David Senra + Mitchell Baldridge #5: David’s Private Conference, Writing Books, and Building Networks

Smart Friends Episode 78: David Senra and Mitchell Baldridge #5

Join us for another hangout full of stories, strategies, and laughs with David Senra and Mitchell Baldridge.

David Senra is a biography-reading maniac and the mastermind behind the ever-growing Founders Podcast, the best place to learn from history’s greatest entrepreneurs.

Mitchell is the founder of the Baldridge Financial empire which offers tax and accounting services, betterbookkeeping.com, cost segregation, and much more.

Today, we cover food poisoning, speaking at Harvard, controversial hiring decisions and… business ethics.

We shared about the importance of writing books and other bodies of work, and how valuable they are even if they don’t generate income.

Links to Platforms:

Inside the episode:

The Senra family rules… #2 is “Mind your own business”
It’s important to educate the market. Intel had to teach people about the microprocessor.
There is huge value in producing excellent work and how it can attract opportunities and support from others.
Building a body of work that represents true desires and interests.
Leisure makes loses. David prefers staying productive and engaged rather than seeking relaxation – so on-brand.
Simply being great at something naturally attracts the right people.
Life is short. Do something meaningful.
“Mute the world, build your own.”

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Our Website has background on the fund, our past deals, and more.

Accredited Investors: reply to this email, I'll send you our deck, and we'll get you into our deals starting this quarter.

Learn more about David Senra:

Learn more about Mitchell Baldridge:

Additional episodes if you enjoyed:

Episode Transcript:

David Senra: When's the last time- should we look this up? Like when's the last time we did this?

Eric Jorgenson: We recorded in January, or maybe it was late December was the last time it came out. But it was before- you had announced Founders Only, but we hadn't had the event yet, so I want to recap Founders Only.

David Senra: That feels like a lifetime ago. I thought we recorded like six months ago, not four. All right, I'll see you guys in a couple months.

Eric Jorgenson: I think that was the last time I saw you guys in 3D. What's your recap of Founders Only, David? How was it from your perspective? This was like a private invite-only 150-person event that David put on in Austin, Texas, his first in-person multi-day event.

David Senra: I guess the way the idea came up people might find interesting. I went to this place called the Campus of Lake Austin. It's where we held the event. And there was an asset management firm that asked me to come speak to their... they had a private event, like 150 people. And so that was like I think last May or something like that. And so I wound up hanging out at this location for like two days. This is really cool. Like once you get past, it's like once you get past the guard gate, like everything is self-contained, like where people stay, all the meeting rooms. And then if you had like little breakout sessions, which we didn't even do at Founders Only, which we're going to change on the next one, is there's like a ton of like private meeting space. It's just like a really beautiful location. I was like, man, if I ever do an event, I think I would do it here. And then I just had that in the back of my mind, just went about making the podcast or whatever. And then we went to, was it Main Street? Mitchell was with me because we went to a meeting with Clayton from Capital Camp and Brent from Capital Camp, and obviously like I'm good friends with Patrick who's partners with Brent on Capital Camp. That was Main Street Summit when we had that meeting? Okay, so me and Mitchell stayed around an extra day after everybody left, and they had this idea, and I think Patrick was the first one to mention this to me, where it's like, well, anybody that's been to Capital Camp knows they do a fantastic job. They are full-time employees for the entire year. They have an entire like headquarters where me and Mitchell went. And Patrick's point was just like, well, we're thinking about doing kind of like an AWS for events for podcasters, people like you. Would you be our first customer? And so, I was like, oh, that's an interesting idea because the worst thing I could possibly do right now is the opportunity cost is too high for me to do literally anything but read books and make podcasts. So, make the podcast, grow the podcast, that's all I have to do. And by them handling, having a world-class events team that's done this multiple times, handling all the logistics, and essentially their pitch is like, hey, you own it, you name it, you pick what the topics are, who goes, the pricing, everything, and then we just make sure it goes off like flawlessly. And we didn't have one complaint, like anything about logistics or any kind of issues at all. And so, me and Mitchell went and talked to him, and I was like, okay, well, what's the fastest we could do this? And I think it was like the turnaround was pretty fast. It was like four months or something. And so the idea was, one, I wanted to experiment with, really, there's a big idea behind this. And it's something that is obvious in the books. We were just talking about this before we started recording. It's that relationships run the world. And our friend, Chris Powers, introduced me to this guy at his private event, because there's all these private events people don't know about, and in many cases, they're invite only. Chris Powers has an invite only 50 person event in Texas. And one of the guys there was- most of the people in the Texas event were like, it was crazy the people he had there. It's like probably 80, 90% of them were from Texas. So you had like a bunch of oil and gas people. You had people that had a real estate company that had like $500 million a year in revenue. You had all these family offices. And one of the guys Chris introduced me to was, he was hired by a bunch of wealthy oil and gas Texas family offices to host private events for other family offices. And he said this line that fucking blew, like was perfect, exactly what I had in mind. And I've realized this in the relationships that I've built. He's like, the relationships between the right people produce a non-linear return. And if you look at all the people that have had like huge impacts in your life, it's only a handful. Like my relationship with Patrick, that's a non-linear return. He literally plucked me from obscurity and said, hey guys, I think this is good. This guy's more obsessed with podcasting than anybody else I've met. You should pay attention to this. And at Founders Only, I invited- like all the speakers that came were like legit friends of mine, people I've spent a ton of time with, and they were all like A players is not even the word. And the perfect example of this is my friend Rick Gerson who gave I think the first talk about relationships run the world, and he told- and let me back up. Every event I do will not be- like there's no recording, there's no- it's like you have to be there. And so, it's like, hey guys, everybody be cool, like don't record. You could say you're here or whatever, but people talk way more openly and freely when they’re not being recorded. And Rick told this fantastic story of how meeting Sam Zell, because Sam was one of his best friends and his mentor for 25 years, literally changed his career. The relationship between Rick and Sam Zell produced a non-linear return. And so, my idea was like, okay, well, there's this idea that keeps happening where like my audience will pull products out of me. And so, for years, they kept saying, can you introduce me to other founders that listen to Founders? And I was like, well, I don't have no mechanism to do this. And then Patrick and Brent gave me the mechanism to do that. And then what I did is like for the first event, and I won't do this in the future, I read over every single application. Because I didn't know, I was a little nervous, I didn't know if I could do this. But what was remarkable to me is like I had- and I knew I had like obviously just a high value audience that listen to founders. I think it's obvious. But there's so many people that were remarkable people that I didn't know were listening that applied to go to the event, and then I realized, oh, this is a mechanism for founders to build relationships with other founders, investors to build relationships with other founders and each other, but also a mechanism for these people to reveal themselves to me. And as a result, because of that event, going through, I went through, I don't know, 500, 600 applications, whatever the number is, picked 150, now I'm aware of these really interesting people that I'm interested in building deeper relationships with. And so, I think that was like the biggest unlock where I'm like, oh. And then I did it and I was super nervous going up to this. This is like- I've just been doing these crazy episodes on Walt Disney, and it’s the same way Walt Disney felt before the opening at Disneyland. He had way more pressure than I did. But I was just like, oh, this sucks. I couldn't sleep. I was like, this is going to be terrible. I just assumed that like I don't know what I'm doing. And I don't want- people traveled all over the world. They went from Nairobi to Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Ireland, all over the country, Canada, Asia. And I'm like, these people are flying all over the fucking world, and like I'm going to disappoint them, this is terrible. And then the day of the event, I flew over with some friends, and I got advice, like you need to- why don't you, instead of saying, I'm anxious about the event, say I'm excited. Like just literally reframe it, just tell yourself, it's like, I'm not anxious, I'm excited. And so, we're flying over. It's like, no, I'm going to- we had an incredible fucking- there was a bunch of like- four incredible founders on a plane. The ride over was incredible. And then, I was like, man, we're going to have fucking fun. And I invited like, in addition to maybe 130 people I didn't know, I invited like 20 good founder friends. I was like, worst case, these other 130 people may like be jerks or something, but I have 20 founder friends I know and love, and we're just going to have a good time. It's like sleepaway camp for business nerds. And it was remarkable. And I knew from the very first day, I was telling this guy, I was like, hey, like I was nervous, I feel good today, but I don't know if I'm going to do this again. And he's like, you have to. I was like, why? He goes, because I met- he was saying, he's like, in your position, you get to meet all these people because they come to your, like this giant beacon that you put out into the world. And he's like, but that's not normal for people just building businesses in private. And he's like, I met 40 world-class entrepreneurs today. He's like, you have to do this. And by the time I got to the second or third day, I was like, oh, this is just going to be an ongoing thing. And so we're already planning two more. The next one will be outside of San Francisco in this beautiful, like in the Redwoods, again, everything's going to be private. I think that's in the end of July. And then another one in Austin in the end of September.

Eric Jorgenson: It is an awesome, it was an incredible event. And it's so funny to think that you were nervous beforehand because it's so obvious that all you have to do is just like name a time and a place and all the people who are fans of Founders and dedicated enough listeners are going to be similar enough and excited to meet each other that you don't even have to do anything. That's the way it is at Capital Camp too. Anytime there's like a band playing, everyone's just like can you keep it quieter? Like I just want to talk to this person in front of me. everyone was just so excited to meet each other that there's like very little pressure actually from our perspective on like the agenda or the planning or the logistics or whatever. Like you could put all those people in a warehouse. They'd have a great time.

David Senra: Well, we saw this though, because remember the end of Main Street when we did the, what does Brent call it? Bang Bang, where we had two dinners in one night. And so, we spent- the crazy part is Main Street was really fun. And I'm going back again this year and I'm going to do a founders meet up there. But it was like six or seven of us, I can't remember the exact number, but we just went, and they're all crazy characters, really fascinating people. And so we went to one dinner and then the next, and Brent got to hang out with us the whole time. And you just saw, once he knew the event was done, his first Main Street Summit was done, now everybody that’s left, 80% of the people are gone already, we're just all hanging out still, and he just was so happy and relieved. And that's exactly how I felt. And I felt it the day I came back, but I also felt it going into the second day. I was like, oh, everybody I met is cool, that we're interested in the same stuff. I could sit out there. What I was worried about, so our friend Sam Hinkie, he was the one, I always call him for advice, even though he gives a speech at Founders Only saying that David doesn't listen to me. But so, we were talking about this. He's like, what you have to worry about is what you don't want is like a line of 150 people waiting to meet you. I was like, I want you to interact with each other. And that wasn't like that at all. So, I would be able to go to like where everybody was eating and I talked to like seven or ten people, and everybody was cool. There was no like- there wasn't any kind of- nobody was like trying to grab at me or anything like that. They were just like, hey, we have the same thing. Like, what'd you think about this book you read, or this episode, or what do you think about this? And everywhere I went, I just got into these very fascinating conversations. I was like, oh, I'm very proud of this audience. Like, I'm very proud that this happened.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, but you got to put an event together where everyone, the brainpower- I don't know if I was talking to Eric or Melanie or somebody, and they were like, well what's different between this and Capital Camp?

Eric Jorgenson: You can't distinguish between conversations between me and your wife. That's fantastic.

Mitchell Baldridge: It's about the same. Yeah, same energy. We were just kind of dissecting how these events kind of like stratify or what are the different populations of all these events. And I noticed that Founders Only had particularly like a high brain power. These people who had come in, I mean, everyone's a reader. Capital Camp, obviously, has wildly impressive people too, but just everybody, I talked to more like technical engineers who were all cool and smart. But when you go to your own event, it's impressive that, yeah, you're not the- you don't have to be the star because everyone there was wildly impressive and interesting.

Eric Jorgenson: They were also enormous.

Mitchell Baldridge: A lot of big people. Eric was feeling bad because he didn't feel like he-

Eric Jorgenson: I texted people through the app ahead of time, which is brilliant, by the way, to let people connect and find each other. It's like, oh, I'll be the tall guy in a black shirt. And I was like, there are like- it's a 150 person event. There's like 20 people here over 6’6”. This is insane.

Mitchell Baldridge: Everyone's wearing a black shirt.

David Senra: One of the things I was most proud about because like I'm really trying to push myself right now. Like we kept pushing back this recording and it's not like- I love you both. You're both good friends of mine. It's not that. It's like I am- I wake up every day more obsessed to the point where like, if this continues, we're going to have to be concerned about me. And what I love is I'm really trying to go after it. Like I literally just have family and work and founder friends. That's really everything I'm doing. And what I love is that they're all excessively dedicated to self-improvement, not only like they're building incredible businesses, they're reading all the time, but the gym, at like 5:30 in the morning the second day, it was like you could not move in there. And I'm like, oh, these are like- like, I love you people.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it was really cool vibes. I'm glad you're going to do more of those. This is an absolute no-brainer for building the brand and strengthening- like letting those fans connect to each other and build relationships strengthens, it may not be obvious, but it strengthens the value of the whole Founders ecosystem so much.

David Senra: If you listen to Founders, and you're a legit fan, and you like it, and you find somebody else that's like that- So let me give you two examples. One of the most impressive founders that I've ever met, and he's super secretive, and he doesn't like- I was like, do you want me to introduce you to anybody? He was like, no, I'm fine. He's just like, he's a killer. And his name's Eric. And I was like, dude, I'd love if you come to this event. And he's like, oh, no, I can't. And then he texts me back like an hour later. He's like, what am I talking about? He's like, I have to go. And so he wound up going. And then my friend, Sam Poirier, who's the founder of Mercantile, went. They're both- like, I spent a ton of time talking to Eric. I spent a ton of time talking to Sam. And then I did not even think to introduce them. They somehow stumbled upon each other. And they immediately hit it off. The end of the night, I got a text from Sam. He goes, hey, that Eric guy, he's like, I think we're going to be friends for life. They had already, before the end of the day, they had already- because they're both like outdoorsmen too. They love to fish and hunt and kayak and all this other stuff. And so, they're like, they already scheduled like a camping and hunting and fishing trip, the first day.

Eric Jorgenson: That Eric, he's a fascinating cat. I got to hang out with him toward the end. Really interesting story.

David Senra: He's a killer. He's such a quiet killer. And he's been- that dude's an OG Founders listener from back when it was a private podcast. He would- like how generous he's been with his information because he's built this giant business. He's got a physical, like physical product component but also subscription product component. And like back when it was a subscription podcast, like he went and like he built tools to- like his own proprietary tool, because he started out before he's an entrepreneur, he's a programmer and engineer. He's a reluctant entrepreneur. He's like, I don't trust these business guys. I have to learn how to do it myself. And he's fucking smashed it. But he's like, yeah, you can have access to this tool for free. I gave him all my data. And like just unbelievable the amount of time he delved into what I was doing and was just super helpful. He's just a remarkable person. And I was like, oh, that's it right there. Two people that I love, didn't know that I love them, and now they love each other, and they're legit friends and they're talking all the time.

Eric Jorgenson: It'll be really interesting as you do more of these that move around, if you get- like who are the ones who go to every single one who are like the diehards and how much is different geographically or seasonally based on like who can get to what. But I think that's where things get really sticky for like the business part of the event side of things is where you become the platform for a bunch of people who are lifelong friends, that is just like that's the context for them to get together.

David Senra: So, I'm going to tell you a story too about like, this is why I think like the relationships run the world, connecting two people, the right people together, does produce this non-linear return. And there's a guy, and I can't name him, he was at the event. I'm not going to say who he is because he's super private. Me and Patrick were hanging out with him in Patrick's office in Greenwich a couple months ago. And actually I'm seeing him tonight for dinner. He's in Miami right now. And Patrick's like, the guy leaves, he goes, out of everybody I know, that guy's probably going to make the most money. He just thinks his business is incredible, he thinks the guy's an incredible person. And so that guy comes to the event, and I introduce him to another good friend of mine. And I was like, dude, I don't know why, I just think you two should talk. They go down by the river. They have this conversation. I see the guy that Patrick said he's going to make more money. He goes, I'm going for 10 billion. Like, essentially what he- his whole point was just like he was obviously already like way past the need to work ever again. And just, he's like the energy I got and the ideas I got from this other guy who was unbelievably impressive too. It reminded me of this thing where, it was in one of Warren Buffett's biographies where Warren Buffett would have these like private meetups. Like they were young. Warren's probably in his 30s or 40s, maybe 50s, probably not even 50s, so probably 30s or 40s. And people would drive all over the Midwest to Omaha. And this one guy's wife is like bitching and complaining. She's like, why are you spending $1,500 to go hang out with this guy? And his response was great. He goes, because he gives me energy. And like people discount that. Like that one conversation, the guy traveled from the Northeast to come to Austin, then he has this conversation, and he's spending a lot of time and money, several days at a time.

Eric Jorgenson: Energy's your currency.

David Senra: Yeah, but like that energy makes a freaking difference. Like the crazy-

Eric Jorgenson: Anytime you can invest in energy, invest in energy.

David Senra: The crazy thing about Walt Disney too, it's like, when he's building Disneyland, he's 53 years old. He's been chain smoking since he's like 17. He's kind of fat. They say he's slightly overweight; that's a nice way of saying he's chubby. But they talked about his energy levels that he had. He would move- I talked about this in the episode I just released. I just did a two-part episode on Disney I'm really proud of. But it talked about this reoccurring theme in the history of entrepreneurship is not only the high energy levels, but the high energy levels translates to speed. And that's speed inside your company, but also literally physical speed. There's so many of these books, like these guys walk fast. Like what's going on here? They have so much energy in there, it's like this manifesting, it has to come out. But yeah, I think energy is, it's one of the most important things, energy and focus.

Eric Jorgenson: I think about that all the time on road trips. Like road trip as metaphor for life, where like, if you're like a one under the speed limit person, you're probably like not an entrepreneur. But if you're like 25 over, you're living too dangerously, and you're going to either like crash and die or have too many tickets or get your license taken. There's like a sweet spot of like 10 to 15 over that's just pushing it enough that you really value your time.

David Senra: You might be on to something. So, Steve Jobs famously did not want to have a license plate on his car because he'd get pulled over all the time. There was like this loophole in California that you had like six months, by the time you get the car, you have like a six month window to get a license plate. And so he got pulled over for speeding. And so, he would get a new- he'd lease a new Mercedes every six months. So he never had to have a license plate. But there's this one story in one of the books I read about him where he gets pulled over, he's doing like 120 or something, or whatever the number is, he's like way over. He's like kind of pissed off that the guy’s pulling him over. And then he immediately just goes right back to 120. I'm like, that ticket had no influence on his behavior. He didn't get caught the second time. Whoever was in the car, I think the author's in the car with him and was like, this guy's...

Mitchell Baldridge: In the Microsoft Acquired, they talk about Bill Gates. He's a hot shot. Windows is starting up. He's making some money. He goes and gets a 911. He's in Seattle. Like, no one in Seattle has a 911, much less this like 20 year old kid. And he gets two tickets from the same cop in one day, that's where his mugshot comes from. They took him to jail.

David Senra: Did you read Hard Drive, Mitchell?

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, yeah.

David Senra: Okay, so then you'll remember this story. That's one of my favorites. That's easily a top 10 all-time biography of an entrepreneur for me. It's Hard Drive, it's hard to find, but it's a biography of the first 35 years.

Mitchell Baldridge: There's a good Founders episode of it.

David Senra: Multiple, I've done two. I'll probably, I'll read that book, re-read that book every few years. But he had this thing where when they were moving Microsoft from Albuquerque, New Mexico, if I remember correctly.

Mitchell Baldridge: Oh, he was in Albuquerque. You’re right.

David Senra: Yeah, he was in Albuquerque. No, but he does the drive. So they're like, we're going to race from New Mexico to Washington. And he had an affinity for Porsches. And I think he gets pulled over one time, and the cop asks him, I think this is in the book or maybe it's in, it might have been in Paul Island's autobiography, his co-founder, which I also read. And the cop asks him, he's like, how fast- they pulled him over. He's like speeding. He's like, how fast does this car go? And Bill Gates goes, I was about to find out.

Eric Jorgenson: I feel like every, like all the GOATs have a car story. There's the one about Elon, like as soon as he sold his first company, he goes out and buys a McLaren and then like crashes it in like his first week and then starts laughing hilariously. On Sand Hill Road… On Sand Hill Road and starts laughing. And then he's like, why are you laughing? And he's like, oh, the funny part is it's not even insured yet.

David Senra: Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So, I guess like there's clearly a massive demand for founders and investors to meet other founders and investors. What I'm going to do is, there's no reason for me to ever go above 150 because Capital Camp exists, Main Street Summit exists. So, if I'm going to do that, I'd rather just help them sell tickets, not that they- they don't need my help to do that anyways, but I'd rather just refer people to this already existing thing. I don't want to build products that just other people do as well. But I am going to experiment with one, there's a couple ones, more 100 to 150 people events, and then I'm going to be doing some 20 person events at like excessively high-end places, and that'll be like no programming at all. So literally you're just like highly vetted 20 successful investors and entrepreneurs hanging out together just doing activities and really talking. And the next two events I'm going to do is- for Founders Only, it was on the fucking stage like the whole day. I'm not doing like- and more of that is like I want to also talk to people, so we're going to do much more like small group sessions and way less- like I want to- I don't- you hear me- there's 400 hours of me if you really want to hear me talk, like you can listen to On Demand. Even though I do think the presentations were- like Sam Hinkie’s, it kills me that that guy will not let me record him, because I thought his presentation- it was like almost two hours long, it was- Go ahead.

Mitchell Baldridge: I thought the intro was fantastic.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, the intro was my favorite part too. That was the funniest shit I've ever seen in my whole life. I know we're not supposed to like fully recap it, David, because it was like, whatever, there's a no recording rule.

David Senra: You can tell them about the intro.

Eric Jorgenson: David gets- Sam Hinkie is a great white buffalo of a speaker. He doesn't write anything, he won't record anything, but he's brilliant. And the things that come out of his mouth are like per word wisdom is incredible.

David Senra: Yeah, he's wise. He's a very wise person.

Eric Jorgenson: He's very wise, but he stays low key. And so every chance that people get to kind of listen, they appreciate. And so, I was looking forward to hearing Sam Hinkie. Everybody's looking forward to hearing Sam Hinkie. David gets Sam Hinkie to the conference and then up on the stage and spends probably 10 of the 40 minutes that you have introducing him. And then I started laughing at 10 minutes. I could not stop laughing at 15 minutes. I started texting my wife at 20 minutes being like, this is the funniest shit I've ever seen. And then I think, yeah, it was it was between 25 and 30 minutes that like your intro stopped and Sam said the first words. It was a beautiful, very kind, moving intro. But I could not stop. My whole fist was in my mouth, I was laughing so hard.

Mitchell Baldridge: I got to immediately walk up to Sam and go, my favorite part of the speech, the intro, it was next level.

Eric Jorgenson: It was the most David thing I've ever seen.

David Senra: Every single person there was like- the reason I did that is because I wanted to explain like relationships rule the world. Relationships run the world. These people, every single person here has been like life-changing for me. And I built relationships in large part because they first were listeners to the podcast. And so like, I'm a legit good friend with Sam. Like I fly- our wives know each other. Like we go out to dinner with our wives. I know his kids. He's met my kids. I don't introduce my kids to anybody. I stay at his house. And he's just been super helpful for no other reason than that he really believes in what I'm doing. And so, I wanted people to understand, it's like, listen, I could just come up and you have all these smart, successful people talk to you, but like understand why we're here. It's like you're here for two days, take advantage of the opportunity. Every single fucking person sitting next to you is doing something interesting. They've been vetted. Like, talk to them. And I'm an introvert. Like I was explaining, I was like, listen, my instinct would be to go hide in the fucking corner. But if I was here, if I was in your seat, I'd be like, I'm going to be uncomfortable for two days, but I'm going to try to like get to know these people.

Eric Jorgenson: And everybody was great. It was cool of you to give away some tickets to some like young kids, too. So, there was like some really smart like 20 year olds and stuff that were there.

David Senra: Oh, they hustled them out of me. I was not- first of all, let's be clear. So my friend Rick, who was there, like I love the fact what he said, because all day long, people want something from Rick. He's got $20 billion in assets under management, he's super connected, he knows everybody. And the idea that that guy took two days out of his fucking schedule to come spend time was absolutely incredible. But we were standing next to each other, and Kevin, actually, I'm not going to out who it is, somebody came over and was like, hey, I have an idea for you. He's just like, why don't you do like, next time, like cheaper tickets or free tickets so you can have like- so people interested in entrepreneurship or entrepreneurs that aren't yet successful can come. And Rick's like, that's a terrible idea. He goes, first of all, David's running a business here. And second of all, he goes, what they want me to do, and I didn't understand this till after the fact, because then they explicitly told me this, so I can tell you this too. He's just like, if you do that, all the high quality people, the people that like, essentially young entrepreneurs are going to come and pitch these people. They get pitched every fucking day in their day job, seven days a week. They want peers. They don't want subordinates. They're not coming for deal flow. They're coming to meet peers. And he's like, if you do that, I wouldn't go. And so, one of the most shocking things was, this amazing guy, he's like one of the largest- this is the craziest feedback I got on the conference, is raise the price. He's like, multiple times. There's one guy, he's like one of the largest real estate developers in Australia, he owns wineries, he owns a ton of things. And he goes, we were talking, he's an older gentleman, and we were talking, and he's like, listen, he goes- and he's emailed me a bunch. Like these are like, again, old school, OG. What I'm most proud of is like these really successful people have been listening for years because I have emails from them for years. Usually a lot of people turn out of podcasts. And what he was telling me, he was just like, listen, he goes, I'm a huge supporter of everything you're doing. Your podcasts make a massive impact on how I'm running my business. So, let's say the guy's worth $500 million. That's a 1% impact from the podcast. Like, it's a substantial amount of money. It's probably greater than that. And he goes, everything you do. He's like, every single thing you've ever introduced, I buy. I'm just going to support you, everything. He goes, but what are you doing here? I go, what do you mean? He goes, $5,000? I go, yeah. And he goes, my plane ticket here was 30. He spent $30,000 to fly here. And that happened a bunch of times. One guy was like, hey, I love the event. Next time, you can't charge $5,000. I go, why? He goes, I Apple paid that shit. And then another guy's like, I was going to send you an email. This is all happening while I'm on location. And he goes, one guy's like, man, and he goes, I'm so relieved. I go, why? He goes, I was going to send you an email. He's like, because when you said it was only going to be $5,000, he's like, is David going to have us in like a Motel 8? And then he goes, I don't think David would stay in a Motel 8. I was like, you're damn right I'm not staying in a Motel 8. And he's just like, he was, the price was so low. Chris from AG1, when it came out, first thing he texted me, he's like, yo, make this 10 or 15, and I'd want it more. And what happened was, again, I think there's like other conferences, Main Street Summit, it's like $1,000 ticket. It's a lot more- like I'm not building the essentially like in-person social network for founders. It's not like a- it's a luxury product because the people that are in this audience, in some cases, don't listen to any other podcast. I was shocked at how many people I talked to, they're like, I had never even listened to a podcast. I didn't know what a podcast was before you. But they had all these other founders and investors tell them about it. And essentially, the biggest feedback was like, a lot of these people were like I have an unlimited budget if you can introduce me to other mes. And so, you have- that's why I'm like going to experiment with like smaller events, way higher ticket, like phenomenal locations. Every single place that I'm doing an event at, I want to be able to- like I have to spend days there. Like I want to- that's the filter. Like would I want to- am I excited to go get on a plane and go to this spot? And so that was the biggest feedback, where they're like- and me and Hinkie were talking about this, he's like, listen, because you could easily charge 10. At your first one, don't do that. Charge half that, because what you want, you want a small door and a long line out that door. And that's exactly what happened. So, I never tweeted it, I never LinkedIn, posted it on LinkedIn, I never sent it to my email list. I literally just did two ad reads at the end of two episodes. And we had four times the amount of people apply that I had capacity for. So there's this huge demand here. And he's like, now you have this long line, you have this email list, this waiting list, and that's exactly what you want. And so yeah, that's what we're going for. It's just like, the podcast is free. It's a world-class education. If you're just starting on your entrepreneur journey, listen to it over and over again on demand anytime you want. But all of these events I'm building are for already wildly successful entrepreneurs and investors because those people connecting produces that non-linear return that I'm interested in facilitating.

Eric Jorgenson: Well, and then you have people who for a decade as they build aspire to getting in that door, which is an incredible...

David Senra: So yeah, I know who you're talking about. They hustled it out of me. And good. They're young founders, and I want to help them. I was like, yeah, I'll let them in.

Mitchell Baldridge: You talk about this kind of aspirational event that people want to be at that you know really, really talented people will be at, and you can choose to pay up for that. There's people who will see that and will think like, oh, I don't belong there. And then they just self-select out. And then it's funny that there's these kids who go like, I need to be there, and I don't have the money, and get me there, and they completely self-select in.

David Senra: And two of those kids wind up hustling and they wind up talking to Sam Hinkie for like an hour. I'm like, dude, you are so generous. So how valuable was that? Yeah, but the point is, I'll lose that high-end audience if they're just getting hassled, if they're like why the would fuck would I come here? And every- again, this is the biggest thing about like getting to meet just crazy people because obviously the smartest and richest people in the world read a lot, and if they read a lot, they're going to be attracted to a podcast like Founders. And the biggest thing is like I've been able to build relationships with them. I’ve never asked them, any of them for one fucking thing. Nothing. Not an intro. Not nothing. Ever. The only person I've asked something for is Patrick. When I called him, I was like hey, and we were already friends. I was like hey, I'm going to do an ad based version of Founders and I think it should be on your network. That's it. Because the whole point is like, dude, they get hit- and this is what people don't understand, I said this on stage, me and Rick talked about this on stage. The worst thing you could possibly do is like for a high-value person is fucking ask them. You should find ways to serve them. I talked about the greatest cold DM. I get cold DMs all the time. It's like, can I pick your brain? Can I take you to coffee? And those are not usually successful. But the greatest DM was like, hey, I love your podcast, I'm a 21-year-old kid, I took an idea I heard on your podcast, made a video, and I got 10 million views. Can we talk about it? He's like, essentially what his DM was, I can do this service for you. You did something first. And so like every single person, like I've never asked for a favor. And I think that's the biggest thing. Where like if you go to these events and you're just like, gimme, gimme, like that's not- you don't build a relationship like that.

Eric Jorgenson: Always give first and never have an expectation of return. It's funny to look back, like I can see I was very lucky that people told me that early, early in my career and I took it to heart because it's so funny now, ten years later, that you can see, you're just like Johnny Appleseed, like running around helping people, like giving them stuff. And then some small fraction of those generous moments will be remembered and returned to you in ways that you can't possibly fathom one, five, ten years later. And it's so interesting now to see like the culmination of that happening in Scribe. I'm able to sit back and be like this person that I met ten years ago that we spent a few hours together like all of a sudden popped back up, and it's like, oh, hey, like it is just absolutely wild.

David Senra: And even if there wasn't a return, like what I think people misunderstand and it's something that's present in these biographies is like what Rick said about, he was with Sam Zell on his deathbed, and Sam had 10 billion dollars, he knew everybody in the world, built incredible businesses. He wasn't talking about his business achievements. When he knew he was dying, he fucking knew he was in his last hours, he talked about relationships, he talked about the experiences they had, the motorcycle trips they went on, the times they went to Malibu with their wives, like all that other stuff. It's like right now, I told you, I've been telling no to every single other person for me to go on their podcast. I will get to them, but I just went through this fucking hell. Look at this. That's crazy. That's just the last two episodes. Do you understand? That's 1600 pages. But I said yes to you because of our relationship, where it's just like, yeah, I'm not going to keep telling- like I'm not going to keep pushing Eric off. I'm going to that. I want to talk to Mitchell too. That's the important part. It's just like that's really- it's just going to be more fun as we continue to go through life and build our businesses. It's just like, dude, I get high on the conversations we get to have and the wins that you guys get. I feel like I'm living vicariously through you.

Mitchell Baldridge: You get to go give first and the risk is that, what? You give something and somebody takes it and walks away. But then what have you learned in that transaction? It's very easy.

Eric Jorgenson: I feel so lucky to be surrounded by people that if I spent my whole life making them successful, even if it didn't help me, I would feel great about how I used my life. I feel that way about my partners at Rolling Fun, Bo and Al. I feel that way about you guys. I feel that way about like my wife. I feel that way about the founders I invest in. Being able to just give with no fear of no reciprocation is like so satisfying.

David Senra: I think there's an idea from your book on the Naval. And then I want to talk about there's an idea from this book on Intel that I think applies to Scribe. Don't let me forget about that. Because if you're public-facing or if you already have a business, it's very obvious like how to build a network. But I think for some people that might not know how to do that, I think Naval gave the best advice. And he's just like, I forgot the exact line, but he said something like, forget networking. He's like, just be great at something and the network will appear to you. And that's where I think people fuck up is they're like, you don't need a network to achieve anything. Try to achieve something first or at least have a body of work to point to. It could be a demo, it could be a startup, it could be a podcast, it could be a book. But you need something to point to, a body of work, like I did that. And then people- that's the way to make yourself easy to interface with. I think people are fucking up, but they're like, every single person wants to get to Naval. You know how many fucking people send him messages? It's like, you know his autoresponder, it’s like, please stop sending me messages.

Mitchell Baldridge: Don't email me, don't call me.

David Senra: But if you're super talented, he'll find you. And so that is the biggest thing, man. I didn't go out- like, I'm an introvert. I did not go out and try to network anywhere. I sat in a room by myself for five and a half years and read fucking 100,000 pages on history of the greatest entrepreneurs.

Mitchell Baldridge: You talk about, David, this story of how Patrick did you this great favor of retweeting you and saying, hey, everyone, go listen to this podcast. But Patrick's, you're not the only time Patrick's ever done that. And the thing is, you just had the goods at- there's a lot of great podcasts, but you had the goods at the bottom of it where when people found it- I was saying that to, like, I found my start on Twitter by just kind of like Nick Huber shining this light on me. And I was like, man, thank you, you've done so much for me. And he's like, dude, I've done that for like 100 people, but like, you know how many people have like really just done the work behind it?

Eric Jorgenson: You took the ball and ran with it. I mean, I like the mindset, like every day is an audition. Like someone is watching, and if you perform greatness every day, someone will notice and someone will contribute to your success. Like that happens over and over and over again. It's just another way of saying what you did, David, which is like produce great work and people will be eager to support it.

David Senra: I haven't read it yet, but I just finished this other book. Here's the book that I did, I think I released the episode yesterday. And what's fascinating is the very end of the book, it talks about all these people that worked at Disney when they were kids. Steve Martin, the comedian. Who made- Somebody made a book called, Be So Good They Can't Ignore You. Or maybe that was a phrase of his. I'm pretty sure it was Steve Martin, right?

Mitchell Baldridge: I think it was Cal Newport, right?

David Senra: No, this is like old school.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, I know, but is that?

Eric Jorgenson: He might have stolen it from Steve Martin.

Mitchell Baldridge: He stole it from Steve Martin. Cal.

David Senra: Steve Martin's book is called Born Standing Up. Maybe in the book he's talked about like his way to like succeed.

Mitchell Baldridge: Be undeniable.

David Senra: They can't ignore you. What’s fascinating is that Steve Martin worked at Disney from the time he was like 10 years old to like 20. And so they said like he might be the most successful like Disney alumnus that worked, because there's a bunch of people that worked there when they were kids. I'm like, who the hell was hiring 10 year olds?

Mitchell Baldridge: That's Ovitz at the Paramount lot, too, just walking around, doing it for fun.

David Senra: I talked to Ovitz on the phone the other day.

Mitchell Baldridge: No, no. Tell me more.

David Senra: I was at breakfast with a friend, and he called my friend, and then he put the- on speakerphone, he's like, hey, I'm actually sitting here with my friend David Senra. He does the Founders Podcast. I don't know if you've heard of it. Mike Ovitz pauses for a minute. He goes, I listened to four of them yesterday. And he's like, I love the Vanderbilt one. And so now I have Mike Ovitz's number and I'm supposed to hang out with him and meet him and have dinner with him.

Eric Jorgenson: I read his book right as I was starting with Scribe. And I was like, oh, this is a really fascinating model for agency building, transforming industries. Like he's a really interesting story. I love that he's getting into venture now too. I guess it's been 20 years now.

David Senra: Yeah, in that book, it talked about meeting with Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz before they started A16Z. They're like, oh, we're just going to do the CIA playbook for venture. And so I think he was involved heavily there. He's a machine. I love these people. They're just monsters. I had this crazy four hour dinner with Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify last week. It was me, Daniel, and Patrick. And Daniel gave me great advice. In fact, the next book I'm reading is because Daniel's like, hey, can I make a request? And I'm like, you're fucking Daniel Ek, of course you can. And he's like, you've got to read this book, and I ordered it immediately. But same thing, you leave these conversations, and you're like, oh, there's levels to this. Once you see that, you're like, oh, I can- you aspire to that. And Daniel's just unbelievably wise. Andrew Wilkinson tweeted out like, who's the wisest, now that Charlie Munger's gone, who's the wisest person? He was looking for an older person, like 70, 80. And I almost responded Daniel, like, eh, like, I don't want to put that out there. But that was- I left that super motivated. And like just talking to him for four hours, like, oh, this guy's wise. It's like, he's very wise in what he's doing. Same thing, like Ovitz is a fucking machine.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, Toby Lukey, I think is like quite wise. Shane Parrish, wise. Yeah, it's an interesting question. Peter Kaufman, but he keeps a pretty low profile.

David Senra: I think Andrew wanted older people, like 70 or 80. Because yeah, usually you don't associate the term wisdom with somebody that's 40.

Eric Jorgenson: Mitchell's got an interesting story to tell, which was like fresh off the press at Founders Only, and I heard him tell it two or three different times. We were talking before we started recording about the mid-wit curve of who's still CEOing and hustling every day and who is in chairman mode among our friends. And I feel like Mitchell's step-by-step going, the march of just building a new business and hiring a CEO, this is an interesting... All of our conversations ended up being an interesting catalog of this march, but there's another big step in that that I feel like will make an interesting story, Mitchell.

Mitchell Baldridge: Melanie Baldrige, chairman mode.

David Senra: What are you talking about?

Mitchell Baldridge: What's that?

David Senra: Baby, birth of children mode.

Mitchell Baldridge: There you go. You heard it here first.

David Senra: It’s the most important of all jobs.

Mitchell Baldridge: So, yeah, I mean, that was that week we had announced that Melanie was stepping aside at RE Cost Seg and we brought on Zac Prince, former CEO of BlockFi, to be the CEO, which we're however far from that event and it's going extremely well. He's a grinder. He's really, really smart. He came in and like immediately filled this kind of like VP of sales need that we had there, and we're building the sales team, and we're building out.

Eric Jorgenson: Personally? Or have you hired for it?

Mitchell Baldridge: He's really like running it right now. We've hired a few people. We've hired a marketing guy and another salesperson. And so, we're like- I think in hiring people, my experience has always been like if you hire a person and they're not working out like three weeks in, there's no reason they're going to ever like magically turn it on at month six and start to work out. So, I have sort of a short leash for- I think even before you hire somebody, especially a big role, like we worked together probably for 30, 40 hours in like negotiating contracts, working with lawyers, employment agreements, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We had met all day in Houston talking about kind of the vision of the company and who we are and who he was and how we'd work together. We had a bunch of calls. And like, people very, very quickly tell you who they are and how they're going to act. And he's come in and just he's busting his ass and immediately into action. He came in and was like, I'm worried that y'all are going to be too slow because there's like four of you, and it's going to be hard for you to govern. I think y'all are going to come in and try to slow me down. And we're like, this is why we would slow you down. This is why we wouldn't slow you down. What was that? Oh, it was the Home Depot book where he's like the dog fence, the like wireless fence. Like you're just going to run against the wireless fence and get shocked one day. That's how it's going to be. And we've kind of just done that. I'm like, yo, go do whatever you think is right. Report back to us. We still have a weekly call at this point, but it's been great. And so, it was one of those things where we all decided, hey, we need to hire a new CEO. And I'm like, oh, let's run a process. Let's hire recruiters. Let's kind of do all this stuff. And Nick Huber's like, I'm going to go on Twitter and tweet that we need a CEO right now. Then he has like four good candidates on the line, and we talked to several people doing several things, and Zac turned out to be the best one, and I'm like, well, can we slow this down? And he's like, no, this is the guy. Just, it's tough to go slow and stuff like that because there aren't just unlimited talented people out there, especially that talented. So, it's been fun.

Eric Jorgenson: And Zac was great, interesting timing because like he came in with a chip on his shoulder, came out of a like crazy crypto story I feel like, which you took some smoke for.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah. Well, I went to Zac and was like, hey, this is what I'm saying about you behind your back. And so is this all right? And he added a couple of points to the media training for me. I'm like, you have to tell me what to say, otherwise I'll just say anything and that's not good. So, I just told the truth, which we thought about. Obviously, Zac came from BlockFi, and BlockFi had a bad outcome. I've learned that VC-backed businesses have bad outcomes all the time. I mean, a lot of them, most of them go to zero, but when you take people's money, there's this higher standard, obviously. Zac acted in good faith. Zac did the right thing. Zac testified to Congress in the FTX trials. He didn't- he obviously like forwent a lot of his own funds inside of the platform. He took a secondary. But he did everything the right way that you could, and that's what I sat there and looked at the whole time. So, he's like a monumental talent. I'll say that, that like people- you said, David, that there's like levels to this. And just like when you meet people who are operating at the like 0.1% level, it shows really, really quickly in how you operate with them and how you work with them. And it just was immediately obvious, like, oh my gosh, this is by far and away the best guy we could possibly hire. And like what we did was we built RE Cost Seg into a massively, massively scaling business that was big enough for somebody like that to then go, oh my gosh, what's happening here? What is the whole addressable market for this? Who are the competitors? How big are the competitors? And so, he saw the vision pretty quickly too, that we can 10X this thing and all do really, really well.

David Senra: So how do you want to spend your days? Because it goes to how Eric introduced that question, where it's much more of the Zell, chairman of everything, CEO of nothing, was his term for how he operated his career.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, Greg Eisenberg wrote this thing last week and he's like, the CEO is by far the worst job in the company. You can make like 70 grand and sort of have no responsibility, or you can be like a chairman and play golf every day. The CEO ultimately has the responsibility.

David Senra: Yeah, I don't know. Playing golf every day sounds like a fucking nightmare to me. The people I admire are like, they get after it until they fucking die. They're not trying to take the easiest route in life. People like that want to do that, it's fine. But like Steve Jobs didn't play golf every day. Edwin Land did not play golf every day. David Ogilvy did not play golf every day. I don't- like, you're here one time. And some people don't give a shit, like legitimately don't give a shit. I understand, there's totally different- like I mind my own business. Rule number two of the Senra family household, after always maintaining situational awareness, is mind your own business. So I don't care what other people do for a living or how they want to live their lives. But like this idea, it's like, I'm here for one time. Like, I study dead people for a living. So every fucking day, I get to the end of that book yesterday and like it ends with Disney's death. One day that my death will be, like I'm going to get to the end of that time. And my day is not- I'm not here to like take the easiest route or to fucking golf or to be leisure. I'm here to be the best in the world at what I'm doing. And then you get around other people like that. Like we just talked about Mike Ovitz. You think he was optimizing for days on the golf course?

Mitchell Baldridge: No. No. He was- the Patrick interview with Michael Ovitz was so good.

David Senra: He was peeing in bottles on a…

Mitchell Baldridge: I was literally about to say that. He was pissing in bottles on a cross-country aircraft. He could barely make it with the gas, but he could not piss.

David Senra: Did you guys see that Jerry Seinfeld interview in GQ that just came out? It was spread around Twitter. It's excellent. We need to pull out a couple quotes from this if you don't mind, because I think it's instructive. Because there is this fucking meme in the entrepreneurship community where it's like, try to get the most by doing the least. It's just like, no, how about I don't do that? And Jerry Seinfeld's like a fucking billionaire. Like, all he does is keep reselling the same show over and over again, and they're like, why the fuck are you working so hard? And I think I texted Patrick because I thought he pulled out the best line in the entire article, and we can leave it in the show notes. It says, Jerry Seinfeld says movies are over, here's why he made one anyway, it's in GQ, just came out. And Patrick pulled out, to me, what was the best line. And Jerry talked about this. He's like, I know a ton of rich people that are not fulfilled, these leisurely rich fucking people. And so, this is the best line. There's nothing I revile quite as much as a dilettante. I don't like doing something to a mediocre level. It's great to be 70, 70 years old, because you really get to preach with some authority. Get good at something That's it. Everything else is bullshit. And he talks about all the fucking rich people in his- that he knows, and Jerry Seinfeld knows a ton of rich people that are fucking unfulfilled because they have no meaning. They don't practice. Like we are meant, I truly believe that humans are put on this earth to build and build things for other people, not just fucking take as much money and gorge on it as much as we can. It's not gimme, gimme, take, take. It's like, what the fuck do- don't be proud of what you consume. You didn't make that. Who gives a shit? Be proud of what you built. And you can't fucking build anything on a goddamn golf course.

Mitchell Baldridge: And the same thing, like, look, I want to be really, really involved in my kids' lives, and I want to be an example to my kids. And part of how you are involved with your kids is you show them that way of like, hey, this is how you make an impact in the world. This is how you find meaning in life. It's not-

David Senra: It's activity, it's not leisure. When I-

Mitchell Baldridge: It's not going on a three week vacation at the beach.

David Senra: I mean, if you like to do that, you like to do it. Me and Chris Powers were talking about that. It's like the worst things our wives want us to do is fucking these beach vacations. Like it just drives me fucking insane.

Eric Jorgenson: That's a reading vacation.

David Senra: And so, Sam Zell moved that point because he's like, I met him when he was 81. He knew he was dying. He knew he had cancer. It just wasn't public. I didn't know that. And he kept saying, he's like, I'm going to be doing deals till I die. And he was traveling all over the world. Because there's also a sense of meaning. It's not just building businesses. Like you’ve got to pick whatever the fuck you want to do. I don't know you. You have to pick it. But his thing was just like he would travel all over the world on his dime, passing forward the lessons that he learned in his 60 year career to other entrepreneurs. That was something that was giving him meaning in addition to buying these crazy businesses, still making tons and tons of money even though he's trying to give a bunch of it away. But he loved the game for the game's sake. If you tell Sam, hey, you can't do deals, go fucking sit on the beach or go sit on the golf course, he'd fucking shoot himself.

Mitchell Baldridge: So, Cost Seg, my hope is that Zac runs that business for a really, really long time and it's very, very successful and it spits out a ton of cash. And then, yeah, so people go, well, why don't you just stop there? And I'm like, well, what would I do?

Eric Jorgenson: He's about to go build his magnum opus. Like, he's about to do the double down of all double downs, which is very exciting.

Mitchell Baldridge: Well, I think, and I have my core business, Baldridge Financial, we're like launching an RIA out of it. We're trying to expand what we do. Then we have Better Bookkeeping. And in some ways, everyone says, well, why don't you focus? And I do agree that focus is underrated, but in some ways I'm like, I am focused. I'm just trying- like I read the Power Broker, and I'm like, if Robert Moses focused, he would have built like a park on the lower east side of Manhattan. You know what I mean? And like you could have spent years trying to build one park or you can try to like build a large, large thing that can all work together. And I don't know the order of operations of like how to attack that, but we want to go build an RIA and a trust company that operates as like, a lot of big RIAs have promised this idea of like kind of one-stop shop, money management, estate planning, tax efficiency, and I want to put it together. It's just, it's a lot of work. It's going to take a long time. And I don't know which side to take it at, so I'm just working at it every day. So that's what I'm doing. And I think Cost Seg’s a part of that, but really like managing people's money, giving people like tax planning, estate planning, tax saving, bookkeeping, all of that in one place in one package is, it's tough work. I went on a podcast once a while ago, and they were asking me about it, and they were like, well, what's the trick to it? And I was just like, there's no trick. It's like really, really hard. I don't know what to say. And then that was kind of- it was like just dead air. It wasn't even a good answer, but it's just like, it's hard. That's the whole point is that it's hard. Otherwise, somebody would have done it already, and it would have been done really, really well. So I hope I can do it. I'm trying.

Eric Jorgenson: Who are kind of the like- what's the lineage of greatness in this domain? Like is Peter Malouk, like Steve Jobs and Bogle, Edwin Land, like who else am I missing?

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, I mean, Bogle's the GOAT, or like there were all these old banks and there was the entire like stock market crisis of the 1920s where people were, it was like crypto is today, people were just buying like shit they knew nothing about, and then obviously it became a lot more regulated over time. And I mean, over time, you read like a Random Walk Down Wall Street, you look at like Peter Lynch, Bogle, these people who were writing through the 50s, 60s, 70s, even a lot of Ben Graham, of like taking these ideas of, hey, these are companies, you're not buying price, you're ultimately buying something underlying the whole thing, and trying to teach the public about what to buy, how to buy, kind of what this all means. And so, I mean, but I think what I've tried to do is just like put this layer on top of it of like, this idea blew my mind, that you could go buy real estate or that this thing called a deferred tax liability existed and that there was like ultimately this arc in your life of how you would pay taxes and that everyone will tell you, there are people who can beat the market. Some do it through systematic thinking, some do it by luck, some do it illegally. But the market's been pretty good. I mean, the market returns like 9% for the last 6 years. And so, it's ultimately like you're not going to beat the market, especially if you don't spend all your time beating the market, and you're ultimately, like you don't even want to beat the market. You don't have to beat the market. What I've tried to do is like add this layer of tax alpha on top by saying like, look, if you achieve tax diversification similar to how you would achieve kind of market diversification in your investments, you will have this layer of like tax alpha that is easier to achieve than trying to beat the market. And so that was a just kind of wild idea for me that I think, frankly, is a good enough idea to launch an entire investment strategy around. And then, look, it's funny that you go online and a bunch of people complain about fees that advisors charge and say that it's a waste of money. And I agree that there are advisors who charge fees that don't provide enough value. But as I've dealt with people who have more and more wealth, their financial lives- look, if you make more money than you can spend, then your financial administration and compliance is actually a burden, and you have to go like sort it out, and you already make more money than you're going to spend in your whole life. So now you have this burden of administrative compliance sitting on top of like you've made the last dollar you're ever going to spend. So now you have like, it's like a storage problem. You're like, now I have to work to go maintain this. Or like David, you talked about this with Sam Zell. It's like Sam Zell is making money faster than he can give it away. He's making money faster than he can go reinvest it. And Sam Zell had a zillion lawyers and accountants and advisors and every- or he had to because it just becomes so complex. So, the entire business, or the thesis is like, how do you take this pain point that really bothers people and simplify it? And it's hard to do because it gets more and more complicated every year, in every law, in every…

David Senra: So, let's zoom way out. I'm curious like how, and this question's for both of you, how do you want to spend your days? Like, what is an ideal day for Mitchell Baldridge? Like, how do you want to spend your time?

Mitchell Baldridge: I was thinking about this because like I think we work- I think there are- I think some people work way less than people used to work, and I think some people work way harder than people used to. Like, when you read old books, like I was watching that documentary about Carl Icahn and corporate raiding all these old companies and those CEOs were making the most money you could make and they weren't working very hard is at least his story about what they were doing. And it's like, I think you used to go to work and work and then go get drunk at lunch and then sleep at your desk and then go get drunk again at dinner and then go home.

Eric Jorgenson: It's like roughly how my grandfather built his business.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, so it's like there are people who just grind 12 hours a day now, and I think people- I think a lot of people waste their time. I think also a lot of people are just working on problems that take 12 hours a day to solve. But I want to have a good family life, I want to have a healthy body, and I want to have some control of my time at work to be able to work on things that are interesting to me. And then I need to work on the things that keep the trains running. So, some of like how do I want to spend my time doesn't matter all that much.

David Senra: It sounds like it does.

Mitchell Baldridge: Well, I think there are things I have to do that I don't want to do. I don't think you get to just have an entire life of doing- You talked about the dilettantes of money spending. It's like there are dilettantes of like, if I wake up- if your baby's crying in the middle of the night and you don't want to go take care of your baby, you just have to get up and take care of your baby because that's- and so there is that metaphor extends out into there are things at work that I have to do that I don't want to do. I try to always do them and then go, how do I never do this again?

David Senra: What are the things that you don't like to do? Because you do have the position where you do have other people, you're in a good position where you have other people running all of your businesses right now, the three businesses, right?

Mitchell Baldridge: And it's really just like when things break inside the business and I have to travel into the center of the business. I go with the CEO of the business and the managers of that business and go like, how do we organize this so this never happens ever again? Like, what do we need to do?

David Senra: You would prefer like, you like jumping in and out, like, okay, where am I most needed? Today might be RE Cost Seg. Next Tuesday, it might be Baldridge CPA. The day after, it might be Better Bookkeeping. That's how you- that's what I mean, how do you want to spend your time? You like having multiple things.

Mitchell Baldridge: I like to ideate and tinker and build at a high level and continue to build a roadmap and have things just happen. And if that just happened forever, I would just keep building forward forever. But then, when my- yeah, so ideation and tinkering and just kind of like thinking is my favorite thing to do. And then when that breaks, I prefer to think at a high level than have to jump in and deal with operations. But like, I think you have to. How do you think about that, Eric? And as far as like you have a few things going on too. You had this podcast, you have the fund, but really it's Scribe today, right?

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I mean, I think of it as kind of like two big buckets, which is I like to learn things and I like to apply them, see if what I learned is correct. Learning takes a form of like reading, listening or talking to smart people. And applying usually takes the form of writing and publishing or operating, which is, in my case, as CEO, usually writing or talking to people, talking to the team. The decision-making or delegating of decision-making inside, that's the function of the work. And I love doing both of those things. As long as you have the ability to choose the people around you that you spend your time with, choose the inputs and outputs, and feel like you're working on an important idea or ideas, which I do. Like, I love writing books. I love helping people write books. I think books are sacred. I have a vision of an abundant utopian future that drives sort of as much of the book writing as I can do and as much of the investing as I can do and is a filter sort of indirectly on like who I spend time with and if I think that they are pro-social and pro like the future that I see and making the world a better place. Like that's all of how I choose to spend my time.

Mitchell Baldridge: You had a pretty incendiary text yesterday about how you think that maybe mini storage hasn’t added as much value in the world as certain other asset classes, which...

David Senra: I'm lost. I don't understand.

Mitchell Baldridge: Eric tweeted, Eric was talking about essentially, if the same tax breaks that were given to real estate were given to venture capital and like real hard tech, would the world be moving faster? So I think- I just was razzing him. Sorry. Sorry, guys.

David Senra: Do you want to expand on that tweet?

Eric Jorgenson: I know venture capital gets a like weird bad reputation, but in most cases or in a lot of cases, it is the capital and risk behind technological innovations that make life better for a lot, a lot, a lot of people. And I don't know that you could argue quite the same impact comes from self-storage or real estate investing, but real estate has arranged itself a lot of extremely advantaged tax things. There's a lot of people who are channeling money into real estate even though it's a little bit of a like, it's not quite zero sum. I'm not going to say that there's no benefit to giving people great places to live, but does it need the advantages that it has? And is it as good for civilization?

David Senra: Taking money away from new business, like funding new businesses to get advantages of tax that real estate provides. Is that what you're saying?

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think if more money went into building new businesses and building new technology centric businesses, civilization as a whole would be better.

David Senra: I had a weird thought that popped to mind when I was listening to you speak. What do you think is the best business book of all time? Not biography, business book of all time. My answer to that question, and I'm curious what you think, is Zero to One. If you can only read one book, I think Peter Thiel's Zero to One is the best, like it tells a little bit of his own story, but it's definitely not a biography, it's not an autobiography. And one of the things I most love, I love what you just said, you said books are sacred. You're dedicating your time and your effort, your energy, your finances to this, and I agree, obviously. I think it’s one of the greatest creations, and we know it's one of the greatest creations because it lasted 5,000 years. Shitty inventions don't last a long time. And one of the things I most love about Peter's perspective in that book is it's like you should have a definitive view on the world and believe that the world is malleable and that you can actually change it. It's not luck. It's not all luck. It's not all randomness. And I guess that's what I was taking away from Jerry Seinfeld, and again, it doesn't mean that you have to be super fucking serious about your work. His thing is like, I want to be a really good stand-up comedian so I can make people laugh because making people laugh is a great form of entertainment. But I think it's all tied to that idea. It's like, the difference between, I see a lot of entrepreneurs kind of like just like go through life or like life maybe happens to them. Life doesn't happen to Peter Thiel. He happened to life. Like he was-

Eric Jorgenson: He happened to a lot of people's lives.

David Senra: Yes, he did. And his message is like you can have a definitive plan. And like I was sitting here thinking, you mentioned earlier you were listening to a bunch of Founders episodes before we started recording and like writing down these like little maxims that pop up. And one of the things that really resonated with me when I was doing this multiple part series on Disney, Walt Disney, is he had a definitive life. Say what you want about him, that dude had a definitive view of life. And there's a line, there was something I said in the podcast by accident, I was just thinking about the highlight and the note that I wanted to talk about, and every single time he wanted to create something new where there was- He grew up thinking he was going to be a newspaper cartoonist. I tweeted his first business card. He's like 18. He's like, hire me, I'm going to be a newspaper cartoonist. Then this new industry of animation comes. He's like, oh wait, I can actually bring life to cartoons, that's better. This is a- when he jumped into animation, he was less than two decades old, and he did that on purpose because he wanted to find somewhere in an industry where he could make a big impact and he could be not just one of the best, but the best. And you see this over and over again. Then he does like shorts, then he does seven minutes, then he does Snow White, the first full length, feature length cartoon, he did the first sound cartoon, he did all this other stuff, then he does Disneyland. Every single time he's trying to do something, people around him are like, this is stupid, this is a dumb idea, this won't work. And in many cases, he's persevering through- he pushed all his chips in multiple times, borrowed against second mortgages, life insurance, sold a vacation house, everything, went all in. And one thing I realized, like studying the life of Disney, he didn't look around, he looked in. And I think that's the biggest thing. I don't give a fuck what other people do for a living. All I'm saying is like, are you actually doing something that's authentic to you? Do you actually want that life? Because there's a ton of people, and we know them, we're all friends with them, that had this fantastic outcome. They got 50 million, 150 million, 200 million deposited into their account and they tell you the same thing. I was happy for a day, a fucking day. And then they go into depression. And that sounds silly. Walt Disney, at the time when he's in his 40s, he is world famous. He's innovated in multiple categories. He is fucking depressed. He is miserable. And why? Because he doesn't have any meaning in his life. That's what Disneyland gave him. It gave back his meaning. And so I think that ties together with Peter Thiel. That's the reason I asked you, how do you guys want to spend your days? It's just like, I think we'd all be better, beneficial, like having a definitive view on life, saying this is what I'm doing, the work I'm doing, I know it is important, because it benefits the lot, it's in service to other people. One of my greatest maxims from the history of entrepreneurship is that, from Henry Ford, money comes naturally as a result of service. And so I just love that idea. It's like, hey, I find books sacred, and I think innovation is sacred. So, if you look at how Eric spends his time, it's like, I'm going to help- I'm going to write more books, which are fucking fantastic, by the way. I have, I think, 40 extra copies of your Naval book in my house now because I bought like 200 or whatever it was, a bunch of people that take them from Founders Only. So everybody comes over and it’s like, here's a book for you! But I love what you just said, where you're like, hey, I think books are sacred. I'm going to write more books because they- your Naval book changed my fucking life. It changed the life of you. This is something we’ve got to talk about, the Intel Trinity book, too. And then you're saying like, hey, then when I'm not done, I want to make investments to do innovation. Same thing with we just heard a version of that. And you have to read between what Mitchell was saying. We know him so we can read between his lines. It's like I have this huge advantage. I think taxes is, you used the word alpha. It's just like, why doesn't this thing exist? Like, helping people save more money on taxes so then they can do whatever they want with their wealth is actually a service to the world.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, I did a college presentation, by the way. So, David, you speak at Harvard. I speak at the University of Houston, Bauer College. We are not the same. I'll tell you that. And my college presentation, I tweeted about this back and forth with Moses Kagan. I literally said, how to get rich without getting lucky by Naval Ravikant, adapted by Eric Jorgenson, and that was the framework of the entire exercise. Like, if you're talking to a 21-year-old, 22-year-old kid, these were all kids who are about to graduate in like six months, and you're just- what you're talking about, From Zero to One and what you're talking about with the Navalminac are very much the same principles of specific knowledge, leverage, accountability, long-term thinking, independent, first principle thinking. This also even goes back to before I- in 2010, I found that book, what do you call it, Think and Grow Rich, which is a corny, like self-help book, but it is the same thing. It's like, have a desire, think about what you want, and just implant it in your mind, and go make it happen, and don't even waver.

David Senra: I think the maxim there is like, don't look around, look in. It only makes a difference. People do their best work like when it's authentic to them. It's like a true desire that they have, not with their mom thinks or their friend thinks or anything like that.

Eric Jorgenson: And it takes space and time and weirdly also sometimes crises to see that clearly. Like I remember-

David Senra: Our friend Jeremy Gaffon has this great line when he did it on Patrick's podcast – post-falls. Like it's pre- and post-fall. You're not going to find your life's work until there's going to be a fall… called post falls and everybody in that group chat is post fall.

Mitchell Baldridge: At the at the Founders Only summit, Jeremy couldn't be there because he had food poisoning, and when he like popped out at the end, I go, Jeremy, are you post fall now? Have you been through the ordeal?

David Senra: It's funny because he landed way before I did, and he's like is anybody there? It's like yeah, Clayton's there, there's a whole crew there, they'll let you in. And then I couldn't touch him.

Mitchell Baldridge: I'm going to go have a burrito bowl.

David Senra: Yeah, and then I couldn't touch him. I was like, what happened? And then somebody- we had to do a wellness check. I was like, dude, I don't want to mess with the guy, but what if he died in there? We have to do a wellness check.

Mitchell Baldridge: I literally DMed him. I was like, hey, Jeremy, we could get you a mobile IV or something. If you need a doctor, we'll get you a doctor.

David Senra: I think the way I found out really what happened, I think his wife texted my wife or something. I can't remember exactly. I was like, oh shit, I thought he was like, I don't even know what I thought. But yeah, that was fucking hilarious. I do want to bring up one thing because I know this because we've talked privately, and you've said so somewhat on this podcast too, but there's this line, so I went back and I was rereading my highlights for this book that I haven't done in like, I don't know, seven years, some shit like that. And I'm going to reread it. It's called The Intel Trinity. It's written by this guy named Michael S. Malone, who's also written a bunch of other books on early Silicon Valley history. And I was rereading this because it's only like 40 highlights, and it's amazing how much came back to memory. And I got to a point at the end where I was like, man, this makes me think of Eric Jorgenson. And they talked about the company is like, it's almost like dying. The main thing, I'll get to the main point, the market has to be educated. And there's many such cases in the history of entrepreneurship where it's not that your aim is wrong, it's not that your target is wrong, it's like you just haven't educated the market yet. And so, Andy Grove is the one running Intel at the time, and Robert Noyce comes up with them because he's like we're going to start another project. And Andy Grove later remembered thinking, he says, go away, we do not have time for this. What kind of company starts new projects when it's very survival was at stake? And the answer is, the answer is a company that can't resist a great technological breakthrough. And that was the invention of the microprocessor. And one of the biggest things, it's fucking crazy how powerful ideas are because I read that entire book, it's probably 400 pages, I did it probably back in 2016. And this idea, the reason I went to go look up my old highlights and to reread them is because this fucking idea stayed in my brain, that the market has to be educated. You're introducing something brand new, you have to educate them. And I thought about this, where like I know how world-changing Scribe Media was to you, Eric, because we're friends, because we've had private, hours and hours and hours of private conversations. And I can't help but thinking, and I'm going to try to help you do this with this trusted partner network that I'm building out that Scribe's going to be a part of, where I can help educate the market too. We'll be like, hey, even if you're not- you have a great line where it's like, books don't have to make money to make money. Is that the line?

Eric Jorgenson: Books don't have to make money to make you money.

David Senra: Okay. And I was like more- again, it goes back to having a body of work, having this like proof of work that you can point to, even if you're not trying to sell the book. And so, I'm going to read two highlights from the Intel Trinity that really is like, you know it's important because I always say like, you know what- the reason I started this conversation was like, how do you want to spend your time, Mitchell? How do you want to spend your time, Eric? I talked about maybe before we were recording, I can’t remember, it was like the opportunity cost for me doing anything other than reading and making podcasts is too high. It's like, that's how I want to spend my time. But it says McKenna quickly discovered the marketplace wasn't just confused by the concept of the microprocessor, but was actually frightened by its implications. Many of my engineering friends scoffed at it. It was the fucking microprocessor, one of the greatest inventions of all time. And engineers are like this is ridiculous. His solution, the market had to be educated. So what did Intel do? Intel was run, the reason the book is called the Intel Trinity, because it's Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, and fucking Andy Grove. And it says at one point, Intel was conducting more seminars and workshops on how to use the microprocessor than the local junior college’s total catalog of courses. Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove became part of a traveling educational roadshow. Everyone who could walk and talk became educators. Here's the punchline. It worked. It was not a bad product. The market just had to be educated. And you're already fucking smashing it. I think you said you had like 69 books, and I saw this tweet from you on 4/20. Was it like- is that right?

Eric Jorgenson: It's up to 75 now, but yeah, we're flying through books.

David Senra: But I think, especially for like the audience will listen to something like this, the audience will listen to Founders, any kind of like executive, investor, entrepreneur, it's like you have ideas, you have this whole experience, even if you're only 10 or 15 years into your career, you have these thoughts, why don't you just use a service that organizes them, and you have a body of work that you can point to. I think it becomes such a powerful unlock for people's careers. They just have to be educated on it because it's a weird thing. Like before you told me this, I was like, everybody, like you came to me, you should write a book. Jim O'Shaughnessy came to me, you should write a book. I'm like, no, I'm going to podcast. I'm not going to write a book. You're like, oh, we can actually do this for you, with you. And I was like, what are you talking about? I had to be educated. And again, then it completely unlocks it. It's like, oh, this idea from Intel Trinity, it's that concept right there that you used for the microprocessor would be very beneficial to my friend Eric Jorgenson’s business.

Eric Jorgenson: Thank you. Yes, I should work much harder on educating the market because you're completely correct. And you hit this drum hard in the most recent, like all the directors you're talking about and the entrepreneurs who don't want to write books, don't want to take the time to write books, but have so much to teach, and they want to give back to the next generation of entrepreneurs. And we can do that very, very easy. You don't have to spend a thousand hours at a keyboard to capture the knowledge that you have and give it to the world, give it to the next generation of entrepreneurs.

David Senra: My fucking jujitsu instructors, they started listening to the podcast, and they're like, I love that episode, all of them loved the Naval episode. And I was like, dude, I know that- that's my friend Eric. Like, we became friends because of that. And they had a teacher, they've been doing jujitsu. They're from Brazil. They've been doing jujitsu for 40 years and their teacher was teaching classes up until he was 90. And there's pictures of him everywhere. He's a huge influence on the way they teach and they have a curriculum at the school. And I was like, do you guys have like- it's in your mind. But like, can I read about it? They're like, no, there's nothing like that. I go, why don't you guys write the book? And they're like, well, we're kind of busy. Like, it's a great idea, but like we're working everyday teaching people jujitsu. I was like, well, my friend Eric's company can do it. You just mentioned the Naval. I told you, I think it touches you. I was like, they can do that for you. They would literally just interview you, send them the material. You have final- you own everything. You have final cut, final cut, maybe. Like you control everything that's in the book. Nothing gets in the book that you don't want in there. And so, I think they're going to do it. And they want to also do, they want to do a second one because their father was unbelievable. Their father passed away. His three sons, the way they speak about their father, and these are all grown men with their own kids now. They're in their, anywhere from like 50 to 40, or I think the younger one's like 35. And I'm like, man, I hope my kids talk about me like that after I'm gone. And same thing, like he taught us so many lessons and I was like, why don't you- even if you don't want to make this book, because they may not make that one publicly available, but they want it for their entire family. So it's like the catalog, the wisdom of their father to make sure it's disseminated through multiple generations. I'm like, that's another use case right there.

Mitchell Baldridge: Two things. One, my wife's family, my wife's maiden name is Bujnoch, B-U-J-N-O-C-H. They came from Czechoslovakia into this small town and they have this hardbound leather book of the family's history, which is like the most powerful thing you can have to hold a family legacy together. I went to this conference and saw Sam Parr there, and he was just talking about on MFM, this guy, there's this guy- I'm a YouTube shorts addict. I watch it to wind down. And there's this guy Bobby Flay who walks through Costco and he's like, eat this, not this, this thing, you see all these seed oils, blah, blah, blah. And they were talking about him on MFM, and I talked to Sam, and I was like, I love that guy Bobby Flay, he's just a weirdo. I was like, there is this world where I could do YouTube shorts but I can't do YouTube shorts. And he's like, dude, you could do exactly what he does. Just, you could take the 150 topics of tax and do YouTube shorts. And I was like, eh, that wouldn't be great, whatever. I'm not going to do it. But he just, he said, specific knowledge or the knowledge gap is just the biggest thing of like what you know versus what other people know, and I project my own knowledge onto other people, and they just don't have it.

Eric Jorgenson: They just have a tendency to forget that the things that you know are still valuable and other people don't yet know them.

Mitchell Baldridge: And I can't, David, go read your Brazilian jujitsu instructor's book and then go know how to choke somebody any better.

David Senra: No, it's philosophy. It has nothing to do with moves. It'd be like Nival. That book is really like Naval's philosophy on life.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, and I can't even read the Naval book and become like... So hear me out. I don't read the Naval book in two hours and become a different person the moment I set it down, but it does set you on this... I did choke somebody right after.

Eric Jorgenson: It takes reps. It takes reps.

David Senra: No, I don't understand what Mitchell's trying to say.

Mitchell Baldridge: What I'm trying to say is that people think if they give away their ideas, that their ideas lose power. And obviously it's the opposite, that if you give away your ideas, your ideas gain power. Like, people think that their ideas are scarce or that if you say them out loud, people will copy you or people will like steal what you do. And it's just like, there's almost nothing you can give away in your business by writing a book that will take somebody who would have been a customer and make them not a customer. It actually further entrenches people into wanting to use your product and your service because now you're the expert.

David Senra: I mean, the perfect example of this is this book that came out in 1965. I've done two episodes on it. It's Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy. He writes down how he built his ideas on advertising. He publishes it, and the end result is a few years later he goes from like a rather unknown person on Madison Avenue to one of the top five or top ten. Yeah, excellent. Look how smooth he looks too.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, I know. So dapper.

David Senra: Yeah, and it's like he literally like- and then he does it again in 1983 or 1984 and he publishes Ogilvy on Advertising.

Mitchell Baldridge: And when he writes that book, he's basically like, hey, when I wrote the other book, I was nothing, and now I'm like, shells my account.

David Senra: And it was hilarious. And he was just like, it proves- he's the best writer that I've ever read. Like, I've been thinking about-

Eric Jorgenson: Advertisers, good advertisers are good writers in ways that writers themselves are not at all.

David Senra: Anybody building a company that can listen to my fucking voice right now, go order the Unpublished David Ogilvy. I think it's episode 189 of Founders. It is a collection of 50 years of internal memos that was never meant to be for the external world. Internal memos and letters that David Ogilvy is writing for his employees. It's the best business communication you can ever write. Like if we do this book with Scribe, it's going to look- this is why I'm obsessed with bullet points and numbers and look at all the stuff I tweet. That's David Ogilvy. It's just like there's no fat anywhere. It's all brevity. It's like compact ideas. It's just- there's a great line in the Disneyland book I just did that I didn't include in the podcast, but it said that Walt Disney would have Napoleonic brevity because Napoleon spoke about this a lot. David Ogilvy would speak about it. Churchill would speak about it. Cut your words in half. Like you're talking- you need to use the smallest amount of words to get the idea across.

Eric Jorgenson: Just like what Paul Graham is preaching right now, too.

David Senra: Yeah, and so Disney's like- everybody, he's like, people would see him at Disneyland after it opened because he was like, oh, I want to work on something that's living. This is why I resonated with that fucking book so much because like Founders is my Disneyland. He like started this because he got annoyed because he would do a movie, then once the movie's gone, he can't improve it anymore. He's like, I want to work on something living and breathing. Warren Buffett talked about this, like sitting on his back and it's like he's painting the Sistine Chapel. I mean, he's just like, this is my masterpiece. It'll never be done. And don't come over here and tell me this area should be blue. Like, I want it yellow. This is how I want it to be done. Like, I want to work on something living and breathing and something I can change and improve on. So, people came across him sitting- Disney was fucking on the move all the time. He's just sitting there staring. His employee goes up to him, and he's like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm looking at my mountain. And the guy's like, it's a fucking pile of dirt there. It's like, what are you talking about? So he goes and he visits Matterhorn, the famous mountain. He sends back- so he's in like a little shop at the bottom of the mountain. He sends back a postcard to one of his art directors. It's a picture of Matterhorn. On the back: Build this. That's it. But I'm telling you, the Unpublished David Ogilvy, I've given that book as a gift. Probably, it's up there. I give the Naval book the most as a gift, River of Doubt, and then Unpublished David Ogilvy is the only other one that pops to my mind. But when I do this Founders book or when we do this Founders Book together, like that's what it's going to be. It's not going to be fucking- it's like, I love the way he writes. Very short, bullet points, I love fucking numbered lists. It's just so easy to read. The founder- have you guys been using Perplexity? Between Perplexity and ChatGPT, I don't use Google at all anymore. And I saw the founder of Perplexity, who also has a good episode on Invest Like the Best with Patrick I recommend you guys listening to, if you haven't heard it already. And one of the early beta testers, now early investors in Perplexity was Daniel Gross. And when they just announced this new fundraising, he released the initial feedback that Daniel Gross gave him on the product. And the emails, it's a numbered list, it starts at zero. It was zero, one, two, three, and you read it and it's like, oh, you don't get to the end of that email, like I wonder what he fucking means. If there's something in the human mind where you put a number on it or- like it's just, it's very easy to understand. And you go through David, again, David Ogilvy is a better writer than anybody on Twitter. I don't think that- that's fact. Like he made his living through writing words. Maybe not the best, whatever. Maybe that's an exaggeration. But he's one of the- if he was on Twitter today, he'd be fucking killing it. This is the point. And you go and look at like how he communicated with people when he wasn't writing for an external audience, and it's nothing but short letters, short memos, numbered lists, bullet point lists. He was trained by one of the guys. He said he was able to master the terse memo because he was trained by one of the guys. He worked for the British version of CIA or whatever when he was a young man and the guy that he worked for was one of Ian Fleming's inspirations for James Bond, and he said that the guy would have three responses. You'd send him something, he'd respond back yes, no, or talk, and talk meant come see me. But that's it. Like there's nothing- it's like yes, no, talk. So yeah, I just love, I love that idea, like you see it over and over again. He's like, build this. It's like, what is it? We're building Matterhorn. I think it's like in a 1/15th scale, and that's what they did.

Mitchell Baldridge: It's also just, there are things in life that you just have to- I was talking to a friend of mine and he was talking about how like they were- his kid was having these problems, and every night, it was like taking three hours to put his kid to bed, and I was like, you just have to fix that. Like, I don't know what you have to do. I don't know who you have to see. But like, your whole life, you go to work, you wake up, you do all this stuff, you spend this time, you can't have your life be this thing of every day, three hours of your day is that your kid won't go to sleep. Like, the best entrepreneurs are just like this just has to be- they're just high agency. Like, build this. Like, if you need more help, either come find me or let's find someone who doesn't need more help, I guess. But like, we are- Walt Disney was building the Matterhorn, no matter what. Like, you weren't going to get in between him and the Matterhorn.

David Senra: I will say there's one counter example to the idea where like, hey, if you put it down in a book, like, David Ogilvy wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man, said exactly how he thought about advertising. Claude Hopkins wrote Scientific Advertising. Now, that's different because Claude Hopkins wrote the blueprint for how Albert Lasker built, Albert Lasker made more money in advertising than- in the advertising industry than anybody else in history. Claude Hopkins worked for him. And he saw the book that Claude Hawkins was making and he insisted that they put it away in a safe for 20 years. So there is some examples where there are actually secrets. Same thing with Disney, where like Steve Jobs starts doing this extensive study into what the business model of Pixar is once they switch from trying to sell the Pixar image computer to actually making the world's first computer animated film. And he wanted to know, what is the- like, what are the economics? Like, what is the business model of animation? And he realizes like, it was so hard to get the information because it's like, oh, he has this great line. He's like, there's only one company that has ever done animation well, and it's Disney. He's like, you can't go to the library and take out a book called The Business Model of Animation because there's only one company that's ever done it well. It's Disney. And they don't want anybody else to know how lucrative it is. So, there is exceptions to everything, obviously. David Ogilvy's like, here's all my secrets. Walt Disney's like-

Mitchell Baldridge: Look, if you're trying to get customers to buy from you, that's what- and you give away the framework of how you do the work- Girdley said this on a, I don't know if it was- it was on a podcast somewhere. But he was basically like, look, I have this business, it's called Dura Software. We buy these certain types of vertical SaaS companies. We have this specific way and this specific market on how we buy these things. I'm not going to tell you how we do it because I will never be able to buy one again, and every time I buy one, I make like five million dollars. So no, call me- say I don't have a, what do you call it, like positive sum, or say I don't have like an abundance mindset, I'm not going to tell you how our secret sauce is done.

David Senra: That is a much more common- I think what Ogilvy did with marketing.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yes, I think that's what a book is, is marketing.

David Senra: It's why Scribe could be a very powerful tool for the people we're describing. But the maxim that appears over and over again, if you listen to Founders, is bad boys move in silence. They were not- they find an edge and then they shut up about it. That's way more common than the let me just lay everything out on the table.

Mitchell Baldridge: The best is in Mad Men when Roger Sterling is reading Ogilvy on Advertising, and then he starts to write his own book, Sterling's Gold. The idea is how that book rippled through Madison Avenue, everyone read it, and everyone was like, oh my God, this is genius. And yeah, I don't think-

Eric Jorgenson: And then they're all chasing him. Like, then they're playing his game because he wrote the book.

Mitchell Baldridge: He wrote the book on it. And I tell you this all the time, David, and I believe this, we don't know what was true and not true inside of Ogilvy on Advertising or any of these books because they get to write the book. So, you get to write- Bill Murray in the 92nd Street Why episode with Ovitz goes, why did you write all those lies in your book? That's like the open- Ovitz is basically like, I wrote the fucking book. You write your own book, whatever. Like you can refute me in your book, but this is my book.

David Senra: Yeah, I mean, the larger issue you're talking about, it's like, people don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. And so, like we could write a book on this two hour or whatever long conversation we've had, and every single person's going to have a different perspective.

Mitchell Baldridge: Yeah, and if you get the book to market, and everyone buys it, and it's very, very readable, and it's a great book, you will get to own the...

Eric Jorgenson: Michael Ovitz did notoriously sort of create legend around himself.

Mitchell Baldridge: He founded Andreessen Horowitz.

Eric Jorgenson: But it is very true, the rebuttal to any critique of your book is go write your own book. Don't tell me what mine should be. You go do yours.

Mitchell Baldridge: You go do yours. I have mine, you do yours, and everyone can read both of them, and then they can decide. So, I think, yeah, I don't think you should go write your trade secrets in a book. I think, in a lot of ways, if you just went and wrote out your trade secrets, people wouldn't be able to replicate what you do.

Eric Jorgenson: That's basically what- Scribe has given away everything that we know about how to publish books for free, because the people who are going to hire us to do all the hard work are not the people who are going to try to save every penny and do it themselves. But if the people who want to do it themselves like can't afford our services, fine, like go do it yourself. We'll help you. It's like you can build your own house if you want to spend an assload of time on YouTube and you don't mind things like maybe not working so great for a little while. But if you want a professional to build your house and you want it to be great and you want to hire somebody that's done it 2000 times before, like here we are.

Mitchell Baldridge: No one's going to be able to reproduce Founders podcasts unless they have a time machine and they have- like you could tell everybody exactly what to do. We could reverse-

Eric Jorgenson: You basically do, David. Like, it's no secret.

David Senra: It's funny, so we all love John Cougan. He was another- I think he's actually the tallest person. He might have been the tallest person at Founders Only. He was in town like two weeks ago.

Eric Jorgenson: He’s the man. He's hilarious. Oh yeah, he's enormous.

David Senra: He's like 6'9", almost 7' tall. And he has this podcast, which he's not updating anymore, and I actually liked it. It's a solo podcast. It's called Power Law. And we were at dinner, and I was like, why did you stop doing this? And he's like, it's different. It's like, it's kind of weird because I'm doing kind of like the founders version of, but people are like alive. And so then like I'll do an episode on them, and then they hear it, and then they reach out, and some are happy and some are not. He's like, you don't have to deal with this. Rockefeller's not sending you an email. And I think John is super talented, and I think there should be more solo podcasts. And he's an incredible researcher by nature, that's just how he is. And so I want this product. I was like, why don't you do that? And he's like- so then do it on dead people. And he goes, no, because then I'd be competing with Founders. I was like, well, and I explained, I was like picking a podcast is more like picking a friend. So, like it wouldn't be like Founders. It’d be your version of that. He's like, that's too close. I don't want to compete with you. And then I go, why not? He goes, because you're a fucking psychopath. And I was like, oh, I didn't know that was part of my brand. That's fucking hilarious. That's a good little moat to have. It's like, you sure you want to do this?

Eric Jorgenson: You didn't know that was part of your brand?

David Senra: No.

Eric Jorgenson: It's a great reputation to have.

David Senra: The funniest thing was the first time we met in person because we had talked a bunch. It was at Capitol Camp and you're like, you're simmering energy is like hard to deal with in person. You said some weird shit. It was hilarious. You're like, just like there's something underneath, like almost like I'm Satan or something. There's like flames coming from underneath.

Eric Jorgenson: I said that?

David Senra: You said something like, yeah, you're just like, your simmering energy in person's like very- you didn't say hard to deal with, but you said something along the line. It wasn't an insult, but it was just like-

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, no, I would- It is as advertised, I would say. It's not like you get like revved up and then like record a podcast and you're like that one hour a week. You are like that all the fucking time, which is authentic and beautiful and energizing and amazing. And that's why you're the ultimate run-through-a-wall dose of energy friend.

David Senra: If you saw, like you see all the stuff that happens with podcasts that try to get canceled. I don't even know if that's a thing anymore. But what happened with Joe Rogan, they try to cancel him, he adds two million subscribers on Spotify. He went from 12 million to 14 million. And then the Huberman thing was like-

Mitchell Baldridge: Everyone's like, this guy seems cool.

David Senra: The Huberman thing was like perfect because they didn't even- it's just like, I'm going to post through this, I'm going to keep going through this. I talked to Huberman's partner, Rob, and I was like, this is the best thing ever. It's like, whatever, this is like gossip, this is like personal life stuff, but they can't touch his body of work. It'd be a big problem if they were like, he was falsifying studies or some weird- because you're going to him for health advice. And the result was just what Mitchell said. It's like, wait a minute, this guy can do this. Like he's got all this energy at 48 years old.

Eric Jorgenson: Sounds exhausting.

David Senra: But my point being is like, and then what happened is the same thing that happens every time. It's like, listen, the person's going to read that article. If you spend so much time listening to Huberman or Joe or anybody, or you listen to Smart Friends or anything, it's like you know that person. That's what makes- that's the magic of podcasting. It's like very, you can't- it's hard to put on a show and not be who you are and then the end result of that is like some people are not going to like you, which is fine, but the people that really like you- there's nobody that's listened to Joe Rogan for, what does that guy have? He's probably got, I don't know, 2,000 episodes, something like that, three hours long, like 15 years. It's like, dude, if you listen to Joe, there's nothing that CNN or another publication can tell you about Joe that you don't know. And so, it's almost like this weird thing where the people are saying, I'm never going to listen to Huberman again. They weren't listening. The crossover between New York Magazine and Huberman is probably not there. And I think that's the biggest thing where I talk to friends that have super scripted podcasts. I'm like, listen, you could do that, but you're taking away one of the superpowers. And podcasts give you the ability to build relationships at scale as long as you're authentic. Because there's nothing worse than like meeting somebody that you saw videos of or heard somewhere, and then they're completely different. Like that's what- the two things- One of the things I got most from meeting Charlie Munger and Sam Zell before they both died is like they're the exact same person on stage that they were in person. And like that just immediately- if you like them on stage, you're going to love them in person. And like that's a huge unlock.

Mitchell Baldridge: You see the two things, I've met enough people where you're like, hey, I love what you do on Twitter, and they're like, oh that's not me at all. That's the first thing they say and you're like, what? What are you doing? The other one is my pet hobby horse is like the people who their origin story is how they're like a criminal. You see that in business biographies all the time where they're like, yeah, the first thing I did was like something totally unethical and illegal, but I got through it, ha ha. What do you think about that, David, of like, does that bother you?

David Senra: No, no. One of the funniest ones- I want people to be who they are. Like I really- when I say I mind my own business, like I actually mean it. Like I responded back to Gurley's tweet today because he was like, I'm not going to give advice for people. Like if somebody says something wrong on the internet, why am I wasting my time trying to like- I'm like yeah, why are you wasting your time? My response was mute the world and then build your own. So I don't really have like a judgmental attitude. I just think of like, do I want this in my life? Does it make sense? But like, I mean, George Lucas broke into his school's, the film school so he could use the editing equipment. Like, I don't know, is that unethical? It was like, what is he doing? He's trying to work more. John Carmack went to jail. He's the only one that went to juvenile delinquent for like using an Apple II computer. Edwin Land broke into, I think, Columbia or NYU so he could run science experiments. Like, I don't think that's what you mean. You mean like, I'd have to get like a better example of that. I can't think of many. Jay-Z's autobiography, he's selling fucking crack. Like yeah, do I think- like no, you shouldn't sell crack, but it'd be worse that he- I also don't know what it's like to fucking grow up in Marcy projects. Your dad disappears. Like you're in one of the worst possible situations you could possibly be in as a young man. No education. I think Jay-Z obviously is very smart. He's got like a seventh grade education. No dad. His dad literally like raised him until he's like 10 or 11 and left, no money, you're single mom, four kids. Like I’m not excusing that, but like if I was in that situation, I don't know, and that's my way out, like am I going to sit here holier than thou, like I would never do it, like I don't know. And I think that's the biggest thing. It's like why I don't try to go on the internet that much. It's like I'm not interested in like getting mad at the- if you study so much history, and I've been studying history for decades, there should be nothing that happens in the world that's surprising to you. There should be nothing that a human does that's like, oh, I've never seen that before. That never happens. It's just the same story that repeats over and over and over again because history doesn't repeat, human nature does. And I think studying history for a living is so beneficial because it allows you to step back. I don't think of something that's happening now. I'm like, oh, that is like this thing that happened in the 1700s. And that is like this thing that happened. It's like, oh, it just makes it easier to deal with humans and the vicissitudes of life. But yeah, it doesn't- there's a famous saying, I think, in the 1800s, like behind every great fortune lies a crime or something. Yeah, I don't know. You'd have to go back and replay that. Daniel Ludwig, the Invisible Billionaire, one of my favorite books, really hard to find. Highly likely that before he built this massive shipping empire and this massive conglomerate, like he was a bootlegger. He was running- well actually, maybe he wasn't a bootlegger. He was running the alcohol, the illegal alcohol for the bootleggers. Yeah, I don't know, is a bootlegger a transport or the actual person selling it? Because he wasn't selling it, he was a hired hand.

Eric Jorgenson: I thought it was transport. I don’t know…

David Senra: Yeah, so what are the examples that you had in mind, though?

Mitchell Baldridge: I had like, one is Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban's like the perfect example of like his origin story is when he was a kid doing all this kind of like sketchy stuff to make money. And then-

David Senra: The only thing I know is he ran like a bar when he was underage or something, right?

Mitchell Baldridge: There's that, or even the like idea that-

Eric Jorgenson: What's your line about the juvenile delinquent, the story the juvenile delinquent?

David Senra: Like so that's Yvon Chouinard. It's like if you want to understand the entrepreneur, you need to study the juvenile delinquent. The juvenile delinquent is saying with his actions, this sucks, I'm going to do my own thing. I don't think that's what- I think Mitchell’s saying like there's a darker line maybe because all the examples I gave you, like no one's going to be upset this guy broke into fucking a college to run experiments. Like who cares?

Mitchell Baldridge: I read the Ken Langone book pretty recently when he was on Patrick's podcast.

David Senra: I loved that episode.

Mitchell Baldridge: I did too.

David Senra: 88 years old and still, that was fantastic.

Mitchell Baldridge: He told this story in the book about how he worked for this business and basically didn't do the job at all. He was supposed to be doing background checks on people. And he was like, yeah, I decided the business shouldn't be doing background checks on people, and so I didn't do background checks. I just wrote nice things about everybody, and then they found out that I wasn't doing my job, and then they fired me. And you're just like, well, I guess that it's true. That's what he did. But I'm like, why would you even- I guess Ken Langone’s a real one. And then at the end of the story, he's just kind of like, yeah, and I mean, I never felt bad about it because fuck them. It's like the end of it and you're just like all right.

David Senra: That's sounds like he’s making like a moral judgment. Like I mean, I wouldn't want to be his boss.

Mitchell Baldridge: Don't take the money. Quit the job.

David Senra: I wouldn't want to be his boss. But like this is something that you've brought up a few times, so I know-

Mitchell Baldridge: I just don't- it just confuses me why you would like-

Eric Jorgenson: Do you have a confession to make, Mitchell?

Mitchell Baldridge: I sold crack. But no… I don't know it just is confusing that like people just tell- that you can write any story.

Eric Jorgenson: I appreciate that people are honest about their stories in retrospect, like when they have enough space, they feel safe.

David Senra: Mitchell, you need to explain to us what you mean. Like you said, it's frustrating that people can write their own stories?

Mitchell Baldridge: No, no, it's not frustrating. It's just like you could say anything, and like why would you say that? Or even...

David Senra: Did you read The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant?

Mitchell Baldridge: No.

David Senra: Okay, but you know the background, right? They spent 50 years cataloging the entire human species. They wrote the 11 page...

Mitchell Baldridge: The 10 zillion page book.

David Senra: Yeah, I think it's 11 separate things, every one's like a thousand pages, it's the history of civilization. Then they write this book called Lessons of History. They're trying to summarize the human species and everything they learned from a half a century of being historians on the human race into a 100 page book. And there's a line in that book, in every age, governments have been corrupt and men have been dishonest. This is what I mean. Like your response is fascinating. Like, oh my God, can you believe people write down things that are not true, and I'm like, well, yeah, because I read the Lessons of History and Will and Ariel said in, every age, governments are corrupt and humans are dishonest. It's like that happens now, it'll happen 1000 years after we're dead, and this happened 10,000 years ago. It's like I don't get upset about these things because the human species is obvious, like we're fatally flawed. Like we are such a weird species. I'm reading this book on the history, it's a biography of the Comanche Indians. And I'm obsessed with the history of the American West and Native American culture in general. And I'm listening to it last night before I go to bed, soothing fucking, soothing history before I go to sleep. And they're like yeah, the Comanches would catch another tribe, and they would take the women from the other tribe and they would cut their Achilles tendon, and they’d leave them in like the middle of the plains, like now you’ve got to walk. You can't walk; you’ve got no Achilles tendon. Like what are you doing? Like why would you do that to somebody? But it's not like- it's not surprising. It's like humans have done fucked up shit to other humans forever, forever. There's nothing in that book, now there's some grotesque stuff, but it's like yeah, that's what humans do. The lesson I take from that is like I want to make sure I maneuver myself and my family in a position where I'm not at the- I don't have to rely on the good graces of other humans. That's the biggest lesson from history. It's like, you should control the people that you have around you and the environment you're in as much as you can. And I think entrepreneurship just has to be the world's greatest creation to be able to do that, to literally what I said, mute the world and then build your own. But this idea where like, let's go protest, or like can you believe this human did this? Do you not understand? Like the same shit you're upset about today, they've been upset for a thousand years. If that behavior routinely reappears throughout human history, what the fuck should that tell you? You're spitting into the tornado. You're not changing anything.

Eric Jorgenson: I think it's interesting. I think that is both deeply true, and it is also true that things have gotten markedly safer and less violent and more peaceful and we've gotten smarter over time. And so, like while I think what you are saying is mostly true, there's like a thin candy shell on the outside of like someone's probably not going to cut your Achilles tendon and leave you in the plains to like crawl until you're eaten.

David Senra: Did you see what's going on in Haiti right now? Yeah, they'll capture you and then they'll fucking barbecue you and eat you. What do you- It just depends on where you are in the world. This is what I meant about building your own world and controlling your environment. But like that's actually maybe not true because I don't buy into Pinker's theory, like the good angels of your nature, that humans are getting less violent. It's like, yeah, we just have our violence stored kinetically. Because I'm reading Annie, what's her name? Annie Jacobson, she's on those podcasts. She did a historical novel, The Nuclear War. And so the book is like, it's minute by minute. I think it lasts like 90 minutes or something like that, I think split into three. I'm listening to that too. And it just like goes into detail. It's like we have developed technology to a sufficient degree where we can exterminate every living species on the earth many times over. And I'm like, obviously, we're just holding on. Hopefully, we don't do this. But no, like that instinct, that human nature that caused them to do that, cut these tendons, is no different than somebody, and I'm not getting caught up in current affairs, but like invading another country or dropping a bomb on them or shooting up whatever. Like, it's just this- and again it's probably my guess would be a small percentage of the population that does these things, but it doesn't matter. Like 10% of 8 billion people is a lot of psychopaths.

Eric Jorgenson: You think 10% of people are psychopaths?

David Senra: 5%, whatever the number is. It's like we're getting in big ass numbers here.

Eric Jorgenson: They're big numbers, but it matters. Like it matters the difference between a totally ungoverned, like human nature ungoverned and human nature in the context of a civilization and a whole set of like coordinating, cooperating technologies and norms that let us protect each other and serve each other and accomplish things together instead of compete over scarce resources and scraps of food. And we need to do everything that we can to appreciate, honor, and protect those things that keep us from having to shank each other for an apple. Like, we can honor the deep, deep roots and the terrifying currents of human nature and at the same time know that we have to fight that with the tools that we have because we do not want to go back to that.

David Senra: Maybe that- so I agree. I wish things was like that and I wish the world was, we all got along. My point is like, I guess that the way we might differ on opinions, and it really is like irrelevant because I don't think we have control over this. This is like human nature is not evolving. It's not changing. It is constant.

Eric Jorgenson: No, I agree, I agree.

David Senra: And so like, yeah, I would love for that to be the case. I would love for there not to be...

Eric Jorgenson: I'm not saying human nature is changing. I'm saying we have developed things that let us harness it effectively for good and bad. But like more good than bad.

Mitchell Baldridge: I think... As we've said a few times, and I've said before, and you've mentioned that like I've said this before, I just think like you have to triage all this stuff coming into your- everything that you read on Twitter, every podcast you listen to, every book you read is written by a person, and to your point, some people are great and some people aren't great, and you just have to like read through the middle, and to like what you said, it's funny, David, you say, mute the world and build your own world, and it's like part of building your own world, you don't want to start from zero, like a feral child in the middle of the woods. Like, you have all these building blocks that you get to build your world out of, but you have to be so selective today about what you take in and what you just like tune out and who you bring in and who you cut out.

David Senra: And what I mean by build the world is like, the reason I kept doing this filmmaker series is because filmmakers literally build their own world. It's like, the analogy between entrepreneurship and movie making I think is very deliberate and obvious. And so, what I mean is the way I'm building my own world, it's like one of the things I loved about Peter Thiel, he says most people systematically undervalue their time. It's like literally the only non-renewable resources you have. And so, I'm very, try to be very protective of my time. I still make mistakes. Like I'm still saying yes to way too many things. But I'm hopefully trending in a better direction. But what I mean is I want to make sure that the work that I'm doing, because I'm putting a lot of my life energy into this, that it is good for the world. I believe that what I'm doing is good for the world. And then when I'm not doing that, which hopefully is in service to other people, then I'm spending time with my friends and family and I'm trying to take care of my health. Other than that, I was just on my friend's boat for the weekend. We went to the Bahamas. And he's like, I recommend you listening to this podcast. And like I'm not even going to tell you what the podcast was about or anything else. But I had like, hey, who's this guy they keep talking about? It's like, how do you not know who that guy is? Like, apparently he's like, there's this war going on in the world right now and this guy was an influential person. And I was like, I don't know. Like, I don't read the news. Like what I told you is like I literally just read old books, make podcasts, have great conversations with my family and great conversations with my friends. That is me muting the world and building my own. Now I'm not- to the degree that I have control and influence over other people, then that is all guided into my work. But I don't get upset. Some people, and I used to do this, I used to be a political junkie when I was in my early 20s, and you get so fucking- like there's this emotional rollercoaster. Like my team is doing bad, or this guy- it's like I don't have any influence over this. What am I doing? And then I started reading about- and then the advantage I had was I started reading about the early newspaper and media tycoons like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. You could- and people tell me, you're stupid, you should- I've heard this before. You're an idiot, you should read the news. And I go, I will read the news as much as you do once you read these two biographies, and not a minute, not a minute before, because they literally built the blueprint that you're wrapped up in, and you don't even understand that. And so that's what I mean. It's like I don't- I never scroll Twitter and get upset. And there's fucked up shit on there and people doing bad stuff to each other all the time. It's like you should expect this. The point is like I'm trying to build myself into a formidable individual and I'm trying to protect myself and my family so I can resist all the craziness that is in human nature. It's inherent in human nature, the same problems we have today that we've been having forever. And so that's what I mean about mute the world and build your own. Like literally, like there's no point- the world has enough critics. We need enough enthusiasts. And I think what Eric referenced earlier is like criticizing something is wasting your time. The best way to criticize is not with your mouth. It's build something different. And so that's what I'm trying to do. I'm like, hey, excuse me, there's a little- terrible advice that you see in the modern entrepreneurship industry. There's these stacks of books about these people that seem to have some shit figured out. They wrote down all their ideas. Maybe somebody should just go back through and be like, hey, this guy said this. This might work in your job. That's why it doesn't matter, to your point, where obviously humans lie. So how do we know the stuff written in books is true? I'm not- when I'm reading the story of did this person really say this or did this really happen? I'm not looking at like- I want the idea or the principle behind it. I abstract it away from the actual event and be like, here's the principle. And then is that principle useful in my life? And that is a very valuable use of your time as opposed to, I don't know, did he say it in 1893 or did he not say it or like did this actually happen in 1896, that's irrelevant. It's the principles that I'm interested in.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I love it. The optimizing for usefulness, I think, is actually the right thing. Like, there are all kinds of things that are more useful than they are accurate, and as long as you feel okay selecting those, great. I love how well-designed your life is for being able to shut out the world and and build your own.

David Senra: Yeah, and this is a problem, like friends of mine that can't do that, it's like, well, they're capital allocators. I'm not a capital allocator. Like they have to know what- like what's going on the market, all this stuff affects their life. So it makes perfect sense. Again, I'm not here to like cast judgment on what other people do. We go back to this whole some people want to be chairman of everything so they could be on the golf course. If you love golf and that's how you want to spend your life, good. You should do that. My point of what I said about Walt Disney is don't look around, look in. If you are looking in, you're like, God damn it, I want to start this business and I want to hire a CEO because I want to golf or I want to do all this other stuff, then you should do that. There's nothing wrong with that. All I want- I just want, to the degree that I want anything from anybody, is just figure out what's authentic to you and then do that. I don't think people have to be grinding seven days a week or doing it. That's nonsense. It's like do whatever you want to do. It's just for me, it's like I don't want- like I'm not seeking leisure. I get uncomfortable when I get too comfortable. That's a problem. But that's who I am. And so I've tried to relax. Like I don't- I feel uncomfortable. Like I don't- That's not- what is comforting to me, the most comforting thing to do is what I'd be doing now if I wasn't doing this podcast, is I'd be sitting in this room right now and I'd be reading a book for a few hours. And then I'd go to lunch with my wife and then I'd come back and I'd work on marketing for the podcast and then I'd reread some past highlights and then I'd call up a friend. I already worked out first thing when I got to the morning. Then I'd pick up, I'll play with my son when he gets home from school. That is my life seven days a week. That's what I want to do as opposed to just I'm not doing anything that's really leisurely. I'm not interested in that.

Eric Jorgenson: You and Elon Musk have that in common.

David Senra: No, Elon's a fucking- I'm nothing- you know what I mean? I do respect him in the sense that that guy is not optimizing for easiness. He is not interested in- he's not even interested in happiness, he told you that. He's like, I'm not- people don't want to be me. But my point is, people who criticize him, he's too extreme, he's too- but it's him. If that's what's in his life and that's what is actually inside of him, then like who are we to judge how he should spend his time or what he should do?

Mitchell Baldridge: Well, David, I mean, you have the conference business which is, you were very, very involved with in the first couple, in the first few, but you have this great outsource team through the Capital Camp team helping you out. And then your other business, Founders Notes. I have that tweet I read a long time ago, the perfect business, 95% margins, 95% recurring revenue, no employees, no customers, no assets, negative working capital, no inventory, no CAC, no competition. And it's like, Founders Notes is a very David business.

David Senra: But it's not even- like, the key there is like, and me and Patrick were on the phone about this yesterday because this is also where I was going back to Intel book, because I really do think I need to spend- and they've been really successful so far, and I want to continue to do this, but educating the market that learning from history is a form of leverage. And what I'm now doing is, first of all, this is a tool for me. And so like, you know it's authentic to me because I fucking talked about it for years. I didn't think other people would be reading my stuff. But now what I'm realizing is like, well, I'm really trying to build out an entire fucking- I'm trying to do the work for you. The interesting part about what the Perplexity guy said, the guy, the founder of Perplexity was on Patrick's podcast. And what he's trying to figure out, he is like in some ways, and like listen, Chat GPT, Perplexity, all of these have been amazing tools. It is what search should have been. When you start using them and you go back to Google, you're like, why don't you just do the work for me, dude? Like, I don't want a list of 10 or 20 links, I want like a summary of what's going on. And I can't pronounce his name, so I'm not even going to try, but the founder of Perplexity said something interesting. He's like, but that like empty dialogue box that all the chat, Perplexity has, Chat GPT, all of them have, is actually a bug that needs to be fixed. And he's like, he uses the example, he's like, if Steve Jobs was building AI, he wouldn't just leave it up to the user to derive value out of this product. Now, I'm building something hyper-focused for entrepreneurs. Turns out, entrepreneurs ask the same questions over and over and over again, the questions that you need, all three of us need in our business, how to market, how to distribute, how to recruit, how to hire, is there interesting distribution tools, distribution ideas from the history of entrepreneurs, give me some ways Alexander Graham Bell marketed this brand new invention the telephone, whatever the case is. Now, in the past, you had to do that work. So, like when Edwin Land was inventing the Polaroid camera and when Steve Jobs was inventing the Macintosh, they both did the same thing. They went back and like, well, how did Alexander Graham Bell market the telephone? So what the next step is, what the Perplexity guy said, he was just like, well, Steve Jobs will do the work for you. And once AI, this is the very beginning, but once AI gets really, really good, it'll know you so well that you won't have to ask. It knows what you need. And he compared it, what he's trying to deliver on, and Perplexity isn't there yet, is the Google- remember when we first started using Google back in the day, they still have it, but the I'm feeling lucky. And he's like, that's what it is. Like there is no input from the user. It's press a button and the AI tells you what you need. So what I'm doing next is I've been saving all of my searches and everything I've been using on Sage and I'm building out and then I'm also collecting from the other users. And it's like, I'm building a library. So maybe you go to the Sage, you have nothing, you don't fucking know what to ask today. There's nothing to ask. And that's why I asked if you use Perplexity because it's very fascinating. It's like, if you look at the app and it has the discover feature and the library feature, I want to build the discover feature that Perplexity has. But it's based on what is the collective community of founders using this tool, what are they asking? And for you to be able to search through and get ideas, it's essentially doing the work for you. It's like, here's the top 50 things, here's the top 20 things. I don't know what the number's going to be, but if you read these 20 things, it's much more of not an empty box. And then when you have a question, then the empty box is there. But it's like, the point is- the reason I think- this happens when we're on phone calls all the time. You guys will tell me something going on in your business or something going on in your life, and I'm like, oh, this is kind of like, da-da-da-da, and it’s kind of like random, the shit I read. My point is like, I can use these tools better than anybody else because I made them for my fucking self, before they were for sale for anybody else. But how do I give the skill that I'm able to get out of these tools because of my life's work, what I do during the day, and give it to every single person that uses it? And so, that's also, it's like, well, it might be more profitable to just take 30% of this company and like you'd be a distribution point for it and let them do it. But I think it's such an important idea, and I'll see if I can deliver on it. Yeah, nobody else could do this but me. And so, if I don't do it, it's not going to get made. And that's where it starts to get real fucking interesting because the emails I get are really like, fuck man, I didn't- like, literally help them make an important decision in their work, just like the podcast has been doing, except it's on demand in a way the podcast can never be. And I'll see where this goes, but I know I'm not going to build, after this, I'm not building any other product other than the podcast. And I can only dedicate time to this because it's embedded in my workflow and I'm literally using it every day because I'm fucking, like what we just said, there was multiple times in this conversation where it just came from my brain. Oh yeah, that's like fucking Edwin Land breaking into NYU or that's like- you asked what's that juvenile delinquent quote. I didn't- you saw my eyes. I didn't fucking go look it up. It's like that shit's in my brain. It's also in Founders Notes. But like that, how can I do that, which is very valuable to me, but like how do I give you guys that power, and that's going to take a while to actually figure out and deliver on. But yeah, it's very fascinating. And then the other aspect, the only thing that I think I'm uniquely fit to do is like connecting people in this audience. And so, I feel good about that because I've already seen the emails, the texts, and the phone calls about like- our friend, like Justin Mares, who I'm not going to tell- I won't like violate the private conversation we had, but he met somebody, and he's like, the price of admission just to meet that one fucking person is worth it. And he didn't know that person was going. It happened very organically. And then now after that, that's the biggest thing, it's like after they left there, they're still talking. And if they are and they're actually- but you're not- 150 fucking people, you're not going to build relationships with 40, but even if you get one or two or three, that's fucking- That's a phenomenal return on investment, phenomenal. And what they're potentially working out is literally it would be like a non-linear return. Let's just fucking put it that way. So yeah, I think my point being is like when I asked you, Mitch, earlier like how do you want to spend your time? I'm very comfortable with the way I'm spending my time. It's something, it took me 32 years to find my path in life, another five and a half to actually figure out if it's going to be a business and self-sustaining. And that's like, to some degree, I feel like I have a weight off my shoulders even though I have a fucking tremendous amount of pressure. Like I still have problems sleeping, like all kinds of dumb shit sometimes because I'm in my own fucking head. But it's what Patrick said. Patrick knows everybody. Patrick's like, dude, there's nobody else on the planet that I know that is more sure of what they want to do when they wake up than you. Like there's nothing else. It's not like I want to do something, like no. The only other thing is an extension of this, like when we had that incredible conversation with Daniel Ek, we get in the car and Patrick’s like, you need- this is why I fucking keep telling you, that you need to interview entrepreneurs because you get to the soul of the founder in a way that nobody else possibly can. He goes, that was incredible. Now we can't record it. Daniel Ek is a fucking public company CEO and all this other stuff. But he's just like that, you have some fucking weird superpower that you're not using. You have to fix this loop because you get to the soul of a founder unlike anybody else. So that's the only other extension. But that's just what we're doing when I call up Mitchell and we go for a fucking walk or he comes to Miami or I talk to you on the phone when I'm walking at night, like same fucking thing. It's just like let's record some of these because the stuff we're talking about, it's like it's not unique to us three. What you realize, it's like dude, there's a fucking- there's a million Davids on the fucking earth right now. There's a million all of us on the earth. There's 200, 300 million entrepreneurial personality types on the earth. We're so much more alike to each other than we are to the general population.

Mitchell Baldridge: And, I mean, you do the- you are perpetually prepared. So, the idea that you can only read so many 800-page books every week, one, or less, and it's a grind, but you can show up to a conversation with a guy like Daniel Ek and have a very interesting conversation that has the bedrock of knowledge of every book you've ever read, everything you ever know, and then the other bedrock of knowledge of like you're one of the top 1% experts in the world in podcasting, and then you start to- those are two- you have this foundational wild skill that no one else in the world has, and then add anything else on top of that and go talk to somebody, and it's going to be interesting.

David Senra: I appreciate that you said that, but I think it's really important, it's like, the way I live my life, I promise you, would be disgusting to some people, where it's like, hyper-focused on one thing, do it forever. I know a ton of people that would- and in many cases, they live lives which may be even more like fascinating in the sense that like they don't want to focus on one thing. They're very curious. They want to have ten businesses. That's what I mean. It's like it's got to be authentic to you. I don't want to run 10 businesses. I literally want to be- because the reason I keep going back to Disney, I was just going to republish, this is the second time I read the Disney book, I was just going to republish an old episode after I did the 800 page biography of his. But I'm like, I feel like a kindred spirit with this guy. Disney is smarter than me, more accomplished than I'll ever be, better talent. He's literally a one in a 10 million talent. I don't think that's me. He's had a massive impact, built the best media company in history, period. The way I felt a kindred spirit is like he had, he felt compelled to whatever he was doing- he didn't want to do something if he didn't feel he could be the best at it. And there's a story in that Bill Gates biography I mentioned earlier where like, I think at the time, he thought of either, I think a mathematician or a physicist, I can't remember which one. And he gets to Harvard and he's like, okay, I'm not better than that, I cannot be better than that guy at math or physics, so he's got to pick a different field.

Mitchell Baldridge: Even Balmer. He's like, I'm nothing to Balmer in math.

David Senra: And so, the point being is like, if that is your goal, Disney can't multitask. When Disney was working on Snow White, he was working on Snow White. When he's working on Disneyland, he's working on Disneyland. And so, if that's not your personality type, if that doesn't drive you, it drove him. I feel a kindred spirit. It drives me. But there's a ton of people that aren't- like Sam Zell, he just wanted to do shit that was interesting to him and he wound up being one of the best entrepreneurs ever. So there's multiple ways. He had, how many fucking businesses did that guy have? Like a million. So there's not one right way. It's just probably one right way for you or a one way that's righter than other ways for you. And that's the biggest thing. Like that's one of the benefits of my job. It's like I'm watching game tape all day on how these guys live their lives. That's why I'm not reading business books. I'm reading biographies. It's a study of their life. Work just happens to be a massive part of that. And then you're like, oh dude, life can be whatever you want it to be. I was having this conversation with my daughter. And what really made me, and I'm not like a- I'm not saying I don't care about school because it's not the right way, but like I was a terrible student. I skipped school. I went to a shitty college. It's like, I'm just like I was a juvenile delinquent kind of character. She's very different. She's like a lot better than me. But what I didn't like is she was underperforming her potential so much. And my thing is like the reason I'm pushing myself, it's like I don't want to get to the end of my life with like untapped potential. I want to ring fucking life dry. And so I made a deal with her, she was obsessed with Taylor Swift. I was like, listen, you- to get the presidential honor, the highest honor roll in her class, or her school, she had to get 95 or above in her classes. My daughter's wicked smart. And I'm like, dude, this isn't an intelligence issue. This is an effort issue. So I'll make you a deal. You want tickets to Taylor Swift that have cost more than my first car did. I don't believe in spoiling you, but if you show an effort for an entire quarter and you hit that list, and ensure you it's an effort thing, not a intelligence thing, I will get you tickets to Taylor Swift. And she just, she hit it. And I was like, I told you. And so what I was trying to explain to her, it's like the world is malleable. Like you're going to get whatever you want out of life. Really, we've been talking a lot about the quality of her decisions because in some cases she made a low quality decision, and she's dealing with the ramifications now. It's more in the social realm than it is in the academic realm. And I was like, that's a good- you're learning. I go, listen, you're upset now. You're learning the most valuable lesson you could ever learn, that the quality of your life is in direct relation to the quality of your decision making. And bad decisions have real fucking consequences. My cousin Jennifer made a bad decision. She decided that she tried heroin, and she gets addicted to heroin. And she has a son, and she left her son an orphan, or I guess he went with his dad. They were divorced or whatever. But she died at 27 years old from drugs. Like this is a bad decision. Your decisions have consequences, both good and bad. And I think that's the biggest thing, is like man, the world and life- When you read biographies, you realize, oh, your life is exactly what you make it. And it's based on decisions that you're actually making. And it's going to play out. It's going to play over, hopefully, if you survive long enough, multiple decades. And Disney’s case, he starts being an entrepreneur at 18. He's an entrepreneur until he's 66 or 65 when he dies. And you see, good decision, bad decision at the very beginning, lost control of his company. Good decision, pick a field he could be the best at. Good and bad decisions. His career is not like up and to the right. It's fucking valleys and peaks, valleys and peaks up until the last 10 years when he was kind of up and to the right the last 10 years. So I think that's important.

Eric Jorgenson: Should we call that a podcast? And everybody should go do something that's authentic to them. David, you can get back to reading. Mitchell can go start an RIA. I can go back to writing. Yeah, I can go back to helping people manifest the books that they love.

David Senra: Have you made any announcement on when your next book is coming?

Eric Jorgenson: No. There's no deadline on excellence, as I like to say. So I'm chipping away, I'm refining, I’m working on putting the final pieces together. But it's getting there. I'm excited about it.

David Senra: I think it's, you have a high bar to pass, but it's going to be incredible.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think, for all the like awareness we have of Elon, he's still understudied as an entrepreneur. And like the lessons that he pioneered and how he's inspiring the whole next generation of much more ambitious entrepreneurs and the playbook that he's going to show them I think is going to produce some crazy stuff. I'm very excited about it.

David Senra: Very cool. All right, so we're doing this, what, once a quarter, once, twice a year? What are we doing?

Eric Jorgenson: I like quarterly. I like quarterly if we can do it.

BooksEric JorgensonJuly 30, 2024Podcast, Founders, BookComment