Founders

What I learned from reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami. 

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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(3:01) No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.

(4:00) Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

(4:00) The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.

(10:00) You can't fake passion — someone else, that really loves the job, will out run you. Somebody else sitting in some other MBA program has a deep passion for whatever career path you're going down, and they are going to smoke you if you don't have it yourself.  — Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love 

(12:00) What’s crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you’ve set for yourself. Failure to reach that bar is not something you can easily explain away.

(14:00) Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.  — David Ogilvy

(16:00) If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting. — Jeff Bezos

(16:00) So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets.

(19:00) Failure was not an option. I had to give it everything I had.

(19:00) My only strength has always been the fact that I work hard and can take a lot physically. I’m more a workhorse than a racehorse.

(22:00) I was more interested in having finished it than in whether or not it would ever see the light of day.

(26:00) I’m the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do.

(29:00) The entrenched professional is always going to resist far longer than the private consumer. — James Dyson

(34:00) You really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing,

(37:00) You can’t please everybody. If one out of ten enjoyed the place and said he’d come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it the other way, it didn’t matter if nine out of ten didn’t like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business.

(40:00) The reason we're surprised is that we underestimate the cumulative effect of work. Writing a page a day doesn't sound like much, but if you do it every day you'll write a book a year. That's the key: consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing. — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(41:00) When you follow what you are intensely interested in this strange convergence happens where you're working all the time and it feels like you're never working. — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(43:00) No matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it’s an activity he doesn’t really care for, he won’t keep it up for long.

(44:00) Nobody ever recommended or even desired that I be a novelist—in fact, some tried to stop me. I had the idea to be one, and that’s what I did.

(45:00) I decided who I want to be, and that is who I am. — Coco Chanel

(46:00) Once, I interviewed an Olympic runner.  I asked him, “Does a runner at your level ever feel like you’d rather not run today, like you don’t want to run and would rather just sleep in?” He stared at me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, “Of course. All the time!”

(47:00) I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that he must always have "an atmosphere of good feeling" around him before he can do his work. There are such men. And in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance on "feeling," they are failures. Not only are they business failures; they are character failures also; it is as if their bones never attained a sufficient degree of hardness to enable them to stand on their own feet. There is altogether too much reliance on good feeling in our business organizations. —  Henry Ford’s Autobiography

(50:00) If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I’d never run again.

(51:00) Focus and endurance can be acquired and sharpened through training.

(54:00) Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce: How the Sun Rose on Silicon Valley by Tom Wolfe. 

Read The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company by Michael Malone with me. 

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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(1:00) America is today in the midst of a great technological revolution. With the advent of the silicon chip, information processing, and communications, the national economy have been strikingly altered. The new technology is changing how we live, how we work, how we think. The revolution didn't just happen; it was engineered by a small number of people. Collectively, they engineered Tomorrow. Foremost among them is Robert Noyce.

(2:00) Steve Jobs on Robert Noyce: “He was one of the giants in this valley who provided the model and inspiration for everything we wanted to become. He was the ultimate inventor. The ultimate rebel. The ultimate entrepreneur.”

(4:00) When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.  — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(7:00) Bob Noyce had a passion for the scientific grind.

(10:00) He had a profound and baffling self-confidence.

(15:00) They called Shockley’s personalty reverse charisma. —  Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age by Joel Shurkin. (Founders #165)

(25:00) What the beginning of an industry looks like: Anywhere from 50 to 90% of the transistors produced would turn out to be defective.

(33:00) Young engineers were giving themselves over to a new technology as if it were a religious mission.

(41:00) Noyce's idea was that every employee should feel that he could go as far and as fast in this industry as his talent would take him. He didn't want any employee to look at the structure of Intel and see a complex set of hurdles.

(43:00) This wasn't a corporation. It was a congregation.

(43:00) There were sermons. At Intel everyone, Noyce included, was expected to attend sessions on "the Intel Culture." At these sessions the principles by which the company was run were spelled out and discussed.

(45:00) If you're ambitious and hardworking, you want to be told how you're doing.

(45:00) In Noyce's view, most of the young hotshots who were coming to work for Intel had never had the benefit of honest grades in their lives. In the late 1960s and early 1970s college faculties had been under pressure to give all students passing marks so they wouldn't have to go off to Vietnam, and they had caved in, until the entire grading system was meaningless. At Intel they would learn what measuring up meant.

(49:00) When you are trying to convince an audience to accept a radical innovation, almost by definition the idea is so far from the status quo that many people simply cannot get their minds around it. They quickly discovered that 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 was a gimmick. Their solution? The market had to be educated. At one point, Intel was conducting more seminars and workshops on how to use the microprocessor than the local junior collage’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. It worked.  —  The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company by Michael Malone. 

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The House of Arnault by Brad Stone and Angelina Rascouet. 

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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Build relationships with other founders, investors, and executives at a Founders Event

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(3:00) While other politicians were content to get their information from a scattering of newspapers, he devoured whole shelves.  — Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden. (Founders #320)

(7:00) Arnault had understood before anyone else that it was a true industry. — The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai. (Founders #296)

(9:00) Arnault is an iron fist in an iron glove. — The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai.

The public conception of Sam as a good ol’ country boy wearing a soft velvet glove misses the fact that there’s an iron fist within. —  Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance Trimble.

(12:00) People often ask me, “When are you going to retire?” And I answer, “Retire from what?” I’ve never worked a day in my life. Everything I’ve done has been because I’ve loved doing it, because it was enthralling. — Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269)

(16:00) “I am not interested in managing a clothing factory. What you need, and I would like to run, is a craftsman’s workshop, in which we would recruit the very best people in the trade, to reestablish in Paris a salon for the greatest luxury and the highest standards of workmanship. It will cost a great deal of money and entail much risk.” — Christian Dior to Marcel Boussac

(17:00) Arnault believed that luxury brands could be larger than anyone at the time imagined.

(20:00) Arnault said this 35 years ago: “My ten-year objective is that LVMH's leading position in the world be further strengthened in the luxury goods sector. I believe that there will be fewer and fewer brand names capable of retaining a worldwide presence and that those of our group will be among them as we will provide them with the means for growth.”

(25:00) There are huge advantages for the early birds. When you're an early bird, there's a model that I call surfing—when a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go a long, long time. But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in shallows. But people get long runs when they're right on the edge of the wave, whether it's Microsoft or Intel or all kinds of people, including National Cash Register. Surfing is a very powerful model.”  —  the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(25:00) One thing I learned from having dinner with Charlie was the importance of getting into a great business and STAYING in it. There’s a tendency in human nature to mess up a good thing because of an inability to sit still.

(25:00) The incredible career of Les Schwab: Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! by Les Schwab. (Founders #330)

(30:00) Dior in his autobiography: It is widely, and quite erroneously, believed that when the house of Christian Dior was launched, enormous sums were spent on publicity: on the contrary in our first modest budget not a single penny was allotted to it. I trusted to the quality of my dresses to get Christian Dior talked about. Moreover, the relative secrecy in which I chose to work aroused a positive whispering campaign, which was excellent (free) propaganda. Gossip, malicious rumours even, are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world.

(31:00) Munger: “There are actually businesses that you will find a few times in a lifetime, where any manager could raise the return enormously just by raising prices-and yet they haven't done it. So they have huge untapped pricing power that they're not using. That is the ultimate no-brainer. Disney found that it could raise those prices a lot and the attendance stayed right up. So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells came from just raising prices at Disneyland and Disneyworld and through video cassette sales of classic animated movies. At Berkshire Hathaway, Warren and I raised the prices of See's candy a little faster than others might have. And, of course, we invested in Coca-Cola-which had some untapped pricing power.”

— Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin

(33:00) The benefits Arnault receives from owning commercial real estate: He makes money from his own stores, from leasing space to rivals—and from the appreciation of premium real estate. When LVMH buys a building, it takes the best storefronts for its own brands and often asks rivals to move out when their leases expire.

(35:00) Arnault is all about details. He has 200,000 employees and he’s paying attention to details about landscaping in the Miami Design District.

(36:00) If we lose the detail, we lose everything. — Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #347)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance Trimble. 

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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Build relationships with other founders, investors, and executives at a Founders Event

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(2:30) Sam Walton built his business on a very simple idea: Buy cheap. Sell low. Every day. With a smile.

(2:30) People confuse a simple idea with an ordinary person. Sam Walton was no ordinary person.

(4:30) Traits Sam Walton had his entire life: A sense of duty. Extreme discipline. Unbelievable levels of endurance.

(5:30) His dad taught him the secret to life was work, work, work.

(5:30) Sam felt the world was something he could conquer.

(6:30) The Great Depression was a big leveler of people. Sam chose to rise above it. He was determined to be a success.

(11:30) You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

(15:30) He was crazy about satisfying customers.

(17:30) The lawyer saw Sam clenching and unclenching his fists, staring at his hands. Sam straightened up. “No,” he said. “I’m not whipped. I found Newport, and I found the store. I can find another good town and another store. Just wait and see!”

(21:30) Sometimes hardship can enlighten and inspire. This was the case for Sam Walton as he put in hours and hours of driving Ozark mountain roads in the winter of 1950. But that same boredom and frustration triggered ideas that eventually brought him billions of dollars. (This is when he learns to fly small planes. Walmart never happens otherwise)

(33:30) At the start we were so amateurish and so far behind K Mart just ignored us. They let us stay out here, while we developed and learned our business. They gave us a 10 year period to grow.

(37:30) And so how dedicated was Sam to keeping costs low? Walmart is called that in part because fewer letters means cheaper signs on the outside of a store.

(42:30) Sam Walton is tough, loves a good fight, and protects his territory.

(43:30) His tactics later prompted them to describe Sam as a modern-day combination of Vince Lombardi (insisting on solid execution of the basics) and General George S. Patton. (A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.)

(43:30) Hardly a day has passed without Sam reminding an employee: "Remember Wal-Mart's Golden Rule: Number one, the customer Is always right; number two, if the customer isn't right, refer to rule number one.”

(46:30) The early days of Wal-Mart were like the early days of Disneyland: "You asked the question, What was your process like?' I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the 'Walt Period' of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park, a Disneyland.

So we're in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything.

We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions. — Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #347)

(1:04:30) Sam Walton said he took more ideas from Sol Price than any other person. —Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary by Robert Price. (Founders #304)

(1:07:30) Nothing in the world is cheaper than a good idea without any action behind it.

(1:07:30)  Sam Walton: Made In America  (Founders #234)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading How To Be Rich by J. Paul Getty. 

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Build relationships with other founders, investors, and executives at a Founders Event

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"Learning from history is a form of leverage." — Charlie Munger. 

Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

You can also ask SAGE (the Founders Notes AI assistant) any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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(2:00) My father was a self-made man who had known extreme poverty in his youth and had a practically limitless capacity for hard work.

(6:00) I acted as my own geologist, legal advisor, drilling superintendent, explosives expert, roughneck and roustabout.

(8:00) Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) 

(12:00) Control as much of your business as possible. You don’t want to have to worry about what is going on in the other guy’s shop.

(20:00) Optimism is a moral duty. Pessimism aborts opportunity.

(21:00) I studied the lives of great men and women. And I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.

(22:00) 98 percent of our attention was devoted to the task at hand. We are believers in Carlyle's Prescription, that the job a man is to do is the job at hand and not see what lies dimly in the distance. — Charlie Munger

(27:00) Entrepreneurs want to create their own security.

(34:00) Example is the best means to instruct or inspire others.

(37:00) Long orders, which require much time to prepare, to read and to understand are the enemies of speed. Napoleon could issue orders of few sentences which clearly expressed his intentions and required little time to issue and to understand.

(38:00) A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin. (Founders #202) 

(41:00) Two principles he repeats:

Be where the work is happening.

Get rid of bureaucracy.

(43:00) Years ago, businessmen automatically kept administrative overhead to an absolute minimum. The present day trend is in exactly the opposite direction. The modern business mania is to build greater and ever greater paper shuffling empires.

(44:00) Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going!by Les Schwab (Founders #330) 

(46:00) The primary function of management is to obtain results through people.

(50:00) the truly great leader views reverses, calmly and coolly. He is fully aware that they are bound to occur occasionally and he refuses to be unnerved by them.

(51:00) There is always something wrong everywhere.

(51:00) Don't interrupt the compounding. It’s all about the long term. You should keep a fortress of cash, reinvest in your business, and use debt sparingly. Doing so will help you survive to reap the long-term benefits of your business.

(54:00) You’ll go much farther if you stop trying to look and act and think like everyone else.

(55:00) The line that divides majority opinion from mass hysteria is often so fine as to be virtually invisible.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading As I See it: The Autobiography of J. Paul Getty by J. Paul Getty. 

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Build relationships with other founders, investors, and executives at a Founders Event

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"Learning from history is a form of leverage." — Charlie Munger. 

Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

You can also ask SAGE (the Founders Notes AI assistant) any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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(2:00) Vice President Nelson Rockefeller did me the honor of saying that my entrepreneurial success in the oil business put me on a par with his grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Sr. My comment was that comparing me to John D. Sr. was like comparing a sparrow to an eagle. My words were not inspired by modesty, but by facts.

(8:00) On his dad sending him to military school: The strict, regimented environment was good for me.

(20:00) Entrepreneurs are people whose mind and energies are constantly being used at peak capacity.

(28:00) Advice for fellow entrepreneurs: Don’t be like William Randolph Hearst. Reinvest in your business. Keep a fortress of cash. Use debt sparingly.

(30:00) The great entrepreneurs I know have these traits:

-Devoted their minds and energy to building productive enterprises (over the long term)

-They concentrated on expanding

-They concentrated on making their companies more efficient 

-They reinvest heavily in to their business (which can help efficiency and expansion )

-Always personally involved in their business

-They know their business down to the ground

-They have an innate capacity to think on a large scale

(34:00) Five wives can't all be wrong. As one of them told me after our divorce: "You're a great friend, Paul—but as a husband, you're impossible.”

(36:00) My business interests created problems [in my marriages]. I was drilling several wells and it was by no means uncommon for me to stay on the sites overnight or even for two days or more.

(38:00) A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature and one of the more pronounced motivating forces in my life.  Once I have committed myself to any undertaking, a powerful inner drive cuts in and I become intent on seeing it through to a satisfactory conclusion.

(38:00) My own nature is such that I am able to concentrate on whatever is before me and am not easily distracted from it.

(42:00) There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to. — The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

(47:00) [On transforming his company for the Saudi Arabia deal] The list of things to be done was awesome, but those things were done.

(53:00) Churchill to his son: Your idle and lazy life is very offensive to me. You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence.

(54:00) My father's influence and example where the principle forces that formed my nature and character.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading about Hans Wilsdorf and the founding of Rolex.

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Build relationships at the Founders Conference on July 29th-July 31st in Scotts Valley, California

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"Learning from history is a form of leverage." — Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand.

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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(0:01) At the age of twelve I was an orphan.

(1:00) My uncles made me become self-reliant very early in life. Looking back, I believe that it is to this, that much of my success is due.

(9:00) The idea of wearing a watch on one's wrist was thought to be contrary to the conception of masculinity.

(10:00) Prior to World War 1 wristwatches for men did not exist.

(11:00) Business is problems. The best companies are just effective problem solving machines.

(12:00) My personal opinion is that pocket watches will almost completely disappear and that wrist watches will replace them definitively! I am not mistaken in this opinion and you will see that I am right." —Hans Wilsdorf, 1914

(14:00) The highest order bit is belief: I had very early realized the manifold possibilities of the wristlet watch and, feeling sure that they would materialize in time, I resolutely went on my way. Rolex was thus able to get several years ahead of other watch manufacturers who persisted in clinging to the pocket watch as their chief product.

(16:00) Clearly, the companies for whom the economics of twenty-four-hour news would have made the most sense were the Big Three broadcasters. They already had most of what was needed— studios, bureaus, reporters, anchors almost everything but a belief in cable.   —  Ted Turner's Autobiography (Founders #327)

(20:00) Business Breakdowns #65 Rolex: Timeless Excellence

(27:00)   Rolex was effectively the first watch brand to have real marketing dollars put behind a watch. Rolex did this in a concentrated way and they've continued to do it in a way that is simply just unmatched by others in their industry.

(28:00) It's tempting during recession to cut back on consumer advertising. At the start of each of the last three recessions, the growth of spending on such advertising had slowed by an average of 27 percent. But consumer studies of those recessions had showed that companies that didn't cut their ads had, in the recovery, captured the most market share. So we didn't cut our ad budget. In fact, we raised it to gain brand recognition, which continued advertising sustains. — Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184)

(32:00) Social proof is a form of leverage. — Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(34:00) What really matters is Hans understood the opportunity better than anybody else, and invested heavily in developing the technology to bring his ideas to fruition.

(35:00) On keeping the main thing the main thing for decades: In developing and extending my business, I have always had certain aims in mind, a course from which I never deviated.

(41:00) Rolex wanted to only be associated with the best. They ran an ad with the headline: Men who guide the destinies of the world, where Rolex watches.

(43:00) Opportunity creates more opportunites. The Oyster unlocked the opportunity for the Perpetual.

(44:00) The easier you make something for the customer, the larger the market gets: “My vision was to create the first fully packaged computer. We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers, who knew how to buy transformers and keyboards. For every one of them there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run.” — Steve Jobs

(48:00) More sources:

Rolex Jubilee: Vade Mecum by Hans Wilsdorf

Rolex Magazine: The Hans Wilsdorf Years

Hodinkee: Inside the Manufacture. Going Where Few Have Gone Before -- Inside All Four Rolex Manufacturing Facilities 

Vintage Watchstraps Blog: Hans Wilsdorf and Rolex

Business Breakdowns #65 Rolex: Timeless Excellence

Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands by Jean Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien 

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo 

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Come build relationships at the Founders Conference on July 29th-July 31st in Scotts Valley, California

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Learning from history is a form of leverage. —Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the super power to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand.

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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(1:00) You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology—not the other way around.  —Steve Jobs in 1997

(6:00) Why should I care = What does this do for me?

(6:00) The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy.  (Founders #348)

(7:00) Easy to understand, easy to spread.

(8:00) An American Saga: Juan Trippe and His Pan Am Empire by Robert Daley 

(8:00) The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

(9:00)  love how crystal clear this value proposition is. Instead of 3 days driving on dangerous road, it’s 1.5 hours by air. That’s a 48x improvement in time savings. This allows the company to work so much faster. The best B2B companies save businesses time.

(10:00) Great Advertising Founders Episodes:

Albert Lasker (Founders #206)

Claude Hopkins (Founders #170 and #207)

David Ogilvy (Founders #82, 89, 169, 189, 306, 343) 

(12:00) Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatever. (That is the most important sentence in this book. Read it again.) — Ogilvy on Advertising 

(13:00) Repeat, repeat, repeat. Human nature has a flaw. We forget that we forget.

(19:00) Start with the problem. Do not start talking about your product before you describe the problem your product solves.

(23:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)

(27:00) Being so well known has advantages of scale—what you might call an informational advantage.

Psychologists use the term social proof. We are all influenced-subconsciously and, to some extent, consciously-by what we see others do and approve.

Therefore, if everybody's buying something, we think it's better.

We don't like to be the one guy who's out of step.

The social proof phenomenon, which comes right out of psychology, gives huge advantages to scale.

—  the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger (Founders #329)

(29:00) Marketing is theatre.

(32:00) Belief is irresistible. — Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.  (Founders #186)

(35:00) I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.

And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

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If you want me to speak at your company go here. 

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall. 

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Come build relationships at the Founders Conference on July 29th-July 31st in Scotts Valley, California 

----

Learning from history is a form of leverage. —Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the super power to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand.

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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(1:30) Steve wanted Apple to make a product that was simply amazing and amazingly simple.

(3:00) If you don’t zero in on your bureaucracy every so often, you will naturally build in layers. You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it. Period. Without even knowing it. So you always have to be looking to eliminate it.  — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

(5:00) Steve was always easy to understand. He would either approve a demo, or he would request to see something different next time. Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say, often with highly detailed specificity, what he wanted to happen next.  — Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281)

(7:00) Watch this video. Andy Miller tells GREAT Steve Jobs stories. 

(10:00) Many are familiar with the re-emergence of Apple. They may not be as familiar with the fact that it has few, if any parallels.
When did a founder ever return to the company from which he had been rudely rejected to engineer a turnaround as complete and spectacular as Apple's? While turnarounds are difficult in any circumstances they are doubly difficult in a technology company. It is not too much of a stretch to say that Steve founded Apple not once but twice. And the second time he was alone. 

—  Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Appleby Michael Moritz.

(15:00) If the ultimate decision maker is involved every step of the way the quality of the work increases.

(20:00) "You asked the question, What was your process like?' I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the 'Walt Period' of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park, a Disneyland. So we're in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything. We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions." — Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #347)

(23:00) The further you get away from 1 the more complexity you invite in.

(25:00) Your goal: A single idea expressed clearly.

(26:00) Jony Ive: Steve was the most focused person I’ve met in my life

(28:00) Editing your thinking is an act of service.

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Learning from history is a form of leverage. —Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the super power to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand.

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. 

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Relationships run the world: Build relationships at Founders events

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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Episode Outline: 

Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention play well when everyone is watching.

It's hard, but it's fair. I live by those words. 

To this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing, and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche. People talk about my work ethic as a player, but they don't understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me.

You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared. 

Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. 

I knew going against the grain was just part of the process.

The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be.

I would wake up in the morning thinking: How am I going to attack today?

I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long.

In all honesty, I don't know what's ahead. If you ask me what I'm going to do in five years, I can't tell you. This moment? Now that's a different story. I know what I'm doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what's ahead. I'm so connected to this moment that I don't make assumptions about what might come next, because I don't want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen, or might not happen, you start limiting the potential outcomes. 

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Relationships run the world. Come build relationships with high value people at a Founders Event. 

What I learned from reading The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy. 

----

Relationships run the world: Build relationships at Founders events

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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Mention you heard about Scribe on Founders and they will give you these discounts: 

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Vesto helps you see all of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business accounts from one dashboard. Tell Ben (the founder of Vesto) that David sent you and you will get $500 off. 

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Episode Outline: 

1. Ivar was charismatic. His charisma was not natural. Ivar spent hours every day just preparing to talk. He practiced his lines for hours like great actors do.

2. Ivar’s first pitch was simple, easy to understand, and legitimate: By investing in Swedish Match, Americans could earn profits from a monopoly abroad.

3. Joseph Duveen noticed that Europe had plenty of art and America had plenty of money, and his entire astonishing career was the product of that simple observation. — The Days of Duveen by S.N. Behrman.  (Founders #339 Joseph Duveen: Robber Baron Art Dealer)

4. Ivar studied Rockefeller and Carnegie: Ivar's plan was to limit competition and increase profits by securing a monopoly on match sales throughout the world, mimicking the nineteenth century oil, sugar, and steel trusts.

5. When investors were manic, they would purchase just about anything. But during the panic that inevitably followed mania, the opposite was true. No one would buy.

6. The problem isn’t getting rich. The problem is staying sane. — Charlie Munger

7. Ivar understood human psychology. If something is limited and hard to get to that increases desire. This works for both products (like a Ferrari) and people (celebrities). Ivar was becoming a business celebrity.

8.  I’ve never believed in risking what my family and friends have and need in order to pursue what they don't have and don't need. — The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227)

9. Great ideas are simple ideas: Ivar hooked Durant with his simple, brilliant idea: government loans in exchange for match monopolies.

10. Ivar wrote to his parents, "I cannot believe that I am intended to spend my life making money for second-rate people. I shall bring American methods back home. Wait and see - I shall do great things. I'm bursting with ideas. I am only wondering which to carry out first."

11. Ivar’s network of companies was far too complex for anyone to understand: It was like a corporate family tree from hell, and it extended into obscurity.

12. “Victory in our industry is spelled survival.”   —Steve Jobs

13. Ivar's financial statements were sloppy and incomplete. Yet investors nevertheless clamored to buy his securities.

14. As more cash flowed in the questions went away. This is why Ponzi like schemes can last so long. People don’t want to believe. They don’t want the cash to stop.

15. A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222)

16.  A summary of Charlie Munger on incentives:

1. We all underestimate the power of incentives.
2. Never, ever think about anything else before the power of incentives.
3. The most important rule: get the incentives right.

17. This is nuts! Fake phones and hired actors!

Next to the desk was a table with three telephones. The middle phone was a dummy, a non-working phone that Ivar could cause to ring by stepping on a button under the desk. That button was a way to speed the exit of talkative visitors who were staying too long. Ivar also used the middle phone to impress his supporters. When Percy Rockefeller visited Ivar pretended to receive calls from various European government officials, including Mussolini and Stalin. That evening, Ivar threw a lavish party and introduced Rockefeller to numerous "ambassadors" from various countries, who actually were movie extras he had hired for the night.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. 

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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Vesto helps you see all of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business accounts from one dashboard. Tell Ben (the founder of Vesto) that David sent you and you will get $500 off. 

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(8:00) When in 1955 we heard that Disney had opened an amusement park under his own name, it appeared certain that we could not look forward to anything new from Mr. Disney.

We were quite wrong.

He had, instead, created his masterpiece.

(13:00) This may be the greatest product launch of all time: He had run eight months of his television program. He hadn't named his new show Walt Disney Presents or The Wonderful World of Walt Disney.

It was called simply Disneyland, and every weekly episode was an advertisement for the still unborn park.

(15:00) Disneyland is the extension of the powerful personality of one man.

(15:00) The creation of Disneyland was Walt Disney’s personal taste in physical form.

(24:00) How strange that the boss would just drop it. Walt doesn’t give up. So he must have something else in mind.

(26:00) Their mediocrity is my opportunity. It is an opportunity because there is so much room for improvement.

(36:00) Roy Disney never lost his calm understanding that the company's prosperity rested not on the rock of conventional business practices, but on the churning, extravagant, perfectionist imagination of his younger brother.

(41:00) Walt Disney’s decision to not relinquish his TV rights to United Artists was made in 1936. This decision paid dividends 20 years later. Hold on. Technology -- developed by other people -- constantly benefited Disney's business. Many such cases in the history of entrepreneurship.

(43:00) Walt Disney did not look around. He looked in. He looked in to his personal taste and built a business that was authentic to himself.

(54:00) "You asked the question, What was your process like?' I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the 'Walt Period' of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes.

We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before.

Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park, a Disneyland.

So we're in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything.

We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions."

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler. 

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders 

You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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Join this email list if you want early access to any Founders live events and conferences

Join my personal email list if you want me to email you my top ten highlights from every book I read 

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(2:00) Disney’s key traits were raw ingenuity combined with sadistic determination.

(3:00) I had spent a lifetime with a frustrated, and often unemployed man, who hated anybody who was successful. 

— Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

(6:00) Disney put excelence before any other consideration.

(11:00) Maybe the most important thing anyone ever said to him: You’re crazy to be a professor she told Ted. What you really want to do is draw. Ted’s notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him. Here was a man who could draw such pictures. He should earn a living doing that. 

— Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #161)

(14:00) A quote about Edwin Land that would apply to Walt Disney too:

Land had learned early on that total engrossment was the best way for him to work. He strongly believed that this kind of concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others. Late in his career, Land recalled that his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.”  A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein. (Founders #134)

(15:00) My parents objected strenuously, but I finally talked them into letting me join up as a Red Cross ambulance driver. I had to lie about my age, of course. 

In my company was another fellow who had lied about his age to get in. He was regarded as a strange duck, because whenever we had time off and went out on the town to chase girls, he stayed in camp drawing pictures.

His name was Walt Disney.

Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc. (Founders #293)

(20:00) Walt Disney had big dreams. He had outsized aspirations.

(22:00) A quote from Edwin Land that would apply to Walt Disney too: My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do.

(24:00) Walt Disney seldom dabbled. Everyone who knew him remarked on his intensity; when something intrigued him, he focused himself entirely as if it were the only thing that mattered.

(29:00) He had the drive and ambition of 10 million men.

(29:00) I'm going to sit tight. I have the greatest opportunity I've ever had, and I'm in it for everything.

(31:00) He seemed confident beyond any logical reason for him to be so. It appeared that nothing discouraged him.

(31:00) You have to take the hard knocks with the good breaks in life.

(32:00) Nothing wrong with my aim, just gotta change the target. — Jay Z

(35:00) He sincerely wanted to be counted among the best in his craft.

(43:00) He didn't want to just be another animation producer. He wanted to be the king of animation. Disney believed that quality was his only real advantage.

(47:00) Walt Disney wanted domination. Domination that would make his position unassailable.

(49:00) Disney was always trying to make something he could be proud of.

(50:00) We have a habit of divine discontent with our performance. It is an antidote to smugness.

— Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness: Being Very Good Is No Good,You Have to Be Very, Very, Very, Very, Very Good by David Ogilvy and Ogivly & Mather.  (Founders #343)

(53:00) While it is easy, of course, for me to celebrate my doggedness now and say that it is all you need to succeed, the truth is that it demoralized me terribly. I would crawl into the house every night covered in dust after a long day, exhausted and depressed because that day's cyclone had not worked. There were times when I thought it would never work, that I would keep on making cyclone after cyclone, never going forwards, never going backwards, until I died.

— Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)

(56:00) He doesn't place a premium on collecting friends or socializing: "I don't believe in 50 friends. I believe in a smaller number. Nor do I care about society events. It's the most senseless use of time. When I do go out, from time to time, it's just to convince myself again that I'm not missing a lot."

— The Red Bull Story by Wolfgang Fürweger (Founders #333)

(1:02:00) Steve was at the center of all the circles.

He made all the important product decisions.

From my standpoint, as an individual programmer, demoing to Steve was like visiting the Oracle of Delphi.

The demo was my question. Steve's response was the answer.

While the pronouncements from the Greek Oracle often came in the form of confusing riddles, that wasn't true with Steve.

He was always easy to understand.

He would either approve a demo, or he would request to see something different next time.

Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say, often with highly detailed specificity, what he wanted to happen next.

He was always trying to ensure the products were as intuitive and straightforward as possible, and he was willing to invest his own time, effort, and influence to see that they were.

Through looking at demos, asking for specific changes, then reviewing the changed work again later on and giving a final approval before we could ship, Steve could make a product turn out like he wanted.

Much like the Greek Oracle, Steve foretold the future.

— Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281)

(1:07:00) He griped that when he hired veteran animators he had to “put up with their Goddamn poor working habits from doing cheap pictures.” He believed it was easier to start from scratch with young art students and indoctrinate them in the Disney system.

(1:15:00) I don’t want to be relagated to the cartoon medium. We have worlds to conquer here.

(1:17:00) Advice Henry Ford gave Walt Disney about selling his company: If you sell any of it you should sell all of it.

(1:23:00) He kept a slogan pasted inside of his hat: You can’t top pigs with pigs. (A reminder that we have to keep blazing new trails.)

(1:25:00) Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow.

(1:33:00) It is the detail. If we lose the detail, we lose it all.

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Get access to Founders Notes 

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

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(0:01) George Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in the most: himself.

(1:00) George Lucas is the Thomas Edison of the modern film industry.

(1:30) A list of biographies written by Brian Jay Jones

(6:00) Elon Musk interviewed by Kevin Rose

(10:15) How many people think the solution to gaining quality control, improving fiscal responsibility, and stimulating technological innovation is to start their own special-effects company? But that’s what he did.

(17:00) When I finally discovered film, I really fell madly in love with it. I ate it. I slept it. 24 hours a day. There was no going back.

(18:00) Those on the margins often come to control the center. (Game of Thrones)

(21:00) As soon as I made my first film, I thought, Hey, I’m good at this. I know how to do this. From then on, I’ve never questioned it.

(23:00) He was becoming increasingly cranky about the idea of working with others and preferred doing everything himself.

(34:00) Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

(42:00) The film Easy Rider was made for $350,000. It grossed over $60 million at the box office.

(45:00) The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233)

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95)

Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing by Randall Stross. (Founders #77)

(47:00) What we’re striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released, and be completely free. That’s very hard to do in the world of business. You have to have the money in order to have the power to be free.

(49:00) You should reject the status quo and pursue freedom.

(49:00) People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. They’re people in cages with open doors.

(51:00) Stay small. Be the best. Don’t lose any money.

(59:00) That was a very dark period for me. We were in dire financial strait. I turned that down [directing someone else’s movie] at my bleakest point, when I was in debt to my parents, in debt to Francis Coppola, in debt to my agent; I was so far in debt I thought I’d never get out. It took years to get from my first film to my second film, banging on doors, trying to get people to give me a chance. Writing, struggling, with no money in the bank… getting little jobs, eking out a living. Trying to stay alive, and pushing a script that nobody wanted.

(1:02:00) “Opening this new restaurant might be the worst mistake I've ever made."

Stanley [Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus] set his martini down, looked me in the eye, and said, "So you made a mistake. You need to understand something important. And listen to me carefully: The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled."

His words remained with me through the night. I repeated them over and over to myself, and it led to a turning point in the way I approached business.

Stanley's lesson reminded me of something my grandfather Irving Harris had always told me:

“The definition of business is problems."

His philosophy came down to a simple fact of business life: success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively.

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. 

(1:05:00) My thing about art is that I don’t like the word art because it means pretension and bullshit, and I equate those two directly. I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m a craftsman. I don’t make a work of art; I make a movie.

(1:06:00) I know how good I am. American Graffiti is successful because it came entirely from my head. It was my concept. And that’s the only way I can work.

(1:09:00) Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281)

(1:21:00) The budget for Star Wars was $11 million. In brought in $775 million at the box office alone!

(1:25:00) Steven Spielberg made over $40 million from the original Star Wars. Spielberg gave Lucas 2.5% of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Lucas gave Spielberg 2.5% of Star Wars. That to 2.5% would earn Spielberg more than $40 million over the next four decades.

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What I learned from reading Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. 

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You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

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What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

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Episode Outline: 

Whatever is there, he makes it work.

Spielberg once defined his approach to filmmaking by declaring, "I am the audience."

"He said, 'I want to be a director.' And I said, 'Well, if you want to be a director, you've gotta start at the bottom, you gotta be a gofer and work your way up.' He said, 'No, Dad. The first picture I do, I'm going to be a director.' And he was. That blew my mind. That takes guts."

One of his boyhood friends recalls Spielberg saying "he could envision himself going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar and thanking the Academy.” He was twelve.

He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own.

Spielberg remained essentially an autodidact. Spielberg followed his own eccentric path to a professional directing career. Universal Studios, in effect, was Spielberg's film school. Giving him an education that, paradoxically, was both more personal and more conventional than he would have received in an academic environment. Spielberg devised what amounted to his own private tutorial program at Universal, immersing himself in the aspects of filmmaking he found most crucial to his development.

At the time he came to Hollywood, generations of nepotism had made the studios terminally inbred and unwelcoming to newcomers. The studio system, long under siege from television, falling box-office receipts, and skyrocketing costs, was in a state of impending collapse.

When Steven was very discouraged trying to sell a script and break in, he always had a positive, forward motion, whatever he may have been suffering inside.

In the two decades since Star Wars and Close Encounters were released, science-fiction films have accounted for half of the top twenty box-office hits. But before George Lucas and Spielberg revived the genre there was no real appetite at the studios for science fiction. The conventional wisdom was science-fiction films never make money.

Your children love you. They want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? We have a few special years with our children, when they're the ones who want us around. So fast, it’s a few years, then it's over. You are not being careful. And you are missing it.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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What I learned from reading Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino. 

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I need some unique ideas on how to find new customers. What advice do you have for me?

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How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me more ideas about how to avoid competition from Peter Thiel?

Have any of history's greatest founders regretted selling their company?

What is the best way to fire a bad employee?

How did Andrew Carnegie know what to focus on?

Why was Jay Gould so smart?

What was the biggest unlock for Henry Ford?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffetts best ideas?

If Charlie Munger had a top 10 rules for life what do you think those rules would be?

What did Charlie Munger say about building durable companies that last?

Tell me about Cornelius Vanderbilt. How did he make his money?

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(9:00) Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive.

(14:00) On the ride home, even if I didn't have questions, my parents would talk about the movie we had just seen. These are some of my fondest memories.

(14:00) He has a comprehensive database of the history of movies in his head.

(17:00) The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron (Founders #311)

(25:00) Robert Rodriguez interviews Quentin Tarantino in the Director’s Chair

(26:00) Like most men who never knew their father, Bill collected father figures. (Kill Bill 2)

(27:00) When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, No, I went to films.

(29:00) Invest Like the Best #348 Patrick and John Collision 

(31:00) Tarantino made his own Founders Notes [Comparinig himself and another director] Nor did he keep scrapbooks, make notes, and keep files on index cards of all the movies he saw growing up like I did.

(32:00) Napoleon and Modern War by Napoleon and Col. Lanza. (Founders #337)

(41:00) On Spielberg and greatness: Steven Spielberg's Jaws is one of the greatest movies ever made, because one of the most talented filmmakers who ever lived, when he was young, got his hands on the right material, knew what he had, and killed himself to deliver the best version of that movie he could.

(46:00) I've always approached my cinema with a fearlessness of the eventual outcome. A fearlessness that comes to me naturally.

(51:00) The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey’s Bay Hustle by Jacquie McNish (Founders #131)

(51:00)

Tarantino's top 8 movies have cost around $400 million to make and made about $1.9 billion in box office sales

Pulp Fiction
$8 million
$213 million

Jackie Brown
$12 million
$74 million

Kill Bill 1
$30 million
$180 million

Kill Bill 2
$30 million
$152 million

Inglorious Basterds
$70 million
$321 million

Django Unchained
$100 million
$426 million

The Hateful 8
$60 million
$156 million

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
$90 million
$377 million

(58:00) What made Kevin Thomas so unique in the world of seventies and eighties film criticism, he seemed like one of the only few practitioners who truly enjoyed their job, and consequently, their life. I loved reading him growing up and practically considered him a friend.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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What I learned from reading Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness: Being Very Good Is No Good,You Have to Be Very, Very, Very, Very, Very Good by David Ogilvy and Ogivly & Mather. 

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Some questions other subscribers asked SAGE: 

I need some unique ideas on how to find new customers. What advice do you have for me?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me more ideas about how to avoid competition from Peter Thiel?

Have any of history's greatest founders regretted selling their company?

What is the best way to fire a bad employee?

How did Andrew Carnegie know what to focus on?

Why was Jay Gould so smart?

What was the biggest unlock for Henry Ford?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffetts best ideas?

If Charlie Munger had a top 10 rules for life what do you think those rules would be?

What did Charlie Munger say about building durable companies that last?

Tell me about Cornelius Vanderbilt. How did he make his money?

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(0:01) But what did David actually mean by divine discontent? Here's an interpretation:

DON'T BOW YOUR HEAD.

DON'T KNOW YOUR PLACE.

DEFY THE GODS.

DON'T SIT BACK.

DON'T GIVE IN.

DON'T GIVE UP.

DON'T WIN SILVERS.

DON'T BE SO EASILY HAPPY WITH YOURSELF.

DON'T BE SPINELESS.

DON'T BE GUTLESS.

DON'T BE TOADIES.

DON'T GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT.

AND DON'T EVER, EVER ALLOW A SINGLE SCRAP OF RUBBISH OUT OF THE AGENCY

(5:00) We have to work equally hard to replace the old patterns of self-defeating behaviors. An old Latin proverb tells us how: a nail is driven out by a nail, habit is overcome by habit.

(7:00) Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)

(7:00) Fear is a demon that devours the soul of a company: it diminishes the quality of our imagination, it dulls our appetite for adventure, it sucks away our youth. Fear leads to self-doubt, which is the worst enemy of creativity.

(10:00) Trust is one of the greatest economic forces on earth. —  The NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(13:00) How great we become depends on the size of our dreams. Let's dream humongous dreams, put on our overalls, go out there and build them.

(14:00) If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work and the oracle replied with a single word my bet would be on “curiosity” — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(17:00) Only dead fish go with the flow.

(18:00) If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I’ll take conflict every time. It always yields a better result. — Jeff Bezos

(20:00) It's the cracked ones that let light into the world.

(20:00)

Rule #1. There are no rules.
Rule #2. Never forget rule #1.

(21:00) Bureaucracy has no place in an ideas company.

(23:00) You see, those who live by their wits go to work on roller coasters. The ride is exhilarating, but one has to have a stomach of titanium. For starters, you're never a hundred per cent certain you'll ever get there. If you (even) get to your destination, you sometimes wonder why you've ever bothered.

Other times the scenery pleasantly surprises you.

(24:00) Discovery consists of seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

(25:00) God is with those who persevere.

(25:00) Dogged determination is often the only trait that separates a moderately creative person from a highly creative one.

That's because great work is never done by temperamental geniuses, but by obstinate donkey-men.

(26:00) Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)

(26:00) We are what we repeatedly do. Our character is a composite of our habits. Habits constantly, daily, express who we really are.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. 

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(1:00) This is a 100 page biography of the human species

(1:00) The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant (Full Set) 

(2:30) Generations of men establish a growing mastery over the earth, but they are destined to become fossils in its soil.

(4:00) Ruthlessly prioritize how you spend your time.

(4:00) The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows.

(4:30) ALL OF THE NAPOLEON EPISODES:

Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell. (Founders #294) 

The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Wordsedited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

Napoleon and Modern War by Napoleon and Col. Lanza. (Founders #337) 

(8:00) Our job is to make our companies and ourselves better equipped to meet the test of survival.

(11:30) Economic development specializes functions, differentiates abilities, and makes men unequally valuable to their group.

(12:30) The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191)

(14:30) In the end, superior ability has its way.

(16:30) Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.

(19:00) The imitative majority follows the innovating minority and this follows the originative individual, in adapting new responses to the demands of environment or survival.

(20:00) If you can identify an enduring human need you can build a business around that.

(21:00) In every age men have been dishonest and governments have been corrupt.

(25:00) Survival at all costs: Nature and history do not agree with our conceptions of good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that which goes under.

(25:00) Victory in our industry is spelled survival. — Steve Jobs

(25:00) All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. — Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson. (Founders #224)

(26:00) By being so cautious in respect to leverage and having loads of liquidity, we will be equipped both financially and emotionally to play offense while others scramble for survival. — The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham (Founders #227)

(27:00) History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

(31:00) The Iron Law of Oligarchy

(32:00) Every advance in the complexity of the economy puts an added premium upon superior ability.

(33:00) The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215)

(34:00) Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II by Arthur Herman 

(37:00) All technological advances will have to be written off as merely new means of achieving old ends

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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What I learned from rereading Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins. 

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(0:01) Vanderbilt was only interested in two things: making money and winning

(3:00) Cornelius Vanderbilt, the descendant of poor Dutch immigrants, would die in 1877 possessing more money than was held by the United States treasury.
(3:00) The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles

(5:00) The NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329) 

(6:00) “If I had learned education. I would not have had time to learn anything else.”

(7:00) Vanderbilt wrote nothing down, keeping every detail of his business dealings in his head, and at any given time he knew his income and expenditures down to the last cent.

(10:00) From Founders Notes. I asked the chat feature:

Tell me about Cornelius Vanderbilt. How did he make his money?

One trait it identified in Vanderbilt was this:

Vanderbilt's approach to business was often marked by a sly concealment of his intentions, keeping information close while simultaneously gathering intelligence on competitors. This strategic obfuscation allowed him to make moves that others often couldn't predict or comprehend until it was too late

(This feature will be available to Founders Notes subscribers very soon!)

(15:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields (Founders #292)

(24:00) The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233) 

(26:00) Gentlemen, you have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt.

(37:00) He's turning everyone against Walker by appealing to their interests. He’s not saying do this for me to get my ships back. He appeals to their interests and aligns their interests with his own.

(40:00) Vanderbilt had more money than all the Central American governments combined.

(41:00) As far as my nature is concerned, I do not meet competition, I destroy competitors.

— The 38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to His Son by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #324)

(41:00) Vanderbilt said why don’t you pay me to not compete with you?

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast