty that's just massive. And David's like oh, this is great. Can I have this book? He just puts it in his bag and just walks out. Chris is like, yeah, you can have the book, David, sure. You just have to say that the great Chris Powers gave it to me when you do a pod about it. David's just getting- He needs like three more suitcases because he’s getting loaded down with bullshit all weekend.
David Senra: No, it's all books though. That’s the greatest this.
Eric Jorgenson: I can’t wait to find out what he stole from Charlie Munger’s library.
Mitchell Baldridge: Charlie, can I have this?
David Senra: I didn't even think to do that. Dammit.
Mitchell Baldridge: Oh my gosh. You’re not going to be asked back anyway; you might as well shoot your shot.
Eric Jorgenson: So two stories your stories just reminded me of, David, is so one thing, I got to spend a few minutes at the table with Sam Hinkie. And he said this sentence that I think was amazing and stuck with me. Everything in my life I have I got through writing. That is just like such an incredible sentence. And I am sure that he has an hour long or many hour long story to sort of unpack that. And I think he said like including his wife. And I was like, oh, that's incredible. And I mean, his letter when he resigned as GM was famous, but I thought that was an incredible thing. And then about three hours later, I was talking to this guy who built a huge RIA, really successful, Josh Womack, and he talked about when he first left, and he was like trying to get his business off the ground and trying to build trust with families and high net worth individuals and become like a successful RIA, that he would write, he would sit down and write handwritten letters every quarter to the same families over and over again, that just slowly like became his business. Like, those two things happening back to back like really stuck with me. And I think it's incredible, like whether it's podcasting, whether it's writing, whether it's video, whatever, like we're talking about this miracle of leverage and the relationships that can come from it and the scale. Like there's something beautiful about handwriting not having scale and being really personal. But we talk all the time about how personal audio feels and the scale of that with the personality, with the sort of deep personal relationship quality that comes from it is absolutely incredible. It's super underrated and will be probably for decades.
David Senra: What it becomes too is like a calling card for who you are as a person. Because think about how difficult it is to like- any high performing or like high value person is going to have a million people trying to get to them. And you have to like shuffle through a bunch of people, like are they worth your very limited time that you have on this earth or not? And one way to demonstrate that is that you guys mentioned earlier, like Danny Meyer, like saying something, like coming by the table or maybe responding on Twitter, and just saying, like thanking you, like that level of hospitality. And what I had in mind when you told that story is like oh, yeah, the way I've described that is not even hospitality, it's like somebody that actually gives a fuck about what they're doing. And so few people actually give a fuck about what they're doing. And I think that what I'm trying to do is like make it really easy to interface with me. And just like clearly, like in this one domain, David gives a fuck. Like Patrick has really a gift, Patrick O’Shaughnessy for people, so I don't like start naming people on a first name basis and no one knows who I'm talking about. He has a real profound gift for naming things. And you see that in like the titles of his podcasts, but also like what his investment firm is doing. They're looking for magicians. They’re looking for live players. You mentioned maniac on a mission. That's a line I got from Patrick. That's not even mine. I stole it from him.
Eric Jorgenson: I thought that was a Mitchell line.
David Senra: No, no, that maniac on a mission he got- he actually got it from- Yeah, he called me a- I think yeah, Mitchell was talking about somebody should do a Founders for the Bible. And people kept giving suggestions. And Mitchell was like, no, no, you're missing what you need. You need a singular voice, and you need a real maniac. Like you need somebody that's like really, really passionate about this.
Mitchell Baldridge: I was like texting David, like, is it okay if I say this? And David was like, this is who I am, yes. Yeah, everyone's like giving me these mock tests, like these two people with doctorates like agreeing with one another on a podcast or having like civil discourse, and I'm like, no, that is not a podcast.
Eric Jorgenson: I want fire and brimstone.
David Senra: And something you learn from these books, though, is that all the high performers in the industry or the time that these people were living, they knew each other. Because like A players want to talk to other A players. I remember reading Paul Johnson's biography of Mozart. And Mozart, clearly the A player in his industry, and he would go talk to people in other industries that they were at the top of their profession just because it's like, oh, this is like a kindred spirit, like mine. And I think I love this idea. I don't know this story from Sam Hinkie about writing got him everything. I don't think I've ever heard that story from him. But it is a way, like in the Ogilvy book, when he was starting out, he's like, I had no money, and I had no clients. So, what he would do is he identified 600 people that he wanted them to know who he was. And he would do these direct mail campaigns, and the direct mail campaigns were like, hey, I'm David Ogilvy. I just started Ogilvy & Mather, hire me, he would just send them interesting information that he discovered through a lot of research and reading. And then what would happen is people would get the mail, he’d do the same thing they were describing, he'd send the update every month or every quarter, whatever it was, whatever cadence was, and then eventually he gets on the phone with Sam Bronfman, who is the founder of the Bronfman family dynasty and the founder of Seagram’s, who I did a podcast on, which his life story is fucking insane. And what does Sam Bronfman do? He comes to the phone, and he starts reading Ogilvy, the last two paragraphs of this 16 page speech that Ogilvy had sent him. And what that told to Sam Bronfman, an A player, somebody that gives a, to use that term, that gives a fuck about what they're doing, what that told him is that Ogilvy clearly gives a fuck about what he's doing. And what happens? What do you think happens? Bronfman hired Ogilvy & Mather, and the way- So the way I look at it is like whether you're doing a podcast, whether you're doing Twitter threads, whatever it is, it's like however you want the world to interface with you, like you should be broadcasting, like you're not playing around. This is very serious. Like work feels like play to me. But I take it very seriously. I don't ever want to be called, tying this back to what Patrick told me, this great line, and once you see it, you see it everywhere. And essentially, he wants to fund maniacs on a mission. And he wants to run away from this term he calls casuals. And he describes casual, and then you start to see it everywhere. And it's these people that have a very casual approach to what they're doing. Usually, they're not focusing on one thing, they're doing fucking 15 things like very mediocrely. The way they present themselves is very casual. And he's like, that's not interesting to me. I like maniacs on a mission. And I want to do everything I can to either put my resources behind them, my money behind them, my media company behind them, whatever. But the worst thing that somebody could say to me is like David's a casual. I would jump off a fucking bridge. Like I find that so distasteful because I don't want to be around other people that are casual. I don't want to- I want people- like they're professionals. They take what they're doing extremely seriously. And it doesn't matter what domain. I find it very interesting.
Mitchell Baldridge: I think this- that analogy further extends, or that idea of Bronfman and David Ogilvy connecting over this idea, then like if you read the CAA story, the Ovitz story and Bronfman and Ovitz connecting and Ovitz and CAA pushing all this literature out and taking the manuscripts and dropping them off at doctors’ offices and lobbies. And it's just like the idea of- and then this circles back to that same idea of just these distribution led businesses, however they look like or whatever they look like, it's like if you have good ideas or, frankly, if you even have bad ideas, and you go start writing your ideas, first of all, your bad ideas, the marketplace will sort it out pretty quickly, and you'll get feedback very, very quickly. I mean, I've learned more- I was telling Roger at my office this earlier, I was like, I've learned more in the last three years of writing in public than I learned in the entire career before that. And I was just kind of thinking out loud, like I wonder if I'm going to learn more in the next three years working in public than I've learned in my entire career working backwards. Like how can I keep doing that where I just keep going on this kind of like convex curve of learning. And that's writing, shipping more often and shipping in public and shipping out to the smartest people you can find that are willing to spend the time to read your stuff and then be critical is the juice, man. So, I'm going to say one more thing. Invest Like the Best, Patrick O'Shaughnessy’s podcast aforementioned, the episode with Sam Hinkie, Finding Your People, like stop this podcast right now, listen to that podcast, and come back. Because I listened to that when I got back, and it's just a lot of what we're talking about rings true of just- and Sam talks about writing in that episode, by the way. But like it just is how can you play longer and longer and longer term games with longer term people and how can you work on things that you're going to be working on in 10 years.
Eric Jorgenson: Sam, I think, David's spent more time with him than I have and maybe has more to add to this, but like, in my experience, is maybe the most actively wise person that I know who's not basically- like, I only know Charlie Munger and Naval at arm's length. And that persona is different than the person. Like I've interacted with Sam enough to know that like he embodies some of those ideas and acts on them like on a daily basis. And that, I just admire that so much. And I feel like I want to learn everything that I can from him and how he operates. You just spend 20 minutes hearing him sit there and talk to Patrick and Jeremy. Like I took a ton of notes. I took a lot of stuff away with it. And his words carry a lot of weight with me. I feel like I can learn a lot from how he works and apply some of those philosophies that he's got.
David Senra: It's episode 204 of Invest Like the Best. It's called Find Your People. We can leave the Colossus link in the show notes because you can actually read the transcript. I have the notes- there’s notes on that podcast that I review a lot. It's actually funny because there was like conflict, not a major conflict, in the relationship between me and Sam for a while because he kept trying to like get an idea in my brain that I resisted. And then I realized like we both want the same thing. And I was like- It turned- I think we're in the car, I don’t remember where we were. But he was suggesting I do something. I go, why don't you do that? He goes, because I don't want to go. Exactly. I don’t know if those were the exact words, but like that click from us, like, oh, we're very different people that have a lot of similar views. But like just one thing that he says he's just like, what I loved in the podcast is like I don't mind being alone in my opinion for a very long time. And that was one of the things I was talking on the walk with Jeremy and David and Mitchell. It's just like, man, like I don't- there's not one word from anybody, like my best friend to the people I respect the most to my wife to my kids, there's not one word anybody can say to me that would convince me that like I'm on the wrong path or that I should not be doing and dedicating all my time and effort into the miracle of podcasting and my contribution to that miracle with Founders. And so I resonate with that. I don't mind being alone in my opinion for a long time. I don't care that no one else sees it like I do. I talked about this on stage a lot. And then another thing that Sam said is like my firm is uniquely me, it's something I want to spend decades on. And it’s like, yeah, the podcast is uniquely me, and it's something that I want to spend decades on. And I think just having- again, building a relationship- sorry, and I’ll stop talking. It was very helpful for me to hear that episode, and I've listened to it a bunch times. Because even when you- as you build a relationship with somebody else, it’s like, oh, podcasting is just building relationship at scale. And it's a two way street. Everybody's building a relationship with me, some of these people, I don't know who they are. But the people I do know who they are, when I listen to them on podcast, I get to know them at a deeper level. And I think that enhances our own relationship. Again, another miracle of podcasting.
Eric Jorgenson: I'm curious for both of you guys where, if you were to like describe the arc of that conviction, like when it hits different points and how it has grown. I know you had a lot of conviction when you first started the podcast, David, but like I imagine that has only grown and probably in a nonlinear way like based on the feedback loops that you've got. And Mitchell probably has something similar sort of in the growth of his business. I think both of ours are like shifting a little bit more frequently than yours are, at least for the last couple of years. But I think that's a thing for people who aspire to have that level of conviction in their own opinion, of an idiosyncratic opinion, that is like sort of the way to get apart from the crowd and have standout results. Like just describe what it feels like to go on that journey.
David Senra: I didn't have conviction when I started. Like, you can look at the upload schedule. I haven't changed anything. And you'll see the dates are very sporadic. It's very casual. Let's use that word. And it was casual from 2016 up until I fucking snapped in 2018. I talked about this on maybe it was your podcast, I can't remember. But I just, like I did it because I love to do it. I thought it was fun. I never thought I could make money at it for the first two years. Because I remember back then in 2016, there's only a handful of agencies that were selling- like you'd sign up with an agency. I don't even know if they're called that, but essentially like people that sell podcast ads for you. And you would talk to them, like yeah, like you need a minimum of like 50,000 people listening. And there was like a couple hundred people, maybe like 2000 people listening at the time. I was like, what the hell, like I'll never have 50,000 people listening. Like that's just, that's never going to happen. And then I just uploaded very sporadically. And then there was just these like weird indications, external indications, because internally it was like, man, I really love this. Like, I really like to doing this. Like it is just a perfect match for like all the main interests. Like I have four main interests, history, entrepreneurship, podcasting, and reading, and like Founders is literally sitting in the middle of that Venn diagram. And then I started getting like weird messages and like 2000 word reviews, and like there was just weird intensity and energy to this. And actually, we should talk about this too because I had a conversation with Jesse Pujji at Capital Camp that I think is important to talk about because I still think solo podcasts are, one, widely misunderstood and, two, probably the biggest underpriced- one of the biggest underpriced assets in the world. I think the fact that there's only- the listener only ever hears your voice, it cultivates a more intense cult-like following than if there was multiple people on the podcast or even like a reoccurring guest or whatever. But I was doing this for a while. And then I just was reading Paul Graham's How to Do What You Love essay, and I had read it multiple times before, and I remember like everybody's asleep in my house, my wife is sleeping in bed next to me. I think I'm reading on like a flashlight or something, or no, probably on my laptop. And because now I have all of Paul Graham's essays printed out, but I didn't print them out back then. They're actually really- like, it's really cool to see his writing because I printed it out for the three episodes I did on it. It's like a big book. But anyways, and then that essay is just like, man, I just believed that I loved doing it. And if I only focused on it, and I worked on it seven days a week, I just had faith that I'd figure out how to make money at it. And it took from 2018 until 2020 for me not to lose money. So every month, my savings would just go down and down and down and down. And I was married, still am, and had one kid, now I have two, and so that's a very stressful period. It’s like oh shit, like I could- but then I was like, alright, well worst case scenario, like I can get a job. I assume I could have job. I can get a job. I’d just do it at night. Yeah. And then 2000- It took until like 2020. But you see when I got serious because you can just look at the upload schedule. It's like I went from sporadic to I haven't missed a week since 2018. And you'd have to like kill me. I had like the flu. I was almost dead last November, and I was still uploading. Like, it just didn't matter.
Eric Jorgenson: We were at Capital Camp like during the welcome dinner. And I was like, are you going to come to dinner with like all people that we flew here to see? And you're like, no, I got to read for four hours tonight. Like, I got a podcast to get out. I was like, you can't pump that for a hot second to like go meet all these people? And you're like, what are you fucking- What the fuck are you talking about? You weren't even like, nah. You were like, shut the fuck up. I'm getting out. Pullover, I'm get out of the car. I don't like you anymore. I hate you for even suggesting that.
David Senra: I went back to my hotel room the first night and read and read and read and the podcast got out like on time. And now I'm trapping myself- and I'm not- I had a bunch of travel last month. But now next, I'm not going anywhere for another month. So I'm literally just like trapping myself in a room and just reading and making podcasts, which is like very- like, I get excited, like the days where I'm like, oh my god, I have nothing on my calendar, I'm going to be alone all day. And I just get to like work in my little corner store on the internet. Like, that's extremely exciting to me. So my point being is like I don't think like you're born or like you know exactly what you want to do and then you have this like high level of conviction. I think you just go along kind of through a process of trial and error and self discovery, and your conviction gets stronger and stronger and stronger. But once it started paying my bills, and once I had like essentially infinite runway, I was like, oh, I'm never doing anything else.
Mitchell Baldridge: It's worth pinging or earmarking this idea of I left my job in 2014. And I left just because I knew I could no longer be an employee of a CPA firm. Like it just wasn't going to work. And the idea that you can always get another job. Or if you are- and the younger you are when you leave, actually the more opportunity you probably have, if you haven't built up a mountain of responsibilities and mortgages and kids and all this stuff. I just, that's become almost my main message to people, like you can go out on your own. And the sooner you do it, you think you have like less of an opportunity, but you really have more of an opportunity in that you can just live simply. So David, if you ever need a job, come on. How are your accounting skills?
David Senra: Terrible. I'm only good at one thing in life, I promise you. The only thing I am good at is podcasting. I'm not good at anything else.
Mitchell Baldridge: You're like less employable than me. I love that.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay, so I have a story to briefly share on the creator led business thing because I think- So I spent a lot of time at Capital Camp with Kevin Espiritu who is the founder of Epic Gardening. I recorded a podcast with him which came out last episode, but I also got to do sort of an off the record like private session. And there's a story there that I think is an incredible thing that you guys will appreciate. But he's an amazing example of somebody that, like Mitchell was talking about, like went out on his own, young, started blogging as a side thing, like nights and weekends, systematized it, grew to the point where he could hire somebody, hired somebody for the blog. Then he started doing his own video stuff, then that grew. And then he systematized and hired somebody for that. And like slowly snowballed up this media business that he was like, okay, this media business is big. It is one of the biggest media or gardening media brands in the world now. And he's like but it's not ever going to be a $10 million a year business. Maybe it'll cap out at a million or two. So I think I should start selling products. And because this feedback loop with the audience that we talked about a little earlier that you started saying like there's no clearer feeling than when your audience is like demanding something from you, and you know that you have already collected the people. And so, he started adding products like that he was showing in his videos that people were asking about or commenting on. And that turned into the majority of the business. And he's now like taken on outside capital to buy- he's made three acquisitions into this. It's turned into an enormous business that literally started with a blog and just rolled up. He's like an amazing entrepreneur. He's got a great story. He's a really, really nice guy. So I think that's a great story, but it's sort of- it shows he's a perfect Capital Camp story. He's a creator who has the savvy of like taking the right step one at a time, worked with outside capital, built like kind of a very interesting multifaceted business over the last 10 years. Really, really interesting, interesting story and interesting guy that I feel like sits in the middle of our interests.
David Senra: Who did he raise money from? Is this like a VC? Is this a VC thing? Is this PE? Like what is this?
Eric Jorgenson: It's kind of like PE VC hybrid. I think the firm is called TCG but like they love to work with these kinds of like content commerce companies.
David Senra: Wait, the Chernin Group?
Eric Jorgenson: And I think Kevin's story is very similar to Al Doan, who is a partner in the fund and started Missouri Star Quilt Company. Like may be the moment of starting those- the quilting company, but like both amazing stories. And that whole category of things is so fascinating to me where you have a profitable media business and a profitable ecommerce business. And when you combine them, it makes them both more powerful. And as a unit, they're like kind of unassailable by any media company and by any ecommerce company. And Kevin has this theory that there's creators who are going to end up basically accumulating entire categories because of that sort of feedback loop and the reinforcement. Like they have all the trust, they have the products, they have the attention, and the best performing of each of those.
David Senra: What do you mean accumulating entire categories?
Eric Jorgenson: So like, let's say gardening is like a clean example. And he's like, the gardening market is like 25% Home Depot, 25% Lowe's, 25%- I think there's one other big box and everything else is like small longtail like mom and pop shops and ecommerce. And he's like, I think the addressable market for the lead creator in that space is basically 25% and maybe 50% over the long arc as like Epic Gardening becomes the ecommerce brand unto itself. Like Al’s company Missouri Star is like the biggest fabric retailer in the world, I think, because they own that market to such an extent. So it'd be fun to brainstorm maybe what are some of the other categories that will end up under specific creators or who already has. Like, I don't know what amount of like the online wine market Gary V had at one particular point, but if he would have not done anything other than like be the online wine guy for 25 years, he might own 25% of like wine ecommerce. I don't know.
Mitchell Baldridge: He might have a bigger business than he has today, frankly. He could have a bigger wine business than he has a media business. Or I think that about accounting and being a CPA in this weird- like, I could move faster. But I've finally like hit this groove. I think you'll always say like, oh, if I knew three years ago what I know now, I would have done this and this and this, and I'll hopefully say the same thing three years from now. But it's just there is a long runway, and there is a long, large moat of just, again, no one's going to create a better biography podcast than David Senra, ever, if they start today and they start doing two a week. It's just impossible because you can only do so many. And so, yeah, there are all these niche silos that creators can come in and either buy a business and bolt on or start a business and incubate a business, and it's bananas.
Eric Jorgenson: Oh, so that was the story I wanted to tell you guys. Okay, so this is the story from the off the record. I'm going to paraphrase Kevin's story that he told sort of offline. We didn't manage to get it into the podcast. But it's also pertinent to the fact that David and I are both wearing Capital Camp hats right now. I'm actually head to toe in like Capital Camp swag. So Kevin went and visited this business.
David Senra: If Clayton is listening, sorry, I love the Capital Camp shirt so much. Will you please send me more?
Eric Jorgenson: Thank you for interrupting me for that. That was totally worth it.
Mitchell Baldridge: Can you send David some free shit, please?
Eric Jorgenson: He doesn't get enough free shit. Isn’t that the theme of the podcast?
Mitchell Baldridge: Someone send David a tracksuit.
David Senra: I love Clayton. He made a shirt for me. He made an Ernest Shackleton by endurance we conquer shirt I wore on stage. I absolutely loved it. So sorry. Because I see the shirt that you're wearing, and like I was wearing that yesterday. And like if it wasn't dirty, I'd be wearing it right now. It's incredible. Sorry. Go ahead.
Eric Jorgenson: This is the power of wearing a brand. So, Kevin went and visited this company that they were thinking about acquiring and met the founders, like a mom and pop founder. They owned this business for 25 years. They're ready to retire. They care about it a lot. Kevin went and met everybody. I think it's sort of early in the acquisition process, just to get a feeling for them. And I don't know if he bought the hat or they gave it to him, but they give him a hat. And he went home and he put that hat on. And every single day for the next six months, he wore their brand, and never said a word about it, in every single video and every single podcast and every single, like no matter what it was, he was wearing their hat. And six months later, they closed the acquisition. And the founder said to him after all of it, like you don't know how much that had meant to us. It was a small, unspoken signal that like he cared and was willing to sort of give first and join their team as much as they were joining his. I thought that was just such an awesome story of small gestures that mean big things and get big things done and funny now that like we're all wearing Capital Camp hats sort of in appreciation of them.
David Senra: I'm just glad that they found one that fit the size of my head. I've never told this story in a podcast, so this is going to be a Smart Friends exclusive just for you. I played baseball when I was young, from the time I was like four to the time I was like 12 and then switched to basketball. And this is one of the most embarrassing stories, but if anybody’s seen me, they know I have a giant fucking head. And when I was like five or six years old, no, maybe like seven or eight years old, I could no longer wear kids batting helmets, so I had to wear a small adult helmet. I literally tried to put on this hat and like, luckily, it extends to extra large noggins. And so I'm able to fit it on my giant head.
Eric Jorgenson: You know what they say about guys with big heads.
David Senra: One thing to close that though because I didn't know- you introduced me to Kevin, I didn't know that he was part of the Chernin Group. And from what I hear, and people that know them very well, they have like a fantastic reputation. And I think they may understand this content to commerce, I hate to call it a trend because it's been around for a long time, but something that has become more important in the age of the internet. They understand content to commerce more than anybody else. I just went to- There's a fantastic podcast that Patrick from Invest Like the Best did with the guys that are running Chernin now. It's episode 220. It's titled Content to Commerce. And another thing, like if you go to joincolossus.com, you can actually listen to them there, but you can also go through the transcripts. And so people are always messaging me, like I wish Founders had transcripts. I'm like they do. They're just not on Founders websites because Colossus takes care of that. But that's like I'm going through as you were talking and just like reading some of the show notes and transcripts from that episode. I remember listening to it a long time ago, but if anybody wants like an overview, those guys seem to be like top of the game.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, they've done a bunch of those deals now.
David Senra: They just did the last one that garnered the most media attention. It is the one with Doug Demuro and Carson Pitts.
Eric Jorgenson: That was a big deal, wasn't it? Do you remember the number?
David Senra: I don't remember the number.
Mitchell Baldridge: Barstool is where I have them stuck in my head.
David Senra: But I think they got- from what I understand, they got to Barstool early too, so they participated in quite a bit of the upside.
Mitchell Baldridge: I came home with so much Capital Camp- Capital Camp, they give you so much swag that they give you a duffel bag to put all your swag in at the end of the swag. And my wife was just like, could they just lower the price and give you less swag? That was Melanie's note, Clayton. But I said, no, we need all this.
Eric Jorgenson: My wife was happier with the Capital Camp swag I brought home than the Berkshire swag. It is not the same classiness. David, what's Powerlink Zack? Is that your note?
David Senra: The day before, so on Monday, I flew to Fort Worth. Mitchell was kind enough to pick me up from the airport. And then we went and met Zach for- I guess he is your friend. He also listens to Founders. He's not your attorney. But he works on like a bunch of deals with our friend Chris Powers. Do I have that correct?
Mitchell Baldridge: He is Chris’s consigliere.
David Senra: Yeah, so this shadowy, smart figure. And there was just something that he said to me that was interesting. Do either of you golf? No? Okay. So I didn't know if this was a term for- if this was a term for golf. He used that as an example, but I wasn't sure if it was just a way to describe it. But he talked about like the level of focus, where if you have like one product, like I do with Founders, and you put all of your effort behind it- he told me this great story that like I don't think I'll forget. And he says like you have no power, like he called it power leak or leaks of power. And he talked about like in golf, there's like multiple parts of your swing that can be complicated. And like you'll find leaks of the power that you can have to drive the ball. And he talks about like through the entire, all different parts of the swing, you could find little things that if you- like you're in a different position, you've kind of limited the amount of power that you're able to produce and hit the ball. And he's like the good thing about your relentless focus is that you have no power leaks. It's like everything- I thought this was a very profound idea and something that I knew intuitively, but I never had the term for it, where it's just like, if you're not being casual, if you're not trying to spread yourself over a bunch of different things and you really just find what you're meant to do and you focus on that and that thing completely, you could do other things, but it all feeds back to your main thing, as opposed to like a bunch of disparate different businesses or collection of activities you're doing. And so, I just liked that idea. I just wanted to bring that up on the podcast where I thought that was a very powerful idea. It's like, well, focus is a superpower. We see that with like the history greatest entrepreneurs. Like Jesse Pujji, who I met at Capital Camp, he texts me earlier. He's like, hey, can you give me some recommendations for great biographies? Because he's going on vacation. And he's like, I'm particularly interested in founders’ biographies on people that have hold cos. And I started going through. I gave him a list of like some people. And I was like, I don't think anybody on this list has a hold co besides Daniel Ludwig, who started out with a very valuable shipping company that spit off cash, and he took that cash and winds up buying and starting 200 companies in 50 different countries at its apex. But the interesting thing about that is like a lot of the people at Capital Camp wanted to do hold cos. And I can understand why because like think about the really successful and world class business that Brent has built. And I went through my episode list, and I was like there aren't any. All of them that built- they were so good at what they did, besides like Berkshire and all these people. Yeah, Berkshire. It is just like the vast majority of people, they didn't have like a very successful hold co. They put all of their hour- all their efforts behind one business. There was no power leak. I just did this long tweet on both Twitter and LinkedIn. And I just collected, I was like there's like 40 something of my favorite quotes from Sam Walton’s autobiography, and I said like, there’s like a bunch of smart shit that Sam Walton said. And one thing that he said in there, he's just like, I didn't think about anything else and I didn't invest in anything else but Walmart. And so, this wasn't- I wasn't planning on talking about this, making that connection, because this just happened a few hours ago. It's just like, oh, wait, that does tell me something. Like there's 305 episodes up there. And besides Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Daniel Ludwig and Henry Singleton, like there's not a bunch of hold cos. There is this is my- like, this is the stake I'm putting in the world. And this is where I'm going to put all of my power behind and all my focus behind this. And I think there is something to- I do think focus is underrated and is a superpower. And so I just want to like put that idea out there. Because listen, people should do whatever they want. They want to build a bunch of hold cos, that's fine. I think what a lot of people miss is that hold cos don't start out as hold cos. They start out as like one great business that throws off so much fucking cash that can't be reinvested into the business that you got to find something to do with it. And then logically, they buy other businesses, just makes a lot of sense. And that's one thing. But like so my thing is like just focus on building one world class business, instead of five mediocre businesses.
Mitchell Baldridge: I feel attacked. The idea of like build a business that creates so much cash flow that you have to then hire a manager, and these big hold cos that are successful have really, really talented people.
Eric Jorgenson: Do you feel, Mitchell, do you feel like you're running five different businesses? Or do you feel like you're running one that are somewhat artificially separated by like names and corporations and bank accounts? Because there's a lot. I mean, like Bernard Arnault owned however many different like actual corporations and shells and there's all kinds of people who did a bunch of stuff all under one umbrella. And I feel like you’re kind of flirting with that. He doesn't really count as a hold co, like it's still all under one umbrella conceptually.
David Senra: If you look at where the vast majority of revenue and profits come from. It comes from fucking Louis Vuitton. I think it's like 70, I forgot what the number is it was on Acquire’s excellent episode about this. I think they said, what, 70 or 80%. I think it’s like 80% of the profit comes from one fucking brand.
Mitchell Baldridge: And I mean, I think I got back from this conference. And I've said it five times, and I'll just say it again, it's just of everything I'm working on, what is the thing I can be working on a decade from now? And what is the most interesting thing I can do? And yeah, and what is the most powerful thing I can do, and what's the thing I'm most excited about, and that means the most, and like Cost Seg has been a massive, massive driver. It's just been a win. It's been a huge win. But I'm not the CEO of RE Cost Seg. Melanie is, and she does a really good job of it. And I don't have to spend that much time on it, frankly, even though I was able to help kind of like architect the plan. And then we were able to hire somebody who knows more about cost seg than I do and than Melanie does and was able to kind of head up engineering. And so, you start to see- But the problem with the cost seg business is there's a cliff. Bonus depreciation goes down every year, rules change, the IRS can just or Congress can come in and pass a law that just fucks the whole thing up. So, then you go, is this a long term game? And what it is, though, I don't know that it's a long term game because it's bound by regulatory risk. But building a good business and hiring good people and learning everything I'm learning is a very long term game. But to your point, David, or to Zach’s point, I guess it is, is like there is a power leak when you've been playing this game, and you've been building this thing, and then with a stroke of the pen, the whole thing gets turned on its ear. And no one can do that to the Founders podcast. No one can come in and totally unwind the hours and hours, hundreds of hours that you've done already.
Eric Jorgenson: That's an underrated thing about podcasts, the open protocol piece. Like it's just like an email list, not like a social media platform. Like you can't get deplatformed from a podcast.
David Senra: And I just want to make it clear, like I don't care what other people do. I've told you that rule number two in the Senra family household is mind your business. If someone says, fuck you, David, I don't want to focus on one thing, I want to focus on 15, God bless. I don't think about other people. You know what I mean? Like, I’m just focused on what I'm doing. All I thought was interesting is the juxtaposition between this clear- there's a clear trend in entrepreneurship community of hold co, hold co, hold co is like fucking going crazy. And that's fine if that's what you want to do. It doesn't matter to me. I just thought was an interesting juxtaposition where I was asked a question about give me a bunch of biographies of great people that had hold cos, and I went through a list of 300, and I found like four. That should tell us something. That's interesting. Is it not? I think it ties to Zach's idea of power leak. That's it. That's all I'm saying. I don't care again. I think last time, our conversation got a little bit cantankerous. And I didn't mean it to because I really don't care what other people do. I just am telling you, like this is what I've discovered in seven years of reading over 100,000 pages, you don't really see a lot of people- the distracted don't beat the focused. That's a fact. And so like this is my whole thing, and I said it on stage, if you think you're going to come into the podcasting game and like treat it as like this side thing, use terms like I want low lift, I don't want to do a lot of work, and all this other stuff, and you're going to compete with somebody and you're distracted, you're working on fucking 15 things, and I'm working on one, and you're going to compete head to head against me, I'm going to fuck you up. And it's not going to be by like a tiny margin. You know what I mean? Like, that's the important part. Like, I don't want any power leaks. I want all of my effort and energy and focus on this one thing. And this is not a unique idea to me. It goes back to hundreds of years of capitalistic history. It clearly is a good idea.
Eric Jorgenson: And when the outcome is a power law, like it matters a lot to be in the number one slot, not the number five slot. Like the difference multiple there could be 50x, or 100x, or 10,000x.
David Senra: Go listen to the episode 204, which is what you guys were talking about. Hold on, let me grab my notes again. And one of my favorite things- So this is actually interesting. I was talking to my friend John Coogan yesterday, who is going to start a podcast, and he's one of these people that should have a podcast because he's a madman. Where it's like he gets to like- he's the EIR of Founders Fund. And like he'll like go and read every single past deal memo. He'll read the entire history of their fucking Slack. He'll read all these books on the history of all these industries, like he's doing these documentaries on the defense industry and all this other stuff. And I have so many conversations with him, where his YouTube channel is like scripted, and it's really good. But in conversation, you’ll have like a three hour dinner with John, and this just happened in New York like two weeks ago or something like that. And it's like, man, there's so much interesting stuff that comes out of your mouth because of all the research that you do, that you clearly- you should have an unscripted podcast. This is basically what I said to him. And he has this idea of like doing these extensive deep dives about these power law people. He just can't figure out a name. And he said, he's like, well, I was partly inspired to figure out that name because I heard you say in one of your podcasts that people are a power law, and the best ones change everything. That's not even my line. That is Sam Hinkie’s line that comes from Find Your People episode 204 of Invest Like the Best. And I think what Sam hit on is more true with what Eric just said, in the age of the internet, which is something that's in your Naval book, it's like you can- it’s something Jeff Bezos talks about with shareholders, you could be really small or really big, but the middle is destroyed. And the vast majority of financial returns are going to be accumulated by people that- like power laws rule everything around us. And if I could build the number one best podcast on history’s greatest entrepreneurs in the world, I will reap more benefits than the next 15 or 20 on that list. There's also something about that that Sam talks about in that episode, that I think he's observed because if you think about like what Robert Caro has done, he spent 50 years writing essentially about two people. He's telling the story of how power really works in the real world. But he wrote about two men, Robert Moses. You talk about power laws, Robert Caro- God damnit, I can never say his fucking name correctly. Robert Caro says that it's highly likely that Robert Moses is the greatest builder in American history, or excuse me, in world history, that no one ever has built more physical infrastructure and physical things than Robert Moses did. So that is like the definition of a power law person. Lyndon Johnson, no one had ever mastered the Senate like he had mastered the Senate. And so, I just want to read two quotes from that, my notes that I think about all the time, and think about like how I can implement this into my work without like they were ruthless, both Lyndon Johnson and Moses would run you over if you got- I'm not interested in running people over. I'm interested in accumulating friends, not enemies. I think it's very dangerous to go- because humans are virtuosos of violence, and the more- and everything compounds in life, and friends compound, and you're going to have a lot of good benefits, but enemies compound too. So like, you don't want to go around accumulating enemies because you have no idea what the ramifications of that, humans could be 10, 15, 20 years down the line. But Sam said that Caro profiled two men whose seeds were not high in the tournament of life. They were both born without many advantages. And to get all the way to the top, they probably had to sacrifice everything to the effort. The meta lesson – this is such a good idea – the meta lesson is that if you're not willing to pay the price, presume that someone else will. If you want something like the presidency, or I put in parentheses or being a billionaire or starting a world class company, you should presume that there's someone out there who will devote their all their time, money, relationships, sense of ethics, everything in the sacrifice of that one goal. Of course, that person is going to win the race. And he's talking about Moses and Johnson, but you also see it with people trying to build fantastic businesses as well. Look at the sacrifices they've made. And I think part of that is what he’s talking about. Like, Moses wasn't fucking multitasking. He wanted to build things. Lyndon Johnson, his entire life, every single decision, except one, that he made in his life was for the accumulation of more political power. The one time that Robert Caro says in his writing, the one episode in Lyndon Johnson's life that juts out, that is an anomaly out of everything else, that deviated Lyndon Johnson from the accumulation of more political power was having an affair with this lady named Alice Glass. Alice Glass was married to one of the wealthiest people and a newspaper publisher if I’m not mistaken. And they were very- this older guy was very instrumental to helping Lyndon Johnson's career, and Lyndon paid him back by sleeping with his wife. And that's the only time where he ever did anything that could have led to not accumulating more political power. And so again, I think everything comes back to like these people have insane levels of focus.
Mitchell Baldridge: And Robert Moses, the greatest builder of all time, built that book, The Power Broker. It's a long book, but if you read the first 50 pages, you start to get this, it starts with this huge map of like all of New York, and you start seeing the expressways and the parks and the parks inside the city and the massive parks on the coast of Long Island and like everything that he did, and he was singularly focused on a massive task that took 70 years. Yeah, exactly. So he was building a hold co. You know what I mean? He was doing a lot of things that all had to come together over a very long period of time. So, it's not, hey, don't have a big idea. So, you asked me, Eric, like do these things all fit together? I think they all fit together. And I think it's just how quickly can they all be done, and how can they all be done very, very well. And David will go part of a business that does something big off of the back of his podcast, but it's not going to take his focus from his podcast, that's for sure. But it's going to make him a lot of money.
David Senra: What was your favorite- We deviated a little bit from our Capital Camp recap. What were your favorite parts of Capital Camp, or what are the parts that stuck out to you? They could be like presentations, conversations. Like, what sticks- Now we're a week- We're about a week removed. It was about a week ago when I saw you guys. So like what has stuck out in the last week?
Mitchell Baldridge: Your talk was fantastic.
David Senra: That's not what- I was not asking that question.
Mitchell Baldridge: I know. Gabe Leydon was great. Gabe Leydon is a video game designer and a contrarian, unique thinker that had a pretty hot take just about kind of what needs to happen in general working in the US for things to get turned around and for a full return to normal to happen, which is probably a lot of people need to get let go of a lot of companies and people need to become more serious about work. That's a fair recap. I thought the man that bumped you, David, the meta open letter, it was the same idea. And the idea about AI, from the lead investor of Snowflake to then go to these opinions on how AI is going to fit into the world, like I think that's going to be meaningful over a certain period of time.
David Senra: Any private conversations that you had that stuck out in your mind?
Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, so like that all- The programming was great, and the programming is great at Capital Camp because they've done a lot less of just the one to many you're listening to a podcast, no offense, Eric. Like the great part of Capital Camp is that there's 400 people there. And there's some people that you only see there every year, and then there's a bunch of people that you get to meet. And I mean, yeah, that day that Eric, you, and me and Sam and Patrick and Jeremy Giffon are sitting at a table together, like that's a conversation that I'll think about for a long time or that walk we went on. Yeah, just all the talks leading up to it and the dinner that we went to, David, the night before. But just yeah, I haven't- It's funny. I had a call today with a guy who we're going to actually do some business together from Capital Camp, but I did not have- I have not created- or like me and Chris work together and that stemmed out of Capital Camp. But what I've gotten- like this call I was on today with this guy who runs a private credit fund, and we're going to start out of the tax credit business like pre funding ERC credits, just basically giving people the money up front and then selling the credits into this private credit fund. And I met him at the first Capital Camp I went to. I've met him at Reconvene. I've met this guy probably three to four times in my life. We have a common friend who lives in Houston. But it's kind of like, look, we get to now talk, and we just trust one another, because I trust him, and he trusts me. And then we have this conversation where we just get to cut all the bullshit and just be like, hey, we're both after the same thing, which is for us to both win at this. So, let's build this entire relationship with that understanding. And you just cut through. So, me and him sat at a lunch at Capitol Camp and sketched out this entire agreement in 30 minutes. And then we got on a call today for an hour and a half and hashed out the rest of it, and it's done. And it's just you don't get that in a day on both sides. You can't build mutual trust, really, really quickly. It's hard. And so that’s what I've gotten.
Eric Jorgenson: I think I had some of the same experiences as Mitchell and agree with him about the programming and that sort of lunch we had. The sort of, aside from the stuff that I was hosting there, the mission that I was on was to meet as many family offices there as I could. And I think to some extent like what Mitchell was saying feels really true. Like the implicit context or trust in that environment is like, there are I don't know how many thousands of people like apply to go to this. So to even be there is like some layer of, vetting is like probably too strong of a word, but like there's an implied kind of like this is a real one by basically everyone who's there. Like, I have respect for every person who like walks through those doors, and to know that I'll have a great conversation with them. And I think the reverse is true. I think a lot of people feel that. So a lot of the conversations that I had with people- the thing I took away from last Capital Camp, talking to a ton of people and hearing different fund pitches is kind of like just understanding our fund’s position in the world and like who good like LPs, customers, or relationships for us would be. And so, this year, I was able to be a little more intentional about being like, okay, this is the handful of people that I should meet, I'm going to make this list, I'm going to be sure that I meet these people because this is the context for me where I can meet them and start a trusting relationship and understand what they need. And they can understand what I provide. And we can take off from there. And last year, that resulted in a number of like great relationships kind of like Mitchell's describing, and people start doing business together. And I think that'll happen a few more times from this year.
David Senra: Did you use the Capital Camp app to like organize with people? This is my first- I just obviously got on it this year. And I was like, man, this would be like a really useful tool year round. Do people like post in there- Will people be posting there from now until next year, or they just kind of like disappear?
Eric Jorgenson: I think it kind of wanes off in the middle. But like it is basically a CRM. And so you can find- you can search people who are there or words of people who- like descriptions, whatever they provide. And then once they connect with you, you get their email. So it's not like you can email- you can’t spam everybody. But if you kind of mutually opt in to like, hey, we talked, we hung out it’s cool-
David Senra: I have their email?
Eric Jorgenson: If you connected with them, you do.
David Senra: Yeah, well, I accept all the connections. So I didn't know. I don't know how to use it. Okay, yes, yes, yes. So I started getting emails from people from Capitol camp. I didn't know how they got my email. I thought they just guessed it.
Eric Jorgenson: It’s not a hard email to guess. But yeah, it's in there. Which is a huge tool.
David Senra: Oh my God, I have their email, their phone number. Oh my god. I'm so terrible at things like this.
Eric Jorgenson: You hid from everybody the whole time. This is great. Now you can do a one on one now. It's perfect. Play your game.
David Senra: I did not hide. You know that's not true.
Eric Jorgenson: You were mobbed.
Mitchell Baldridge: There’s an invite link to the Riverside. We can kind of call in, we can get some guests, get a panel going. But that is an interesting idea of like there's Hampton out there who you were telling me, David, that one of your founder friends who you respect loves being in Hampton because you just get access to the Slack of a bunch of people who have already vetted relationships and solved a bunch of problems. And yeah, I mean, I love building a network just for that reason of like the more and more people I know who can solve interesting problems for me and my clients.
David Senra: These are some discussions. So, these are discussions I'm obviously having with Patrick and I'm having with Sam. So, Sam and Patrick are like the two people I talk to the most about like clearly like you could scale a wonderful business podcast on just advertising alone. But like, my goal is like to definitely have like a vertically integrated podcast just because I like dealing with less amount of people and I like control. Like I'm obsessed with control, like most founders are. But this idea of like, I didn't think about it until now, but the value in like being personally vetted, like the idea to have a community, not necessarily like Hampton because it's not what I'm thinking of, but like just have a personal community of people vetted, very small, I think the value of that is excessively high. So, there's all these different ideas that like we're going back and forth on, but around that because like I even say if you listen to some of my ads, like no one's going to advertise on Founders unless I know the founder. You know what I mean? Like, a lot of them I have become friends with. But even now we have, Matt, the CEO of Colossus just texted me yesterday about a bunch of the inbound interest. And it's just like, yeah, that's fine. But like no one's getting on until I talk to the founder. Like, I want to be able to- First of all, they have to listen to the podcast, they have to like know- like, it just makes so much sense. It's just so much easier because then you understand the power. Every single person advertising right now, not only do they listen, but a bunch of their founder friends listen. So they know- it's just an easier like relationship to build. But this idea where you're essentially selecting for other maniacs on a mission. Like what if you could build an entire network where there's no casuals at all? I'm sure there were some casuals at Capital Camp. But like, what if you had just- and it might not even be a big number, but it might just be whatever the number is, but like I'd be extremely interested, just the way that Mozart in his day, it was so fucking hard to go out and find other A players, like if you had a way to really filter for A players, and then you allowed a way to do this, like what you said, like it's a warm introduction. The fact that they made it through the vetting and they’re at Capital Camp makes you more likely to be able to engage with that person. And then you can exchange information like on the Capitol Camp app. I think that's a really good idea. I just looked up some guy that sent me a message yesterday or a couple days ago, whenever that was, and I clicked on it. And I was like, oh shit, I have his name, his phone number, the company email. I have his LinkedIn. I have all this other stuff. Like that's super valuable. Then it's like, hey, we knew each other. Like, this guy sent me a message. I think he knows you, Eric. I forgot who he told me he knows. He knows somebody that I know. And now I'm like, okay, well, he's at Capital Camp. He knows my friend. Okay, now I can ask questions and like talk to him in a different level than I could just some kind of stranger. That's actually an interesting idea that I'm going to think about.
Eric Jorgenson: We could call it the Animaniacs.
David Senra: I like maniacs on a mission, but I think that is taken. I don't think I can have ownership on that. Like, I didn't come up with it.
Eric Jorgenson: It's about you, so that's fine.
David Senra: That's funny. Yeah. So, that's from business. But like what about you were talking about making it easier to interface people with your fund and everything else. But like what about personal conversations that you had? Any that stick out?
Eric Jorgenson: A ton of those. I had like the handful of people that I met that I set out specifically to meet was great. I had this moment like at the very end, it was like 10pm, Thursday night, almost all the buses were gone. And someone just runs up to me and is like, Eric? And I was like, oh, Tammy, like Tammy Weiner who like runs the Stripe Press thing who I've been like seeing her- I couldn't see her sessions before. But we just ran into each other at the very end. We’re both like really excited, fans of each other's work. I was like this is- I have like been aware of you for like three years and like thought someday I would meet you and this would be exciting. And like here it is just like happening, again, or happening for the first time. But like, again, at Capitol Camp, the context for this happened. So, that was a really great one. And I was just like, I'm so glad that they're going to republish Poor Charlie's Almanac this year.
David Senra: I talked to Tammy. I met her as well. I need to message her because like I want a book of Paul Graham's essays, and I can't feel like there's a better person to do it than her and Stripe Press. You know what I mean? Like, I know you got hackers and painters. That's not what I'm talking about. Yeah, you could edit it, select it, whatever the case is. But like I have it literally in like 8 by 11 paper in fucking paper clips. I want it in book form. Like, I think they're so powerful. And I just think that I'd be interested if she'd be interested in publishing that. But yeah, the Poor Charlie's Almanac, I talked to her about that. And then they're working on something with Bernard Arnault as well, which would be interesting if that actually develops and comes out because, again, the vast majority of what's written about that guy's in French. There's a guy I need to- I'm glad I got to meet him. He's been listening to Founders forever. He's been sending me insane book recommendations, like literally like, I don't know, like 25 good book recommendations since like 2019. His name's Cameron Priest.
Eric Jorgenson: I hung out with that guy for a long time. I like him a lot.
David Senra: Yeah, we all talked outside of the atrium, me, you and I forgot the other gentleman’s name.
Eric Jorgenson: He’s just moving to San Francisco. So if you're listening to this, you want to hang out with a cool ass dude in San Francisco, find him on Twitter.
David Senra: But what he's been helpful for is he's been translating a bunch of the French biographies of Bernard and sending- I sound so silly when I- I like Bernard. I'm just going to call him- it's Bernard Arnault. How about that? But yeah, this idea of like taking these things that are hard to find, which Stripe Press just did this with their excellent- they republished Vannevar Bush's Pieces of Action, his autobiography. I've been looking for that book for years. The cheapest I found it was like $850. And then like two years later, Strip Press is like, oh yeah, republishing it and now anybody can buy it for 40 or 50 bucks. I love what they're doing over there.
Eric Jorgenson: I’ve got two episodes on Where’s My Flying Car?, one Senra style recapping my notes and two an interview with the author. And I think I found that book because of their republishing it. It’s been one of the most formative books I’ve ever read. I love it. It absolutely lays out the case for next Industrial Revolution between nuclear power, nanotech, and AI. It is so cool. It gives you such an optimistic view of the future.
David Senra: And you know what’s crazy, it sounds insane that in modern day, there’s not a Kindel version- before Stripe Press, there would not be a Kindle or digital version of Poor Charlie’s Almanac that you can search and annotate. You clearly need that.
Eric Jorgenson: Obviously, we all need that.
Mitchell Baldridge: Even the Caro book, Power Broker, you can’t buy as an eBook. I had to like- I do this. I just rip books down the spine and just scan them in through my work scanner and put them on my iPad, like a psychopath. But that’s what I did with that.
David Senra: I saw on the list that you wanted to talk about lessons from Sam Zell. He passed away recently which was devastating and unexpected.
Eric Jorgenson: I was just finishing your episode about him because you met him a few months ago and he was doing deals and said he’d do deals until he died. I thought we’d do a little memorial if you had anything that you were reflecting on. But I’d say go listen to the episode you did on him.
David Senra: That’s episode, what, 297. See everybody thinks I have them memorized. I definitely don’t. Let’s see. I’m pretty sure I got that one wrong. It is episode 298. It’s called I had lunch with Sam Zell. So the crazy thing about that is this is also the magic of podcasting because his very close friend put Sam Zell onto my podcast. He listened to a bunch of episodes. Then he listened to the episode I did about his autobiography. He thought it was so good that he asked to meet me, which makes no sense. It’s like this guy sold a company for $40 billion dollars. He’s worth like, I don’t even know, billions and billions of dollars. He’s done all these businesses. He’s world famous in the business community. He is like yeah, I have to meet this podcaster guy. One of the best compliments I ever got was after lunch, him and my friend Rick, our my mutual friend Rick went to the bathroom and I was waiting outside. And Sam Zell turns to him when they are at the urinal together and is like, I love that guy’s energy. So I was like yeah. But the miracle of podcasting is I get to meet him. I tell the story on that episode, so you got to listen. It’s the first 27 minutes. Because the entire time, I thought this isn’t going to happen. Then I thought maybe I’m getting kidnapped. This is some kind of psyop or whatever. But what I loved about Sam is his fierce dedication to sharing everything that he learned with the next generation of entrepreneurs. He would fly all around the world on his jet at his expense just to give talks to younger investors and entrepreneurs because he just benefitted from the lessons of so many people before him. That episode, after the first 27 minutes, is me going through this book that he read when he was a young man, this autobiography of this guy named Zeckendorf that he took an idea out of that book when he was in his 20s and used it his entire life. He felt okay, I have this obligation to repay this. And what happened is he had heard my I had dinner with Charlie Munger episode. And I had lunch with Sam Zell before I had dinner with Charlie Munger. I hadn’t done the I had lunch with Sam Zell episode. I did the Charlie Munger one first. And then Sam reached out. He’s like hey, let’s get- I’ll fly to Miami. I’ll schedule- because he’s down here all the time. He has a bunch of friends and businesses and all this other stuff. But he’s like let’s schedule a dinner with David. We’ll spend a few hours with him, and I’ll give him more material so he can make a podcast that would be I had dinner with Sam Zell. And the day before- This is like a few weeks ago, a few weeks before he died. And the day before, it got cancelled. They said, oh, Sam’s not going to fly down to Miami. He’s not feeling good. He’s sick. I thought maybe it was the flu or some shit. I didn’t fucking know. He died of complications from whatever sickness he had. And this is something, like one, I’m unbelievably grateful, I said on the podcast, like that’s a day he may not remember but I will never forget. But the crazy thing is I didn’t know I was like the Sam Zell guy. I put out that podcast because it was like important to me. It was like a once in a lifetime experience. And then through the enthusiasm, through all the stuff I learned from him, I found out he died. I was in- I was flying back from New York. I was actually in Connecticut at headquarters of Colossus and Positive Sum. I was with Patrick earlier that day. I went to go see a friend of mine for lunch before I was going to go and fly out. And by the time lunch started until an hour and a half later or something like that, I forgot what it was, I had like 25 text messages about Sam Zell dying. And then I had like 100 emails, then I don’t even know how many DMs on LinkedIn and Twitter about Sam. I was like oh my god, I didn’t know sharing the lessons of meeting him and talking about him and people hearing that, they now associate him with me. And I’m very grateful for that. His close friend is grateful that. His close friend is grateful that so many people know- more people know who Sam Zell was, what was important to him and some of the lessons that were important to him and the books and people that were important to him because of the podcast. But I also felt guilty, man, because like he didn’t know he was going to die. I saw him, what, two or three months before he dies maybe, and its just like I didn’t deserve to like spend- I took two hours from him, and two hours of- he had, what, a couple thousand hours left. You’ve got 168 hours in a week. How many weeks did he have left? 12 weeks, I don’t know. Like 15 weeks left. So that was the weird thing where I was very grateful that people resonate with the podcast and with him and really look up to him. But I did feel like really guilty. It’s not like I’m losing sleep because I feel guilty. I just felt like damn, man, I hope I did a good enough job on that podcast to like warrant some of his- a few hours when didn’t have that much time left.
Eric Jorgenson: I think he chose to do that because he knew you would help memorialize and make some of his lessons immortal and help spread them to more entrepreneurs, help other people learn from what he’d done and what he’d been through and his story. That is what he wanted and he invested massively in that and that was one of the many things. I think that is so cool and I appreciate when people do that. Not every founder takes the time.
David Senra: I would say one thing because after he passed away, Shane Perish tweeted out like what’s the lessons you learned from Sam? And I think the most important thing, his autobiography, he is full of interesting information. He is obviously a fucking business genius. The Zeckendorg book you have to read. It’s absolutely incredible. The guy’s got stories for days. But something that Sam repeated over and over to me is you have to optimize for freedom. And he said it at least five times in the lunch, and that’s how he’s lived his life. And so this is my response to Shane, which I really think is really- there’s a lot of wisdom. It is going to sound very similar to what you’d hear for Charlie Munger and Naval. But he says, what I wrote is, go for freedom. Freedom allows you to control what you work on. Then you can work on what you love. If you love it, you will do it for a long time. If you do it for a long time, you will get really good at it, and money will come as a result of that. So that was his main message that he only did things- he had complete control of his schedule. He only went for freedom. He would not trade more money or prestige because he had both of those in abundance, if he didn’t get to control and he had to relinquish any part of his freedom. And so therefore, he worked every day of his life but it was fun to him.
Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, being at that dinner in Miami with you, David, and Nick and after the Shane Perish meet up and just hearing you tell that story about Sam Zell buying that, what did you call it? A legacy business or a family business, generational business.
David Senra: He called them generational businesses.
Mitchell Baldridge: He goes I just bought a generational business. I love this shit.
David Senra: The day before I saw him, he like lights up and he’s like- he looks 81. He lived life to the fullest. That dude was wild, man. These are the people- We are in this group chat, me and Mitchell are in this group chat with Chris Powers. And Sam Zell is one of Chris’s heroes. And he posed the question, who would you rather have dinner with, Buffet or Sam Zell? And I was like listen, I’m speaking from personal experience. I like Buffet but Sam Zell was way more fun. I would take Sam Zell’s life over Buffet every single time because that dude- I like wild people. I like unconstrained, crazy people, not people who are worried about PR, not saying that Buffet is. But Same Zell just had a lot more fun in life. You know what I mean? The kind of fun that I’m interested in. And he just lights up. He’s like I just spent $300 million- I’m trying to like imitate his gravely voice. I just spent- these are numbers- I didn’t write it down so don’t- this isn’t an exact quote. But he’s like I just spent $300 million dollars buying 75% of this generational company that makes $50 million a year, and they run on fax machines. It’s just like- He was just fucking excited about it. He just- and he made the point, he’s like man, I’m trying to give a lot of money away to charity, and I can’t help but make money faster than I can give it away. He’s just funny. He was funny, man, and it was such an experience. I cannot believe that.
Mitchell Baldridge: You had told me that story about him saying, hey, I’m going to buy businesses until I die. This is what I love doing. And then him passing away a few weeks later, and I was one of those who sent you the message because, yeah, it just all connected. And it was like he said he’d do it until he died, and he did it until he died. I mean, I don’t know him. But it was just a- it’s nice when people gain freedom and when people are happy with their lives and people get to do what they want to do.
David Senra: He’s fired up. His energy, his enthusiasm and his energy for his work was contagious. And I think that it’s not just him. It’s anybody doing something that they are super interested in. Think about like even us becoming friends. Go back to this calling card idea. Like I read Eric’s book before I knew Eric. And so I had a chance to meet him. I’m like oh, I already know him. I read his book. We like the same things. We are clearly- we both love Naval, we both love Munger. It’s very easy to make a relationship because your work is your calling card to the world. And so it’s like really-
Mitchell Baldridge: You know Eric by reading a book that literally has none of his words in it, but yes.
David Senra: It’s the- think about that. You could learn more about me by what passages I choose to include in the podcast. You know what I mean? So it’s like the editing and the taste, you see the editing and the person’s taste by the work that they make. That’s true for my podcast. It’s true for Eric’s book as well. He can choose not to put that in. Its not like Naval was standing over his should being like nope, take that out or put that in. He had complete autonomy. He is like this is the stuff I feel is most important.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Somebody else could do the exact same thing that I did and come up with a very, very different book.
Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah. Talk more about that in the sense that we can talk about the Rick Rubin- there was this kind of like Rick Rubin clip that came out of him talking about his ability to have fine taste, and everyone’s kind of clowning on him, but then he’s- they’re not even clowning on him, but then he’s- they are not even clowning on Rick Rubin. They are making fun of people who have this idea that they have great taste when they don’t in fact have great taste. But I mean, even the- and we can cut this out or we can talk about it, but your boy Jeremy Gaffon and the idea that people just know him as a taste maker now, and it’s become this legend around him, and it’s propelling him into this weird world of people just like him and they want to be around him and they like his taste and they like his discernment.
David Senra: This goes to the fact that this is not conceit. It is because this guy has been- He was the first employee of Tiny. He’s been buying businesses for like a decade. He was missing parts of high school, going to conferences and selling software at like conferences. He’s just got a weird unique life experience. And that’s why I’m glad- if you factor in-
Mitchell Baldridge: The Audience of One episode with him is what you sent me.
David Senra: I was just about to get there. I don’t think anybody- talk about content to commerce, no one has done more than Jeremy in the sense that he had one Twitter thread that went viral and then he went on one podcast called Audience of One, which is excellent. And like I think only a couple hundred people had listened to, two of those couple hundred people just happened to be me and Patrick. And it’s like just from these two things, the amount of people that want to work with Jeremy because they see he’s very talented. And so it’s to your point, its like I was walking around New York City with him a few weeks ago and I was like dude, you’re going to be like the Rick Rubin of private markets investing because people trust his taste. And there’s a ton of people who have all kinds of resources, and I’m not going to name who these people are, but two of the people are extremely well known. Like you wouldn’t believe the two platforms. And they’re both like hey, we should work together because I have all this deal flow, I have all this resources, I have all this stuff. And you can- I can be a force multiplier to your taste. And so this idea where- I was thinking about this today because I think I mentioned in I can’t remember what episode where Jay Z, obviously I find him fascinating. I’ve been a huge fan of his work, but it just came in the news that he bought the most expensive house in California history. He paid like $200 million for his house in Malibu. And I was thinking about him and Rick Rubin. I was actually on a walk. And I was like Rick Rubin’s life is pretty crazy where like he may not be the richest person in the music industry. He’s definitely not the richest person. But he’s got enough money. He’s got a beautiful house. He’s got a beautiful studio. He can do whatever the fuck he wants with his time. But yet he has something that is more valuable than money. And he has access because people trust his taste to unique experiences. So I was thinking about this because I had been listening to Magna Carta Holy Grail, which Rick Rubin had- he was involved in that album. And so Jay Z told this story on a podcast or an interview one time where invites Rick Rubin over to his penthouse in Tribeka, and they are out on the- they listen to the album. This is before it’s released. They are out on Jay Z’s balcony. And Rick’s like man, you know at the beginning of the album it is Justin Timberlake singing for like a minute and half, and Rick Rubin is trying to convince Jay Z not to do that, and Jay Z has this great way to imitate him. It’s like yeah, no one wants to hear all that, man, and all this other stuff. And Jay Z kept it in. But my idea was just like that experience is worth something. You can’t buy it, so it’s maybe even more valuable. But they trust his taste so much that he literally invites- He wants you to work on his album, whether there is an exchange of money or not. In many cases, there is an exchange of money for that. But also, it’s like he invites you to his studio. He invites you to his house. You are now in a private conversation- How much money would fucking people pay to go to Jay Z’s penthouse in Tribeka and hang out and have a conversation with him over a night? And so that-
Mitchell Baldridge: Or go watch that Shangri La and watch that like hang and figure out where you would want to be in that.
David Senra: And so people- I think people that dismiss, they think taste is some kind of, again, this willy fufu, it’s hard to nail down. But like good taste, there is something with good taste. Paul Graham writes about this. Edwin Land talks about this. Steve Jobs talks about this. If you read the book Creative Selection, the guy Ken Cocienda who wrote the book was a programmer for Steve Jobs. Apple was the anti-Google. Google, when they make a decision, they are like okay, what color blue should we use for this button? We’ll test 150 different shades of blue. Steve Jobs would walk up and be like that one. Steve Jobs’ taste at large is the design culture of Apple. He made the decisions. It is in that fucking book over and over again. I like that, I don’t like that. He trusts his taste. And so that’s one of the most important things. Billy Openhiemer who is the research assistant to Ryan Holiday who was just on Jim O’Shaughnessy’s podcast Infinite Loops. And I’m always shocked when I’m listening to a podcast from two friends of mine and I hear my name because I’m not like scoping like I wonder if they are going to talk about me. And one of the best compliments that both of them gave me is that David has excellent taste. He’s like, I’ve read a lot of the same books that David has, and I’m fucking always shocked that when I listen to his podcast, I’m like god damnit, he got the best parts. Like those are the best parts. And I think that is really important because what does taste do? It allows people to trust you at scale. Rick Rubin who, and Mitchell’s point, in that clip that went viral, they were like he doesn’t know how to play fucking instruments, doesn’t know how to get behind a production board like Dr Dre, doesn’t know how to do any of that. He’s like people pay you for your taste. That is a very real thing.
Eric Jorgenson: I 100% believe that, and I’m finding it- people ask me all the time how do you scale the creation of these books? And I was like you can imagine writing out the steps, but I can’t replicate my own taste. I can’t outsource that. I can’t- With a little bit hubris, I think that I am just better at than most other people, maybe all other people. It’s a similar thing to reading a biography and pulling out the clips. Taking in someone’s whole body of work, whole body of public work and understanding what are the most useful ideas there, what are the most timeless ideas, what are the most widely applicable ideas and then arranging them in the proper order so they present this picture of not just their worldview and their experience but the things that you can- the tools that they have honed and created that are ideas that you can adopt in the form that you just read them in two or three pages and apply them to your own life. It’s weird to think of that as a skill but it is clear to me now that it is.
David Senra: It clearly is a fucking skill.
Eric Jorgenson: I had to do it to understand it.
David Senra: This is what’s frustrating about you to me. So, let’s use this because now we are still talking about Capital Camp. Now we are talking about- the reason the three of us get together is because we are all building businesses and we want to talk about what that’s like. And I’m like the podcast feeds everything. Don’t stop the fucking podcast. It’s like you build relationships at scale. It’s clearly like a super power. And now once you are going, it’s just going to keep compounding. If you are really interested in investing, keep doing that as well. But clearly to me, it’s like, dude, you have this thing where it’s like start with the Almanac of Naval. Now you do the anthology. Give me the term. The Anthology of Balaji. Are we going to say- have you made public the next one you are going to work on or you don’t want me to say anything?
Eric Jorgenson: No, we can say it. I’m already two months into the book of Elon Musk.
David Senra: But you had a name for it which was great that you told me at Capital Camp.
Eric Jorgenson: I’m not sure how real this is but I think the Anals of Elon Musk would be fucking hilarious. That might be a special edition, not the main street cover, but we will see what happens.
David Senra: But this idea where it’s like exactly what I was saying my friend John Coogan’s going to try to do on a podcast where its just like I’m going to consume all this information, and I’m going to tell a story in an hour or two hour long podcast. You are doing it in a couple hundred page book. It’s like dude, you found the fucking path. You found the thing that you are really, really great at. I just- I would dedicate as much as possible- And it’s none of my business what you do, obviously. But like I see that. I’m like if you cut out everything else, and I’m not saying cut out everything else, if you are passionate about the other stuff, do it. Whatever, it’s your life. But like, I don’t know, if you only did that and the podcast, especially because you have a bunch of help on your podcast, you know what I mean? You could show up and like give the conversation and then I think hand it off and most of the other stuff is outsourced, instead of dropping a book every three years, you could drop one every year. Or like I’m not trying to rush your process, but like god damnit, that seems clearly the path to me. So how do you think about that?
Eric Jorgenson: It is much more clear to me and I am moving much faster than I have been before. The course was a detour that I needed to do that was interesting for me, but it’s not in the core of the stuff. The books are the majority of my time and of my work. It’s just not obvious because I’m not publishing stuff about it all the time. But to me, the thing that is coming together is the reason that I do the books is not just the books. The reason that I do the books is to give to the next generation of 18 year olds what I wish I had at 18. I learned so much over the last ten years from Naval, from Elon, from watching this world develop that like if I had read those three books at 18 instead of the 4 Hour Work Week and Richard Branson’s biography or whatever, I would be on a very different path. I would be, I don’t know. But I want to make that available to as many people as possible and just create these extremely useful, succinct, rich, insight dense resources for people that they can apply, condensed, condensed, condensed wisdom. If you can take in ten years of someone’s experience and give that to someone in a few hours in a way that is highly memorable and changes their behavior, which is something we talk about a lot, then you potentially change the world. If you can create that power law of people and either create more of them or feed them and nurture them in a way that they haven’t been already, you make the future a massively better place.
David Senra: Fucking exactly. Why aren’t you working on that seven days a week?
Eric Jorgenson: Because I think the same thing applies- The same why applies to the fund and the podcast. I think there are- the only constraint isn’t books. Its also connection, it is also conversation, it is also candid podcasts. I will say your podcast is like very close to the books that I produce but its so different than this podcast that we are doing. But it’s like, I don’t know, it is all in service of the same mission to me, which, I don’t know, all fits together and feeds each other, I think.
David Senra: So I would say one thing a far as we very rarely talk about tactics, but what I would say is like what I would love for you and you are starting to see this, like obviously you see this on my public facing feeds. I’m reading, I’m on the third Caro, god damnit, I said his name wrong again. I’m on the third Caro Lyndon Johnson biography. And I texted Sam Hinkie. I was like dude, what if- I was like I think I should promote the podcast the way LBJ campaigned. He just worked harder than everybody else on his promotion, on his campaign. I was like there’s nobody else promoting their podcast like that. And so you are going to start to see a lot more of this from me. But me and you share the same thing in the sense that we spend a lot of time reading and researching. Then what happens is I put this out into the world. You see my Twitter. If you look at the view my tweet get compared to my follower account, they do excessively well. The levels of engagement are very high. And all that is is externalized atomic pieces of things I had read. And when I think of you, like Eric could be doing this all day long. I like that you have an interview podcast because you get to build relationships that scale. You might want to have like a secondary podcast feed which is literally just dedicated to the books you are doing as a way to work in public. Essentially if you think about it, like some of the stuff I tweet, some it is after the podcast, some of it is before but essentially I’m like oh shit, my practice a couple hours yesterday, I came across this interesting idea. So then I just put it out there. That spreads through these centralized socialized social networks, and then it gets you- it feeds back to your main thing. So all I would say is like dude, I think you have a massive opportunity. Like imagine if you just had a feed of Balaji-isms or whatever or Naval-isms or whatever, if you don’t want to just do it in your Eric Jorgenson feed, I just like I think just like I could be doing so much more to promote my podcast, and I have LBJ as the guy in my mind right now as like I’m just going to promote like he campaigns, I think you are sitting on a gold mine. And I think either you could be the one saying hey- you could be the taste maker saying this is good. And you could just send it to- you could have assistants and shit, and make sure they do it. But literally just text put this out on all my channels. I just think there’s so much- You’re sitting on a fucking gold mine. And I can tell from personal experience because my Twitter and LinkedIn has grown quite a bit, and its super valuable. It is super valuable, and I would love to see more of that. I would listen to a fucking podcast feed which is you just updating, it doesn’t matter, every few days, once a week, whatever. It could be 10 minutes long. It’s like warming them up. Because let’s say you had a Balaji podcast feed, or whatever, Eric’s books podcast feed, whatever the fuck its going to be called, and as you’re writing the book over the last two years, you’ve shared maybe 50, 60, 70 micro lessons in the form of these episodes, just like Ogilvy said, he’s like the more you tell, the more you sell. He’s like, I wrote a fucking 17,000 word Rolls Royce ad that people told me is way too long. He goes, guess what, if you get to the end of a 17,000 word Rolls Royce ad, you are buying a fucking Rolls Royce. Because like no one’s going to read and spend that much time on something and not be heavily influenced for a purchase decision. So like the way I think about it is like okay, I’ve listened to this podcast. A year and a half, Eric’s been warming me up to get ready for the culmination of this thing he’s going to produce and then he drops a fucking episode and says- first of all, he says now you can pre order. So then I pre order. Maybe I didn’t preorder. Then he drops it, and it says now its available. You are converting them all. You are converting them all.
Mitchell Baldridge: David, you had the experience of dropping literally a three minute ask in your podcast feed to say come to this one place in Miami on this day, and 200 people or however many literally show up to a specific location at a specific time. That’s insane.
David Senra: But imagine that steady drip. And it’s essentially like what Olgivy is talking about is like listen man, don’t use superlatives in your ads. Give them information. People want information. And so, every single micro lesson on this hypothetical podcast feed is a helpful dose of information, it’s a hidden ad because you don’t even see the fucking sell. Because it’s like damn I listened to fucking- He published 75, I listened to 15. 11 of them- five of them were absolutely amazing, ten were good. I’m going to buy. Yeah, I’ll spend the $25 on this book and I’ll buy it for my friend or I’ll buy it for all my office. That’s my whole point, man. It’s just like these kinds of things. I think the advantage I’m going to have is other podcasters are spread out where like there’s two things that we are going to test right now that I know for a fact no other business podcasters are doing. I can’t talk about it yet. I’ll tell you after the fact. And it just comes from one, the books I’m reading but also it’s like not allowing myself to think about anything else again, so there is no power leakage.
Eric Jorgenson: We are going to publish this in three or four weeks, so if that’s enough time, you can talk about it.
David Senra: No, no, no I don’t want to say anything because this will be multiple- I won’t know the result for maybe months. So, my point being is like it goes back to Zack’s power leak idea. You know what I mean? All my power is under one- it’s one thing. Nothing is leaking out. all my best ideas are going to one thing. The podcast makes sense, the fund makes sense, whatever the case is. But maybe the distribution instead of being, I don’t know if it’s a third, third, third. How do you spend your time? Can you give us the pie graph? Are you comfortable giving us the pie graph?
Eric Jorgenson: 50% books, 40% fund, 10% podcast.
David Senra: What would be the difference, like if you could get it to 75 or 80% book, what’s the different ten years from now? You’ve probably written an extra three books that you didn’t- wouldn’t exist otherwise. And you are self publishing. You are going to build a fucking large audience. One of these books is going to wind up selling a million, two million copies. You just made $25, 30 million. And you are doing something you fucking love. Like I don’t know. I go fucking- I just go crazy over this shit because it’s just like- I feel like I am kind of annoying because my whole thing is like I tell people over and over again just focus more, and no one does it. And so, like then I repeat it. And then people are like fuck that guy, man. He’s just like- he’s telling me to focus all the time. I’m not going to talk to him anymore.
Mitchell Baldridge: I spent a week smoking David Senra crack. And I’m dropping you off at the airport, David, and I’m like, you are going to have the biggest podcast in the world. Every episode is evergreen. You get caught into this trap of David, but it’s like the books are evergreen, the podcasts- This podcast that we are on right now is highly topical. We’re talking about an event that 400 people went to at one point in time, small TAM. The Anals of Elon, evergreen and forever, the biggest TAM in the world.
Eric Jorgenson: To be clear, to be very clear, I’m not having you guys on my podcast because I think it is a good idea for my business. This is purely recreational from my point of view. This is just fun. I make space for that. I enjoy this shit.
David Senra: Eric knows that because I see the same tweets that he does because he responds to them where it’s like I just fucking discovered the Almanac of Naval. When did that book- what day was that book published? Do you remember?
Eric Jorgenson: Late 2020, September 2020.
David Senra: So fucking almost three and a half years later or whatever, it is three years later, and people are still discovering. To Mitchell’s point, they are going to discover it five years from now, ten years from now.
Eric Jorgenson: We sold more books in 2022 than we did in 2021. It is growing. I’m not doing anything, and it is growing.
David Senra: Ding, ding, ding. These are all red fucking flashing lights. The universe will give you these signs. You just have to listen to them, and most people don’t listen.
Mitchell Baldridge: The other tactics or if we could talk- and it was I told you this and a bunch of people have told you this, David, but David has a way that he posts everything that looks like David, if you can standardize. What’s that?
Eric Jorgenson: I’ve got a pretty yellow graphic. I’m going to quote you saying that, and I’m going to post it.
Mitchell Baldridge: Well, thank you. Yeah, you can standardize your yellow graphic and post Elon and Balaji and Naval all day long and just keep it rolling.
David Senra: But wait, don’t skip over Olgivy’s point though. It’s give them useful information. Useful information will compel them to make a purchase decision more than saying hey, look at me, I’m new, I’m the best, I’m the greatest, all this other superlative bull shit that you see in a bunch of ads. It’s like no, this is useful. Just like when he is sending all these updates to 600 people where it’s like he sent somebody a 16 page speech that was valuable. Sam Bronfman at that time he is reading it is one of the richest people in the world. I have a ton- There’s multiple billionaires and super wealthy people that listen to my podcast. They are telling you with their actions that they get value out of this. And guess what happens? Sam Bronfman gets to the end of this 16 fucking page speech, he is ready to buy. He is ready to join up with Olgivy on his advertising agency. For my thing, its just like all I want other people to do is get so much value out of it they are compelled to tell other people about it.
Mitchell Baldridge: If this is the Sam Hinkie episode of this podcast, which it is, the first time I ever talked to Sam, I have this pinned tweet thread of threads that will make me millions and millions and millions of dollars in my life because all I did was for a long time write everything I know about tax and just keep writing it and just keep writing it. And yeah, at the end of my first conversation with Sam ever that was a long, interesting conversation, he just was like, that thing that you are doing, just keep doing that. That is who you are. That is what you do.
David Senra: So this is so silly because the they fact that he would say that is also important in the sense that like it goes against human nature to keep doing what works. Like Charlie Munger says we are just going to repeat what works. Sam Walton says the same stuff. Olgivy says the same thing. He goes stop pulling your ads before they lose effectiveness. He’s like, I ran the same Hathaway ad, the exact same Hathaway ad for 21 straight fucking years.
Mitchell Baldridge: It's not a standing army. It’s a marching band.
David Senra: But people do this. They are like I did this thing. It works. But it’s like oh, it’s either boring to me or like it had to reach everybody by now. Newsflash, no, it didn’t reach anybody. You have to keep doing it. His Dove soap ad, he ran the same Dove soap ad in the same magazine for 34 straight fucking years. And it still works. So Sam’s advice was, one, valuable, but, two, also goes against human nature because they quit or they change or they go and seek- we are novelty seeking primates, man. Its like oh, I have to go do something else. It’s like no, you found the thing you do. Now put all of your power behind that and don’t have any leakage.
Eric Jorgenson: I like that leakage. I like that power leakage as a metaphor for all of the things we are doing. That’s a great one.
Mitchell Baldridge: Thank you, Fort Worth Zack. You see this over and over of like- and people will rag on these- I don’t even want to name anybody by name, but there are people on Twitter who have built massive brands by saying the same thing over and over and over again in 20 different ways once a week. And you get hundreds of thousands of followers, and they make millions of dollars. And what they are saying happens to be right. But people go- all they do is say the same thing over and over again. They have no value to add. And it’s like man, if somebody just said eat less and work out more or floss your teeth every night, there could be a Twitter account that just every morning and every night said did you floss your teeth, and they’d be right. It wouldn’t add that much value, but they would be right. So when people say hey, go write everything you know and quit your job and go start helping people in this small way and you’ll build an audience and you’ll build a business for yourself, they’re not wrong. And so if they just- yeah, the novelty is crazy because I think that all the time. I’m like I’ve already kind of said everything I have to say and everyone’s already read it.
Eric Jorgenson: Start it again from the top.
Mitchell Baldridge: And the next time you write it, it’s different.
Eric Jorgenson: Is it Alex Lieberman or Austin Lieberman that stated- Alex. He just shared a tweet that was him tweeting the exact same thing from 12 months ago like word for word and it going viral all over again. And he is like this game is not complicated. Don’t be afraid to reuse what works. In fact, you should be afraid to not reuse what works, which is, I don’t know, it’s a great point and it bears repeating because like you said, it goes against your nature so you have to repeat it constantly.
David Senra: Both me and Mitchell repost our most popular posts all the time. And in many cases, they do even better the second, third, fourth, and fifth time because your audience has grown.
Mitchell Baldridge: And because you- the most popular tweet I ever wrote that wasn’t a picture of a hot dog was just this thing that I’m going to repost it again, and we reposted it out of Tax Credit Hunter. But like it was my most popular post ever, and I recopy wrote the whole thing and repunched up the whole thing and added good ideas and had a killer hook, reposted it, and it got like 18,000 likes and a zillion retweets, and it just gained 5,000 followers. And like its time to do it again.
Eric Jorgenson: Stick with what works. That’s what we are all here to hold ourselves accountable to. Yeah, once more thing. Drop a cherry on top, David.
David Senra: You put at the top of the document that you wanted to talk about- you said I’ve been listening to David all day – thank you very much for your time and attention. I really appreciate it. I put a lot of my life energy into making these fucking podcasts. And I’m glad you get value out of it. But you said, I like the climb, I don’t care what the summit is. Do you want to expound on why you decided to include that?
Eric Jorgenson: Oh, I just like that. You quoted that. Like that was your own original quote I think from your Sam Zell episode.
David Senra: It’s not my quote. Nothing is my quote. It’s from this rapper named Russ that I talked about on stage at Capital Camp.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I remember you telling me about Russ. That’s a cool story. But I just love that quote and I think it’s a really good resolution to I think the tension a lot of people feel about like trying to reach something, the illusion of trying to reach a destination or trying to reach some state, and it’s just about finding a climb that you enjoy and getting as far as you can in a way that is fulfilling to you and doesn’t destroy your fucking life. I just thought that was a great summary. I was like I’m going to write that down because I want to share it and I want a lot of other people to hear it and I want to remember to tell it to the right people at the right time in their life.
David Senra: I think it ties into something else I said on the stage at Capital Camp where one of the main benefits of doing the podcast is the fact that when I get to the end of these books, because they are biographies, it’s like I didn’t just get to the end of the book, I got to the end of someone’s life. And this idea that there’s some fucking point in the future, this like end of the journey, this destination where you are like I got what I wanted and now I am satisfied doesn’t fucking exist. Humans are not made that way. Nothing. You could sell your company for a billion dollars because that’s what you thought you wanted to do your whole life, and then two weeks later, you are like, why the fuck am I depressed? And I think the key to that is understanding it sounds so fucking simplistic, but you see this in all this religious documentation that goes back throughout human history. It’s like the journey is the reward, dummy. And I’m calling myself dummy to remember that. It’s just like- and the way I think about it, better than the journey is the reward. I like that term better. I like the climb. I don’t care what the summit is. And so people are always like, what are you going to do after this or what are you going to do in addition to this? It’s like why would I- This is it. This is what I’m doing. I am able to do it now and enjoy it. I’ll keep doing it because I’ve been reading my whole life. I’ll continue to read. So it’s like this is- I like the climb. I don’t care what the summit is. Something that I text both Patrick and Sam Hinkie because they are friends with this guy named Graham Duncan. He is an example of this. And they both put me onto Graham. He has an excellent, excellent blog, but he also has an excellent interview with Tim Ferriss. And in 2008, Graham was profiling this guy, he’s like one of the best tennis players in the world. And I don’t follow tennis. His name is Novak Djokovic. This is what he said. This is what Graham picked up in 2018, and he is quoting this Financial Times article about the tennis player, and he says, I can carrying on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball. Then he is asked by the interviewer, are there other players who don’t? And Djokovic says, oh yes, there are people out there that don’t have the right motivation. I can see it but I don’t judge. So I read the entire article. Then I go look, this article is old. At the time, Djokovic is tied for like- he’s got like 12 grand slams. He is like third or fourth or fifth most on the list. But he’s saying he’s going to play at this level for a long time because I like hitting the ball. I don’t follow tennis, where is he at now, this was five, six years ago, he is tied for number one. And the reason I see this is like-
Eric Jorgenson: Tied for number one of all time, not just-
David Senra: Of all time. I like hitting the ball. I like the climb. I don’t care what the summit is. And what I’m saying is I’m in a lot of these podcaster group chats. We share a lot of tactics and everything else. And I see the same thing. Your motivation is out of whack. And you may do this now because you’re having success or maybe you find ways because you want the fame or you want to like monetize another way. I just like making podcasts. And so I’m going to be here forever, and that I know. I can’t say the same thing about you. And I think that’s- it’s just a war of attrition, man. It’s like how many- let’s see who’s around a decade from now. That’s another rapper line; that’s Drake. Let’s see who’s around a decade from now. Because that’s all that matters. I’m not worried about growth. I’m worried about durability. Because if I’m durable, the growth will happen as a natural result of being durable. Media compounds. I like the climb. I don’t care what the summit is. I think my summit is going to be high as a mother fucker. It is going to be Everest level. But even if it’s not, if it’s Kilimanjaro, I may have killed the analogy. It’s going to be fucking- its going to be one of the peaks, man. It may not be the highest peak because to what Mitchell says, I’m not trying to make the biggest podcast in the world, I’m trying to make the best and have the best audience. That’s two different things. I’m not going to have more listeners than a Joe Rogan or some shit like that. But I will have the right audience, and I’ll get the audience I deserve with the work I put in the work for a very long time. And that’s a byproduct of just liking the climb. I like the climb. I like hitting the balls. That’s why I’m going to be here forever.
Eric Jorgenson: You like making podcasts. Mitchell loves saving tax. I’m trying to save the world for the next generation of tech entrepreneurs. We are getting it done, slowly but surely.