David Senra: [00:00:00] People used to say like, if you love what you do, you do it for free.

And I was like, wait, no, no, there's a different level there. You love what you do. They couldn't pay you to stop. And when I realized like, how much money would you have had to give Steve Jobs to not work at Apple? The answer is there is no, it, it was not, you couldn't pay him. I'll give you $2 trillion, Steve, but you can't ever work on an apple.

You can't build a product again. He'd say, no, he's not doing, that's not what he's doing. He liked hitting the ball, he liked making great products, the best product, some of the best products in the world. And he did that until he died. Um, so yeah, I think that's, uh, you know, there's all kinds of people. Some people

they're like, Hey, this is a good way, fast way of the wealth creation. I'm gonna start scale, sell, and then they piece out. Um, but I think the greatest founders, the people that are like, they're doing it for other reasons.

Hello and welcome to How To Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson, and this episode is a conversation between myself and David Sra, host of the Founders Podcast. We talk about the most important lessons we have learned from studying history's greatest leaders and founders, what the greatest and most important biographies are that we would recommend to anyone, the power of podcasting, whether anyone has it within themselves to become a founder, whether it's better to be Jeff Bezos or Napoleon, and more, I just re-listened to it.

And I think this is a really fun conversation. David is just so engaging and I think he has really valuable insights. So I think you guys will love this episode. Special thanks to Sierra for helping make this conversation happen. So without further ado, please enjoy this episode with David sra.

Ben: Alright, what's up? It's David C from Founders Podcast. Uh, David, how you doing?

David Senra: Good. I feel like we're doing podcasts all the time like this. We just never record any of our conversations.

Ben: Yeah, we, we talk a lot. You've been super generous to me with your time and with your money and you've advertised on how to take over the world, which I really appreciate. Um, and we do kind of similar things,

, right, so I thought we'd talk a little bit today about, I dunno, just the stuff that we always talk about, right? Which is we've got podcasts about people who achieve great things and how they do it. And, um, this is a lot of what we already talk about.

Um, I guess I wanna start off talking about like, you've been doing this for how long now? You started in 20 15,

David Senra: Almost eight years. Almost eight years.

Ben: almost eight years.

David Senra: By the end of this year, I'll be over 400 biographies or autobiography spread. For history, stationers,

Ben: and like so many of the lessons are the same. Right? That's what makes it so powerful is you find these like common things amongst a bunch of people and then you're like, oh, wow, this is a really powerful lesson. 'cause if all these people are doing the same thing, that makes it power, that means it's really powerful.

But I guess the, the, the opposite side of that is, do you still find things that surprise you, like new lessons or do you feel like it's reinforcing a lot of the same stuff at this point?

David Senra: um, you're. How, like you're pretty religious, right? You go to church every week. How long? Every, every week. So I grew up like fundamentalist Christian, like, uh, to the point where like my mom when she got cancer, like she tried to, like, her first thing was like trying to pray it away. And when I mean fundamentals as Christian, I mean like, uh, there's named like Benny Hen, uh, he was like famous in like the eighties and nineties and he'd be one of these preachers where like you'd go to him and, you know, he'd like blow on you or like hit you in the head and say like, you're cured.

Uh, of cancer. So they're pretty like, in my opinion, like extreme. But like the benefit of that is like, I essentially was forced to go to church every Wednesday and Sun Sunday for like, most of my childhood. And what I think the, I think the best description of founders I've ever heard is like that it's church entrepreneurs.

It's like when you go, you're, you're obviously Mormon. I grew up Christian. It's not like you guys go to church on Saturdays or Sundays, it's Saturday. Right? Sundays. Okay. Um, it's not like this Sunday the, the preacher is gonna be like, okay, enough of the Bible, like, we're gonna move on to another book or we're gonna talk about this other guy.

Um, and so I think if you actually look through, like I'm very interested in things that last a long time. Most of the people that you and I read about, it's not like, oh, they had a new idea and they changed professions every year. No. They, like, they had an idea and they did it for a very, very long time.

And I think if you look at. Things throughout human history that last a long time, you can actually draw a lot of lessons from it. So like, you know, countries last longer than companies, but religions last longer than countries. So like, what do, like, why do religions persist and endure? And I think a lot of it is like, one, they usually have some kind of sacred text in like a, a, a book that they, they read from, or they, they like constantly revisit.

They obviously have like a, a, a leader. Um, and then they gather together in certain [00:05:00] frequencies with like-minded people. And I think there's actually a lot of analogies there that you can draw and like put to companies. Um, so what you hit, what you hit on is absolutely right. It's like the things that most excite me is not necessary novelty.

Even though that does occur every once in a while. It's these ideas that people that didn't know each other, that lived at different times, lived in different parts of the earth and worked in different industries, all arrived at the same conclusion through experience. So, yeah, I would say that I still find, I find like app, like interesting applications.

So like, let me give an example. I just did this episode on this guy named Todd Graves, who's the founder of Raising Canes, which seems like a weird thing for me to cover other than like, everybody always asked me like, who are my favorite living entrepreneurs since I studied dead entrepreneurs? And I keep bringing up Todd Graves.

I'm like, who the, who the hell is Todd Graves? It was like, he's a guy with a $10 billion chicken finger dream. But uh, like all, all companies need to figure out a way, like how do you finance company at the very beginning, right? Now his application's very unusual. Like he went and worked shift work as a boilermaker, working 95 hour weeks for five to six weeks at a time, fixing things in refineries.

Then from there, he learns from his other boilermakers, Hey, you make a lot of money if you're willing to risk your life, and you go up to Alaska and work the summer on these boats where people are falling over and dying. If you survive, you make a bunch of money. He lived in a tent to do that. That's a new application.

Then he scra, he saves up his own money. Then he scroungers up some startup money from his bookie. And this boilermaker named Wild Bill. So like the idea is the same, right? You need to figure out how to finance your, your company that you wanna start. Sometimes it can be through customers, the bank loans, venture capitalists, whatever the case is.

This guy's like, Hey, I'm gonna risk my life. I'm gonna live in a tent and then I'm gonna borrow money from a bookie. So, uh, I would say most, mostly I feel like I'm just telling the same story over and over again every week through a different personality, and that's what makes it powerful.

Ben: what you were just saying reminds me, um, a little bit of that quote that you quote a lot for, I think it's from Charlie Munger, which is take an idea and take it very seriously.

David Senra: Find a simple idea and take it very seriously.

Ben: There it is. Find a simple idea and take it very seriously.

And I think that's true more often than not. Before we hopped on, we were talking, uh, I was talking about, uh, John d Rockefeller and how he, he wanted to work for one of these big firms in Cleveland. He goes to interviews with every single one of 'em. Every one of 'em says no. And he's like, all right, well I'll just interview again 'cause I know exactly what I want.

So he just goes two or three times and I think so often. People think they need to find a novel approach and they don't at all. Uh, there's another good quote, uh, from one of the British generals in World War ii, and they asked them about the difference between American and British, uh, problem solving approaches.

He says, Americans don't solve their problems. They overwhelm them. It's like so often you actually don't need to solve your problems. You actually just need to overwhelm them.

David Senra: The, what was the, I love the, the episode you did on Horatio, what's his last name? The, yeah, it was so good. And the, the, especially when he's just like, this is my time to die. I'm not going anywhere. I love the ending. Um, I, this is something you and I talk about a bunch. I remember when we were together in Austin, it was like me one night.

It was like me, you and like Cliff Weitzman. And we were talking about podcasting and we were talking about your podcast a lot. And then, uh, you know, I had a bunch of like, thoughts and then I was like, wait a minute, how many episodes have you done? And it was like 90. I was like, there's nothing to talk about.

Like, nobody, I had 90 episodes, nobody was listening to my podcast. I have 391, I think now, because some of them aren't numbered. And it is just, I've tried to overwhelm people with it. And even though I'm eight years in, like, lemme give you an example. Uh, I'm really like kind of nutty about this, where, um, I just got invited to like this fancy, uh, invite only, uh, investor conference.

Only like 15 people there, right? And more than half the people had listened to founders or whatever. But I found the people that didn't listen to founders and I hunted them down and literally I would go and talk to them and I'd be like, Hey, lemme see your phone. And I would, and our friend, our mutual friend, Patrick O'Shaughnessy was there, and this happened a few times where he, he made a comment at the conference.

He's like, I wish I could find a way to make money, uh, on David's ability to turn literally every single conversation back to podcasting because he would just like. You know, this guy would be like, yeah, I bought this company for a billion dollars and now you know, it's worth 20 times that. I'm like, oh, that's great.

Have you heard of podcast? And then I would literally, I would literally like grab the guy's phone and he'd show up and I'm like, oh, this is, here it is. It's on Spotify. Now follow. Just, it doesn't matter what the episode is. You might not know who it is when it pops up. Just press play. Listen on one and a half speed, that means in 40 minutes you'll be able to listen to a whole episode that this guy spent 40 years, you know, building his company.

And I spent 40 hours reading and you can listen to it in 40 minutes. Um, so I do think I, I believe in that, like the, just the constant pressure, constant promoting. If you're proud of what you're doing and I'm very proud of what I'm doing, like I have no problem, uh, you know, telling people about it. And, you know, and the way you do that is like, it's a very noisy world.

Like, so I'll tweet constantly, I will post constantly, I will repost things. 'cause dude, I, I repost episodes. I guarantee you now, because you have more followers, more people listen to your practice than ever. If you have [00:10:00] a great episode, it's, it's a line from David Ovary where he is like, you're not advertising to standing Army, you're advertising to a moving parade.

I just put up this episode, this episode by Chung J Young, who's the founder of Hyundai. I I, I think it's like episode like one 17. I did it like five years ago. Every week somebody would reach out to me about listening to that episode. I was like, oh, that's kind of weird. Like, that one really resonated. So I spent a few hours at re-edit it, cutting it and doing everything else, and then republishing it, and then a ton.

Now a ton of people listen to it that didn't, didn't, you know, go 300, uh, episodes back in my back catalog and find it. Um, so yeah, I just, I, I'm shameless about, you know, promoting my work. 'cause I think without a doubt, I know if people listen to it and they apply the lessons, like it will make their life better

Ben: Yeah, were, so, you're like this crazed evangelist, which I love about you. Um, and you're a complete obsessive about founders and about podcasting. Was there anything before podcasting like this for you?

David Senra: reading. I

Ben: Reading

David Senra: reading, like I have a very weird, uh, I think of an odd personality in the sense that like, I cr I need a ton of solitude. Like I'd be fine if half of my, my conscious life, the time that I'm awake, I could spend completely alone. And if I'm alone, it's like, I'm, I just, I'm very curious in general.

So like, I love to read and love to learn and just like, I don't know, I like to, to, to understand things. I wanna have a better understanding of the world. And then I'm really looking for information that can help me, like prosper in the world and, and make my life better. And the reason I know the information that I share on the podcast is beneficial 'cause it's like made my life better.

So I figure, oh, if I just sit down and record it, it's an active service to other people wanna make their lives better. But no, I, I don't have a lot of passions by any means other than I really like to work. Uh, I get annoyed like I'm about to go on vacation. I'm like kind of annoyed about it. Uh, uh, kind of going against my will.

And if people knew what the vacation was, they'd be like, this is incredible. But, um, it's like the time away from podcasting. But at the same time, my kids are excited. My wife's excited. Uh, but yeah, it's just working, podcasting, reading. Um, and I really like, like building my business. Like it's, it's addicting, it's fun, it's what I wanna do.

I, I mentioned this in the Todd Graves episode I just did where, um, you know, Todd was talking about he's been doing the same business for 30 years. He owns 90% of his business. It's worth at least $10 billion. He's been offered billions of dollars. He's just like, I'm on a God-given mission, like I'll never sell.

And they're like, are you worried? If you think about in the, in the QSR, the fast food restaurant, restaurants, all corporate owned, all the founders are gone. Uh, so he's like, who are you competing against? He's like, non founder led companies. Mercenaries, not missionaries. They're run by accountants. And his point was like, he was asked like, who do you fear?

And he's like, I fear the, the young guy that has the same fire that I do. That is coming directly at me. You know? And his point was like, that's fine. I'm all all for competition. But if you're going to do that, just know like, this is my life. You better get up early. You better go to to, to uh, to to bed late.

You better be working every day. And I mentioned the podcast. I recorded that on a Sunday. I was laughing because I'm doing the outline and I just happened to look at the clock and it was 9:05 PM on a Saturday night. And like I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do, which is like, work on the podcast.

Ben: I, I mean, and one of my big takeaways from both what you do and from that episode in particular, which I really liked, was it's chicken strips, right? It's

David Senra: Chicken fingers.

Ben: Chicken fingers excuse. Well, is there a difference between chicken fingers and chicken

David Senra: No, but he never used the word chicken strips. He's like, I'm on a chicken finger dream.

Ben: All

David Senra: very adamant about that. Yeah.

Ben: chicken fingers. Um, but he takes it very seriously. He does it very well. And when people are looking for startup ideas, it's often just like, again, what, what we talked about at the beginning, take a simple idea, take it very seriously, is there's just, you just look around. Your room is, there's nothing that you can think of that could be better.

Like it, it honestly, people overthink. Things a lot, I think, which is you can just take something very simple, just make it as good as it can possibly be. And that's, that's an idea right there.

David Senra: So James Dyson, you know who I am completely obsessed with. I've done four episodes on every a hundred episodes. I'm rereading his first autobiography, so I'm about to come up on episode 400. That'll be James Dyson's autobiography. 'cause I think it's really important to reread books. Again, we kind of spoke to the influence of religion, uh, and I think revisiting the same ideas over and over again is, is really good.

Um, but he makes that point in his for autobiography. He's just like, well, listen, if you can just improve an existing product, the good news is you don't have to invent the market. Now inventing the market is a pheno, a phenomenal way to build a monopoly. You know, you're, you, you literally can define the, and create the category that your product operates in.

It's just extremely rare and really hard. And his whole point was just like they were vacuum cleaners forever before I started. And he wind up just making the world's best vacuum cleaner. And even now, like I, like, am I ever gonna buy another vacuum cleaner that's not Dyson as long as he's alive? No. And it's like, you can buy a vacuum cleaner on Amazon for like 30 bucks.

I think it'd be like 600 for mine, or 500 and it, it literally is the best one in the [00:15:00] world. Um, and I think like the, the, the insight there is exactly what you described, where it's like, dude, go to all these fast. Like fast food's been around forever, you know, multiple, multiple decades. Uh, shortly, it appears shortly after the invention of the car and. It's like, go to McDonald's and eat their chicken and go to GRS and Cane's. You just tell me the difference. And I, I just introduced my brother and sister who never had it before. I was just visiting them and I was like, have you guys ever had rais and cane's? They're like, no, what's that? And I was like, dude, we gotta go.

And I went, and the, the store that I went to just opened up and it's completely packed. It's like they have a cult life following, and he positions all his stores around co competitors. So across the street, Wendy's not a single fucking person in the drive through at Wendy's, and you have 200 people trying to get into the raising canyons across the street.

Um, and again, I think this is just, people aren't paying enough attention. It's just like, what do you use in your daily life? If you're looking for an business idea, like what do you use in your daily life? You're like, this sucks. Guess what? You're, there's no chance in hell that you're the only person on the planet that also thinks this thing sucks.

Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's that's definitely true. By the way, raisin canes, you love it. You think it's that good?

David Senra: I love fried chicken.

Ben: I, I went for the first time they opened one in Utah and I went and I was like this, it's good,

David Senra: what better, what better fried chicken place?

Ben: Well, I don't, maybe I'm just not a fried chicken guy. 'cause I, there's nothing I can tell you that I'm like,

David Senra: Yeah. Okay. They, some people don't like fried chicken, but you know, if people eat fried chicken, it's gonna be one or two on the list

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Ben: So like, we've been talking about ideas that are very simple, that are very like, um, often you just need to take ideas more seriously, do more, be more serious about it. Um, what is the last idea that you stumbled on that you're like, oh, this is new, this is interesting and really changed the way you thought about the world.

David Senra: oh, ai for sure. Like, I, I was like, I'm always very skeptical of everybody like rushing into trends. I think like that's, you know, the, the mime nature of humans is, is something that's been well documented. It's obvious if you just open your eyes. And so I kind of resisted it and then I start using it. I'm like, oh, this is absolutely incredible.

And so now. I, I, I'm in, I use different AI apps every single day. I built my own to keep track of all the other stuff. So again, the other idea, we'll come back to that, the other idea about finding a simple idea and take it seriously. That's a great Charlie Munger quote. There's also one that's related where he says, we often find the winning system in business goes where ridiculously far minimizing and are maximizing one or a few variables.

And so I think in, in our trade, same situations, it's like I take, if you look at like my note taking, uh, how I organize my highlights, the bookshelf behind me is literally if you start in that upper, uh, left hand corner, the books are all organized in episode, uh, in order by episode number. Um, I take like, I go ridiculously far minimum, uh, max, in this case maximizing one or a few variables, which is like organizing the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs.

And that that is like this flywheel effect where it's like when I did, uh, when I did the Todd Graves episode, like for example, because I have all this information organized and I can pull it up and summarize it, and then I also spend hours every day rereading past highlights. I'm able to do an episode on Todd Graves, but then I made a list of all the other founders I compared 'em to in that episode.

So Rockefeller, David Ogilvy, Steve Jobs, Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, Phil Knight, founder of Nike, Peter Thiel, Harry Snyder, founder of In and l Sam Walton, the Red Bull guy, James Dyson. Daniel Ludwig, who's the invisible billionaire. Michael Bloomberg, Henry Ford. And so that's another example of like, of, you know, maximizing one or few variables.

In this sense, it's like the one variable is I'm maximizing, it's [00:20:00] not good enough for me to make an episode about something. 'cause we forget as humans, we forget that we forget. I go back and reread a book that I've read four times and I still forget, forgot certain parts of it. I'll go listen to a podcast I did five years ago.

It's like, oh, I forgot about all that. So we forget that. We forget. And so, um, the, this is where now if you actually look at my consumption habits. You know, I'm using Claude every day. I'm using OpenAI every day. The deep research for feature from OpenAI is the, the jump from Google to the first, you know, Chet, GPT, uh, uh, that jump was huge.

And then I feel open AI's deep research feature is as large from, you know, the normal chatbot AI chatbots to that. It's freaking incredible. I've been using it to make episodes and literally the, the lines that people will give back to me, not, they're not even the books, they're from open a deep research.

Uh, so I use, uh, I, I subscribe to them all. I built my own, obviously called Sage. I use that every day. I use perplexity every day. I use Claude, I use Open ai. Um, I can't think of any other ones, but like, that was, that's a truly unique technology.

Ben: Hmm. Yeah,

David Senra: you using it at all to make to, in your research,

Ben: uh, I'm not using it very much in my research.

David Senra: are you using it in your day-to-day life?

Ben: I use it somewhat in my day-to-day life. Uh, mostly.

David Senra: for, I think you should for like, it's so important. Most people, what they do is as they age, they like you. This is why technology's like a young man's game. Uh, I, I, my friend Ravi Gupta, uh, wrote this great, uh, essay called AI or Die. And his whole point is like, these, these tools are so wonderful for people like you and I in general for, for super productive people.

Uh, you force yourself to spend a few hours every week learning how to use this. I listened to these AI podcasts to get ideas, and I even think it'd be a good idea. Bill Gates had this idea where he'd do these think weeks, and this has come up in the books a few times where it's like, you gotta get, you gotta get away from your day to day.

And he would bring like, you know, a bag of books and he'd sit in like a cabin or something. I can't remember where he went. And he would just, no internet, no nothing. Just read and think for like a week or two straight, maybe like a week. I think I'm gonna start doing that. But not just reading is like literally trying to consume and make myself get good at using these tools because so much of the value extraction is dependent because we're in the early stages.

So much of the value extraction is dependent on the person, on how you're able to prompt on how are you able to use 'em. It's not like just picking up your iPhone. My dad can barely read, right? But he has, he has an iPhone and he has one. He literally doesn't use email or anything else, but he has one, um, app on his phone.

It's TikTok because TikTok doesn't ask anything from the user just to scroll and like, and it'll serve everything up. AI is not, it's the opposite. You've gotta learn how to extract all the power that it has out, and the only way to do that, literally treat it like a, you know, a part-time job or like a course, like imagine if you went back to for an MBA, just like, okay, I'm gonna do an hour class every night on just learning how to use ai.

Ben: Do you, um, use it at all to structure your notes or your thoughts, or you just use it for research?

David Senra: So not like to structure my notes or thoughts. So like here, I, so I have an AI trained on, uh, it's not your train. I have an AI that just, the only thing you, you can use it to search is all of my notes, all of my highlights, and all of my transcripts. And that alone is nuts. So like, uh, right now I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 of, uh, 15 of, it's called Sage up, uh, 15 tabs in my browser.

And so, like, I use it a lot when I'm reading too, uh, or like, I'll be on a conversation with a friend of mine who's usually a founder. Actually, I don't talk to anybody, it's not a founder. Um, and they'll just say something or they'll have a question and I'm like, I'll prompt Sage, uh, because of this. Or like, let me give you an example.

Um, I just used the, the, I just made the Todd Graves episode. And this is the unfair advantage. This is why, like I told me, and you have talked about this over and over again, podcasting is like one of the, the most valuable tools to learn that history's ever, that humans ever made. And they're some of the most under, they still misunderstood, wildly misunderstood, uh, people that are outside of podcasting don't realize how powerful they are.

And so therefore, anything I can keep doing to keep getting to the top of my profession, like every hour I can spend getting better at podcasting or understanding it at a deeper level is better than, you know, 10 hours think working on something new. And I think what I've done here is like just this. I have an unfair advantage against other podcasters and just gonna keep fucking compounding.

And so I'm sitting here thinking about Harry Sny or Todd Graves. I'm like, man, this guy is so much like the In-N-Out founder. It's essentially what I feel like Todd Graves is Harry Snyder, who's the founder of In-N-Out reincarnated, except they're separated by like, you know, 50 years. Todd Graves founded In and Out, or Todd Graves founded Raising Kings, I think in 1996.

Yeah, In-N-Out was founded in 1948, and so I just asked, because I've done deep episodes on Harry Snyder. I asked Sage, can you gimme the most [00:25:00] important ideas from Harry Snyder and how he built in and out And within 15 seconds, it's like a complete list of all the innovations he made. Like, you know, everybody has gone through a drive-through and spoken at a, at a, at a speaker, right?

Hey, what do you want? I'm a McDonald's, I want a Big Mac. Harry Snyder was the one that invented that. Right? I forgot that I did the episode. I forgot that. So like, it just goes through all the stuff he did, how he was different from his competitors. And it's probably 600 words, so it doesn't take that long to read maybe 800 words, you know?

And, but it, it immediately reminded me of all the main ideas from that. Um, so yeah, I, I think I told you before, if you organize, even if you don't, I, I happen to, to people ask. For my notes and highlight so much. So actually this actually turned into a product and a, and a, like a, an extension of the podcast.

Uh, but even if you don't do that, I think you should definitely think of all the reading research you're doing. Like Yeah, you, you should have it all. And I can connect you with the people that can build this for you too. But, uh, I would have, I would be layering an AI assistant on top of all your research.

And I think every professional is going to do that. And, and I think other, and I think you're gonna be able to buy or subscribe to the AI assistant from other professionals, just because I'm already proving this. Like there's thousands of people that pay to get access to sage.

Ben: so this is good because I always, like, I, I went, I produced half of all the episodes I produced last year, which was a big jump up for me.

David Senra: That was your, that was your problem.

Ben: I, I had about a hundred episodes at the end of 2024, and I produced 44 of them in 2024. And the way I was able to get my production up so much is I just copied your process.

Uh, I was like, all right, clearly I'm not doing this well, and this is the whole hypothesis of my podcast. You can just copy people like you take their playbook, and it's, it's a great way to do it. I was like, I'm just, I'm just gonna steal. And you were obviously very open and, uh, very willing to share, which helped a lot.

And so I just started, I was like, all right, I'm using, read Wise, I'm taking notes exactly how David takes notes, but like, I don't have it all. So like, one of the things I wanna talk to you about a little bit more is your process. So I know how you take notes, which is you read, you highlight, you like to physically highlight Red Pen Ruler.

Okay. And then you go afterwards and you kind of read back through it, and you take pictures of it and index it. And read wise, I, I'm a little less clear on what happens then. So then you've got all your notes. How do you go about. Structuring it, like do you just leave it chronologically and then you just kind of read through and talk it through as you're on the podcast, or what does that look like?

David Senra: Yeah, basically. Um, now Todd, some of these episodes are different. Uh, where like Todd Graves, there's no book. So what I did is I took, he, he's got two in-depth podcast interviews, so I was like, okay, well I'll just turn these into, I'll get the transcripts and essentially make a miniature book. And then I went through the, the transcripts just like I did for a book, right?

The process is always the same. And I don't like one of the most boring things. This is actually, uh, we can talk about too. I, I think the best analogy for, uh, for podcasters is actually filmmakers. Uh, 'cause you, you mentioned like, oh, being open with like, your process or like, we share a bunch of information.

It's just like, it doesn't, like, I, I did like six episodes on all these filmmakers, like the greatest filmmaker, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, uh, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron. And what you realize like a lot of these people knew each other and they would help each other. 'cause at the end of the day, it's like, people are like, oh, is Ben a competitor?

I was like, no, he's not a competitor. 'cause you can just, like, in the same way that you could go watch Steven Spielberg's jaws one week and go watch George Lucas's Star Wars next week doesn't affect Steven Spielberg at all. Um, so I, I don't understand, like most of the podcasters I know are very positive.

Some, there's one or two that are kind of weirdly competitive. Um, and, you know, they have bad reputations and they are getting smoked by the other people. Um, so yeah, I, I, I think if you have something, you, especially in like in the world in what we do is like, if I give you information and you make a better podcast to me, then you deserve to win.

I don't know what to tell you. Like, it doesn't bother me at all. I wanna win because like, I, I wanna make the best po product possible regardless of what anybody else is doing. So one thing I learned from Tarantino though, the, of all these filmmakers is he was, he's like, it doesn't make any sense to do everything in perfectly chronological order.

Think about how he makes his movies. He's like, no one tells stories that way. No one says, Hey Ben, tell me about your life. And you're like, well, I was born on, you know, January 1st, and then I went to kindergarten. It is like, no, you, you jump around. You talk about the fact when you met your wife, that the time you had your first kid talk about this, the, the relationship you had when maybe your dad taught you how to ride a bike.

It's, it's all, it's not chronological. And so I don't feel the need to, to organize and to like go through, uh, you know, the, what I wanna talk about. And another thing is like, I'm not trying to summarize a book. I'm trying to say these are, Hey, I spent 40 hours reading about this, this in interesting person.

Here's like the most interesting parts to me. And you're smart and you want to know the whole story, but then you can pick up the book I link to it in the show notes. Uh, but yeah, that's really all it is. It's like the processes is, is more taste and intuition. Anything else, like, [00:30:00] and the, all the episode are all the, all the, the end result is like, this is what's most interesting to me.

And the, the thing that's changed over the last like two years is now I spend one to two days in between. And when I'm done reading to, when I sit down to record and all that is, is cutting. It's like I may have had 50 things that I thought were interesting and you just read and reread and read and reread, and then you're like, ah, no, nope, don't need that.

And then just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. This is, uh, an idea I got from Walt Disney, and I don't even know if it was conscious, but he talked about it was so expensive to animate back then that you had to do the edit before you did the drawing. And I was like, that's a really good idea. I, so I edit, you know, I still edit it after I record too.

But most of the edit happens before I record.

Ben: It's so interesting to me that what, because I've heard you say on podcasts or interviews, or maybe it was a panel we did or something, but you've, I've heard you say, I don't know anything about storytelling. Like, I'm not a, I'm a storyteller. I don't think about storytelling as a craft, but I. To me, you're a very good storyteller for exactly that.

Reason is, I feel like most people feel the need to just, well, I, I need to flesh out the details here. I need to tell, I need to get across the information. And you just have no compulsion about that. You're like, no, I'm here to say the interesting things. I'm going to move directly from Interesting point, the interesting point.

And that's it. I'm cutting out everything else.

David Senra: I, I, I think it's heavily influenced 'cause Tarantino's always been my favorite filmmaker. And if you look at like, go watch Pulp Fiction, it's like five main scenes. There's huge chunks not missing, but you're, you'll put it together. You're like you if they're gonna listen to founders or how to take over the world.

I don't think you have a bunch of idiots listening to you. It's just too, it's like there's so many other options for people that are like dullards. You know, I'm not making a pod. People always like, I'm not making it for the, the mass population I have no interest in. Like I'm trying to make, I'm trying to make the best podcasts for the best people in the world.

That's literally what I'm doing. Um, and so those kind of people, it's like, dude, they can read between the lines. They'll fill shit in. They're smart. You don't have to like hold their hand.

Ben: so this is, this is brilliant because I've been reading, uh, thus Spectra by Nietzsche. 'cause I'm working on a Nietzsche episode and he has a quote that's basically exactly what you just said because you just go, like, you say, stories and aphorisms are what

David Senra: People remember?

Ben: Yeah. What they reremember, what people remember.

And so that's just, you just go straight from story to story, from aphorism to aphorism. And in thus Ttra, he says in the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks. And those who are addressed tall and lofty, I. So that's exactly what you just said, that like he just, he believes in writing, going from aphorism to aphorism, from intelligent thought to intelligent thought, skipping over everything else in between, and only addressing yourself to people who are

smart enough to get it.

David Senra: are, people are, are they vastly overestimate how much information people can retain? Right. And so like, there's a great, uh, example of this in one of the books I read on Steve Jobs, where mostly he, he knew like an ad should have a singular focus. Uh, his, the homepage of Apple would have a singular focus.

All their advertising would, they would pick one feature and, and, and stick on it. And every once in a while he would deviate from that. And he's like, okay, for this ad I want us to five reasons. And the guy that was running, um, I forgot it was like a world, he's like one of the best, uh, advertising agency founders.

Uh, of course if Steve wanted to use him, that would have to be the way it is. And he goes, Steve, lemme show you something. He rolls up five pieces of paper and he goes, uh, and he throws five balls of paper at him and Steve catches none. He goes, that's a bad ad. Now he rolls up or crumbles up one piece of paper, throws it at Steve, Steve catches, he goes, that's a good ad.

He was like, they're gonna listen to an hour long, how to take over the world. Or an hour long founders, and they're going to remember one or two things. And this line about like breaking things down into like, how do, what, what do I actually remember? I remember I love aphorisms. I'm obsessed with maxims, right?

I, there's a maxim on my computer screen that I'm looking at right now. It says, do one thing relentlessly. There's no explanation needed. It's just like, reminder four words. I know exactly what to do now, right? And I can use it as a principle to guide my behavior. But even the idea of why this is important came from another aphorism where David Gravy says, you can't save souls in an empty church.

And so when he was selling advertising for some of the best brands in the world, he's like, you have to make them entertaining and memorable because you can't save souls in empty church. We can sit there and we can educate for all that we want. You think about all these professors that they're, they're, they're, they're great like history professors, but then they get into a podcast like, why is nobody listening to my podcast?

And I, and I've talked to some of these people and I listen to it. It's like, because your podcast is fucking boring. You didn't understand that they're not, they're sitting in your class. Not because they're, they're, they're not there to learn necessarily. Right. They're like, you have like a captive audience.

There's all these weird reasons people go to college. It's a degree, it's insurance. Their parents made them, whatever the case is. Podcast is fully opt-in. [00:35:00] You can't say souls in an empty church. Ogilvy's just like they have to. It has to be entertaining. It has to be fun. It doesn't mean you dumb down. you don't have to dumb it down.

You just make it interesting.

Ben: I'm, I'm interested in this though because I I agree completely and you're so open and generous and you talked about podcasting, like filmmaking. It's, it's not zero sum, it's collaborative. But one of the things you've been talking a lot about recently is secrets in the power of secrets. So how do you kinda square those two ideas, right?

'cause it's kind of the, the idea of secrets and having powerful secrets is kinda the

opposite of what you're

David Senra: our, our business is different. Like, let's say you're, um, the, some of the most valuable companies in the world outside of like energy, right? It's like B2B SaaS. Like if you look at like, who wants to advertise on founders or invest like the best, like these giant companies because like some of the most valuable companies in the world, you know, are, they're selling to businesses.

Facebook sells to businesses, Google, Microsoft, you know, Salesforce, all of them, Oracle. Um, so that if, like, if me, and you're competing, like you need a database provider and Oracle loses that, right? That contract to somebody else like that is a zero sum game. You're not gonna have two database providers, you're not gonna have two, whatever the case in many cases, like, you're gonna pick one.

So in that case, you should be secretive. If you have an edge that is a zero sum game, right? Um, for us it's like there it isn't like that. No one listens. Very few people listen to one podcast and actually I think. I, I had like, just 'cause I've heard this anecdotally, you were at one of these events where these, like old rich guys would come up to me and they literally, like, I only listen to, I, I didn't even know what a podcast was.

I only listen to yours. But there's that, that's like the tiniest percentage of like podcast listeners. Most of them listen to, you know, a bunch of them. So it doesn't take anything away from me. Now if you're like a Rockefeller and you want to acquire every single one of your competitors and one of your smaller competitors gets that acquisition that you don't, then that's a bad thing for you.

Like, you can't let that happen. And so that's why, you know, he shrouds himself in secrecy. He had all these, uh, you, you've read all the books that I've read. Like, I love the idea. It's like, you know, fuck these Rockefeller guys. Like, I'm not selling the standard oil. I'm gonna sell it to you because, you know, we have to stand up against him not realizing that he secretly owned that company too.

Like, it was just the best. He was just like the, the greatest entrepreneur of all time is obviously Rockefeller. Um, I don't even know why people debate that. Um, but yeah, so I, I like, I, I can't think of anything. I, I can't make somebody listen to a podcast where it's like, here's the features of my product.

You know? It's almost like picking up a podcast, like picking a friend. Like if I asked who your best friend is, you're gonna say like, what do you like about your best friend, Ben? And you're gonna be like, oh, he's smart and he's intelligent, and he's thoughtful. And they're like, yeah, but this guy's smart, intelligent, thoughtful.

Why isn't he your best friend? It's, it's a, it's more of like a, a messy, like human like emotional

thing.

Ben: the most relationship driven

David Senra: Yeah.

Ben: by far.

David Senra: that's not when like, you know, I like this bottle of water. I don't have a relationship. I drink Mountain Valley nonstop. Like, I don't know who, like, I just, like, this is the brand of water that I like.

So this is the one that has won my, uh, loyalty podcast is not the same thing as that. I'm trying to think of, is there a secret? I don't tell any other podcasters. Most of it's like they just won't do it anyways. Like, you know, it's, it's like everybody wants to compete with Todd Grace. Well, are you gonna do the same thing for 30 years?

Right there. You knocked out 99.9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9% of humans every love. They just cannot do that. Uh, I went on Greg Eisenberg's podcast recently. He says like, how do I do what you do? I'm like, what do you mean? He's just like, you have like this recall of like, everything you learn and like there's no script in front of you.

You're just coming off the top of your head. I was like, I do one thing, you do 10. Like, you're not going to do that. It's like people cannot, there's something that is, you know, in my personality where I like, I like simplicity. I like doing the same thing all the time. Uh, that, you know, is, I didn't even understand.

It's very rare, uh, for humans. So, uh, no, I could give away all my secrets and one people still won't do it in podcasting. And two, I I do think like power laws roll everything around us. Podcasting is obviously the same thing. There's like four, uh, 350,000 active podcasts right now, meaning that they've updated at least one episode in the last month.

And, you know, probably 98 of them are bad. 98% of them are bad. Uh, like this is happening. Have you been paying attention to what's happening with T-B-P-T-B-P-N with John Coogan? Jordy

Hayes?

Ben: Uhhuh.

David Senra: Yeah, so, um, like I talked to, I've been talking to John about podcasting for a few years. I've been trying to help him as much as possible.

I thought he was a, a very talented person. He just had the wrong format. Um, I tried to get him on Colossus. I've done a bunch of stuff and so I've been like talking to him majority every step of the way throughout this whole thing. And now it's funny 'cause it's like absolutely ripping and blowing up and everybody's trying to analyze like, why is it, and they make these lists and it's just like, there's one, one guy made a list of like one through five reasons TV PN is working and I was 1, 2, 5 is they're talented.

Everything that you just said is derivative of the fact that they're actually talented. And so, like, I talked to a bunch of other podcasters and they're like, Hey, can you help me? My podcast is not growing and I listened to it. I'm like, let me ask you a question. They're like, what? I go, [00:40:00] when you're at dinner, are people captivated by your presence? Like, are they, are they like, are they fi, do they find you genuinely interesting? Right? And they're like, not necessarily. And I'm like, yeah. I was like, dude, this podcast is a straight energy transmission. It's like one, you either need to be super charismatic, right? Like a Joe Rogan, whether you like him or not.

Like he's a gift. He built an empire, a giant empire with his mouth. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me if you like him or not. It's like unbelievably great conversationalist, undoubtedly, right? The idea that you can have three, the people see that. They're like, I could do that. No, you can't. It's so difficult.

So you either have like, you're great conversations, you have this, like, you know, people find you interesting or you're just super obsessed. The most interesting people in the world are the most interested. This is where like me and where me and you could play, where it's just like, I will just go out and collect more information about this topic, this very focused topic than anybody else in the world.

Ben: Uh, I think there's like a big, um, like one of the problems with this is, so for example, I play tennis, okay. And I was playing tennis at the local college, uh, on, on some of their courts. And the, the college players were playing next to me. And, um, so they, they played BYU, it's division one program, really good tennis players.

And when you watch those guys, they are moving so fast, they're hitting the ball so hard, they're running so hard, you can really tell, right? And you're like, whoa, I could never do this. I could never compete on that level. Then I go watch. I went to the US Open and I'm watching Djokovich and Nadal, the best tennis players in the world.

And they are so good. They're so good. They're so much better than the guys I was playing next to at the BYU courts that it changes. All of a sudden I look at Nadal and I'm like, I bet you I could play with him, but I obviously know I can't. But in my head, because he makes it look so effortless that uh, you're like, oh, I could do that.

And it's the same thing when people are at the very top, when they're looking at someone like Rogan, they're like, I think I could do that. 'cause he makes it look effortless. But the the truth is he's a top 0.00001 conversationalist. And the same is true of, of Jordy and Coogan, that like they're really talented and they're actually so talented that it can sometimes hide how, how, just how talented they are.

And so people think they can do things that they can't do.

David Senra: Yeah, a hundred percent. And then they're also smart enough, they think, like I told you, the biggest problem with most podcasters, they think like podcasters and entrepreneurs, you're, you're an entrepreneur. It's like, this is your product. And they, Jordy texted me about this the other day. Uh, me and him and John were talking about this, where he is just like, there's already people trying to copy them, which they don't understand.

You know, people try to copy like what we do. It's like, oh, I'm gonna do a podcast about books. You think it's about the books. It's just like you're missing the point. Um, and Jordy's like, the good news is if you want to compete with us, you have to quit your job. So it's like, it's like we're like, literally Jordy would call me at like five 30 in the morning his time.

They're obviously in California and I'm in Miami and I'm like, eight 30 it's ringing. I was like, what the hell are you calling me at five 30 in the morning? He's like, I'm driving to the office. Like, they take their shit very seriously. They are streaming, they're streaming 15 hours a week, three hours a day, five days a week to do that.

You literally have to quit your job. Uh, so yeah, those guys are gonna, you know, they're already blowing up. They're just gonna continue. It's gonna the Sherman March to the sea and it is obvious, like I was the one that actually stole the, their, um, their presenting sponsor was ramp. And obviously, you know, that I do like, I really help out on, uh, essentially Ramp's podcast advertising.

And the deal was like they had no really small audience at the time. Almost none. And the deal was like substantial. And I was like, and Ram's really cool. I'm really close with the founders. Uh, and so most of the time they're just like, pull the trigger and there's a little like, debate. I'm like, I'm telling you, no fucking debate.

This thing's gonna gonna, it's, it's going to take off, I promise You and Eric, the, uh, the f the co and founder called me other. He is like, I can't believe this because like what looked like an expensive deal will now look like a great deal because of how the growth and the fact that every single clip has the ramp lo yellow logo in the upper right hand corner.

They're doing ramp ads every, like, it's just, it's, it's blown up. I was like, I told you, like, it was obvious. Most podcasters aren't, they don't take it seriously. Most of 'em are, are not talented and like these guys have a, they're, they're, they're gifted in both of those domains. And they also think like entrepreneurs.

So they think about the marketing and the branding of their podcast. They think about how to get in front of most people. Like, it's just, it, it's perfect. I'm so happy. What's been happening with them.

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Ben: So speaking of talent, do you think everyone has what it takes to be a founder?

David Senra: No. Hell no. No. I love Naval Ravikant. Uh, the, the, the book that our, uh, mutual friend, I don't know if, are you friends with Eric? You've met Eric Jargons. He's another tall guy with a deep voice like you. So yeah. The, the, the Almanac and Naval is like one of the best books I've ever read as far as like change the way I approach my career.

And there's something he says in there, he is like, you know, there's 8 billion people on the planet. I think there should be 8 billion founders. That's probably the only thing I disagree with him on, is like, there's just no way that'll ever happen. Absolutely not. No. I think there's a deep desire in human nature to want to conform and to want to be part of consensus and a group and to want to be led.

And if you're like that, you should not be a founder.

Ben: I think that's true. What do you, but but there, now there's a lot of status with being a founder, which there didn't used to be. Um, but now there is. So how, like I, I find it's a tricky thing a lot with people who are like, I wanna be a founder. But you can just tell in their disposition. It's like, uh, no you don't.

David Senra: There. Those people, no, those people don't last. So, like you, you mentioned Novak Djokovich, who's like, I, I really love his, his crazy philosophy and everything else. And there's a great, uh, article that he did in the Financial Times in 2018 that I found from this guy named Graham Duncan. And he says, you know, like there, they asked him like, how much longer can you do this?

Like at this level? And at the time he only had like, I don't know, four or six majors now he has the most in the world. And he is like, I can carry on at this level for a very long time. 'cause I like hitting the ball and the followup's like, what do you mean? He's like, well, there's some tennis players that are playing.

They're not playing for the right reasons. They don't actually just like they hitting the ball. And he's like, he's like, can you tell? He's like, yeah, I can tell. I don't judge, but like, you can definitely tell their, their motivation is, is wrong. And so, um, I think that same thing with like founders is like, uh, to me, uh, some of the, like, it doesn't matter, like other people's motivations is like I try to mind my own business, right?

Rule number two in the center of family is mind your own business. That's why I teach my kids. I think a lot of people get in it because they wanna make money. And some people, if they just care about getting rich, yet you can do it. But the people that last the longest amount of time, the people that you've read, a bunch of these biographies of the founders, like, they don't, they didn't stop when they were independently wealthy.

They just like the act. They're the, the analogy I have there is they like hitting the ball and if you like hitting the ball, like the example I would use, I remember where I, where I was specifically, I was with my wife at this place called Harry's Pizzeria next to the design district. It's not, I don't think it's there anymore.

And I had this like, epiphany, right? And this is the problem of being obsessed with what you're doing. It's like you're supposed to be on a date. And I'm thinking about founders and uh, and I remember realizing it was like, oh wait, I'm wrong. People used to say like, if you love what you do, you do it for free.

And I was like, wait, no, no, there's a different level there. You love what you do. They couldn't pay you to stop. And when I realized like, how much money would you have had to give Steve Jobs to not work at Apple? The answer is there is no, it, it was not, you couldn't pay him. I'll give you $2 trillion, Steve, but you can't ever work on an apple.

You can't build a product again. He'd say, no, he's not doing, that's not what he's doing. He liked hitting the ball, he liked making great products, the best product, some of the best products in the world. And he did that until he died. Um, so yeah, I think that's, uh, you know, there's all kinds of people. Some people just, they don't give a shit.

They're like, Hey, this is a good way, fast way of the wealth creation. I'm gonna start scale, sell, and then they piece out. Um, but I think the greatest founders, the people that are like, they're doing it for other reasons.

Ben: You mentioned rule number two. What's rule number one of, uh, the center family?

David Senra: Maintain situational awareness. Too many people are out in public not paying attention to their surroundings. Just, just pay attention to what's going on. So like my daughter does really good situational awareness. We were just in New York and like she was walking in front of me and you could tell it's like, Hey, that guy over there with no shirt on, uh, yelling at himself and there's snow on the ground, go to the right.

Like, she avoided him. She just, she understands what's going on. You hear these crazy stories where people get like pushed in front of the subway and stuff. My kids would, that would never happen to my kids. They know. Stand back to the wall. Don't let anybody behind you maintain situation and awareness. We do this all the time.

Like, I've been like this forever. Like if you're

Ben: are very practical rules for your

David Senra: but sit in a restaurant, I'm always facing the door. Like, no, you just know what's go. Like, you have to know what's going on around you. Um, and so yeah, I teach my kids this.

Ben: So you mentioned Djokovich and you've done a few, um, founders episodes on people who are not strictly founders of businesses, right? So you've done Winston Churchill, you've done Napoleon. Who else have you done that's not strictly a,

a

David Senra: I. think they're all, so the, if you think about the, the definition of entrepreneurs, it's like somebody has ideas and does them, I think like they're, I, I, it's, it's, it's not that you have to like start a company, it's like the same personality type. Like if, you know, the market economy is what you're talking about, 200 years old, 250 years old, like, people are [00:50:00] always like, oh, do this episode and this guy lived like 500 years ago.

It's like, there's really no like, market economy. So it's kind of hard to like draw lessons from there. But like, if, like, Rockefeller was alive today, right? Who did Rockefeller most admire? Napoleon. And that's like Rockefeller didn't talk about anybody and he would not shut up about Napoleon. That meant if Rockefeller was born, you know, 200 years earlier, highly likely, he's like taking over country how to take over the world style than he is like building the, the world's most valuable, you know, oil company.

Um, so yeah, I've done, I don't even know, like, you know, I, let's see, I've done a bunch of world leaders. Uh, a bunch of athletes. I did Michael Jordan. I've

Ben: that's right. You know Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, tiger Woods.

David Senra: yeah,

Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have you done Da Vinci?

David Senra: yeah. Episode 15, but it's not good.

Ben: Well, the, uh, the reason, because you talked about like these people, these are the same personality types, conquerors and founders. And I have found, you know, as I've done a bunch of these episodes, a lot of 'em have very similar personality types. Da Vinci was the first one I read where I was like, now this is different.

This, one of these things is not like the others. This is a brain that like, I don't even know what to do with your brain functions differently than anyone I've read about. And

David Senra: what did you think made it, like, gimme an example or elaborate on that?

Ben: um, so for example, like what we were just talking about, he was so relentlessly curious that he, there's no way he could have done the same thing for 30 years straight.

Right? Um, yeah. I actually couldn't see him really being. You could see him being a successful founder just 'cause he's so damn smart. He's so smart.

But he could never be like a great founder, like a Steve Jobs 'cause he just didn't, he had too much curiosity and not enough

David Senra: Yeah, I would say like more of like an inventor. You know, if you really think about, it's like, um, think about Thomas Edison. I've done a bunch of episodes with Thomas Edison. Like he invented four or five things. He didn't work on one thing his whole life, but he was always inventing. So I think of that as like, buffet is the, the greatest financial genius in history, but he didn't work on one company.

He, he had like, everything's in Berkshire, but inside of Berkshire you have all these other things. I feel like a da Vinci's like that. Uh, and Edison's like that, it's like the act of what they're doing, which in case in Buffett's case, is like turning a pile of money into a bigger pile of money. Right. Uh, DaVinci's case, he's like inventing all the thing, drawing, making some of the greatest paintings.

Edison is like, you know, Edison was like way more commercial in the sense that he says like, a sale is proof of utility. Doesn't wanna invent anything that, that won't sell. But he, you know, his, his career is rather consistent. He was just working on different things. But the, the theme that runs throughout all this is that he was like inventing the whole time.

Ben: One of the, like one of my favorite parts of the life of Edison is really early on. He's a telegraph operator. Um, and then he kind of, he's actually still working, but he's inventing at the same time and he's totally obsessed with inventing and his family like, is worried about him because he's like not bathing regularly and he's just like not sleeping and he's totally haggard and he's like selling his possessions in order to get more materials to indent with.

And it just dawned on me like, wow, this person is an addict. He's an actual addict. Like if you substituted in denting with just meth or heroin or anything else, I could be very clear what he is. It just happens to be that he's addicted to something that's very productive. Um, but it's probably not like actually a well adjusted person from that regard.

Uh. Like, do you think it's possible to be a great, great founder and be just normal and well adjusted?

David Senra: Do I, I'm trying to think if I'm read anybody. Well, that's normal or well adjusted. I don't think like, there, I don't think there's, um, one thing that's, that's related to this is like, I don't think being like a psycho or like a, an asshole is like prerequisite for success. Like Rockefeller is the perfect example of this is like, I.

Never said an unkind word to people that worked for him for decades. Never. Like one time they ever saw him lose his temper. Very polite. Um, no, I, I don't think, I wouldn't call any of, I, I don't feel I'm Do you, I mean, do you think I'm a well adjusted person? I don't think I am. Like, you know me pretty well.

Um,

Ben: I think you're a well adjusted person. I think you're a nice person. I don't think you're a normal person.

David Senra: okay. Yeah. So yeah. I, I just, yeah, so I, I mean my, I think everybody you read about and everybody I read about is like, they're no one, like, they're just outliers. They're like completely, they deviate so far from the norm that they can, they look like a different species to me than like just some random person you'd bump into, you know?

Um, I, I think that you can have massive success. With consistency over intensity. If you can like consistently do the same, like build your business and let it compound for four or five decades, you don't have to like, you don't have to burn everything, but like, I think you could have a great marriage, you could have good friends, you could take care of your health and still be wildly successful too.

Now a lot of 'em don't do that because you just [00:55:00] describe with Edison, like they are completely addicted. This is one thing I'm worried about in the sense that like, I like working on my podcast and building my business and getting better at what I'm doing, and there's very few other things that I like to do more than that.

And if I don't watch myself, you know, I could mess up all d other areas of my life where like, I know I want to have like a lot of memories when I get older and good relationships and friendships and everything else. So like I'm very, you know, aware of that and kind of try to put guardrails on myself,

Ben: Do you? Do you like being, well, first of all, I guess, how famous are you? How famous are you? How often do you get recognized if you're out in public? Like

David Senra: uh, out in public, almost never. Um, if I'm at, like, it depends on where I'm at. Like if I'm at like capital camp or if I'm at, like, I'm like, nor like if I'm in New York, like very rare, like once or twice on just Random Street, right? Uh, well now I'm

Ben: twice per day.

David Senra: no, like, like I was just up in New York. I probably got recognized once or twice in like five days, something like that.

Um, and again, most of 'em are just like, love what you do, shake hand. And they literally, like, they're, they're cool. Uh, now I'm doing way more videos, so that may change, but like, yeah. My goal is to never be like, I, I, I, first of all very introverted in general. I love, one of my favorite things to do is like, be able to walk around the city and like, think, so I would never want to like get so my face so well known that I can't do that anymore.

That'd be very bad for my life, I think. But no, I, I don't, I, I would say I don't ever think of myself as being famous at all. And, uh, I think it's unhealthy if you start thinking about the, these things. And the only time I ever notice that people react to me differently is if I'm at like a gathering of entrepreneurs and investors.

That's the only time

Ben: The acquired guys had like a big New York Times article about them, uh, last year, I think. Have you had anything like that yet?

David Senra: No,

Ben: Interesting.

David Senra: no, no.

Ben: Have, have people tried,

David Senra: Like smaller publications. It wasn't New York Times, that was the Wall Street Journal. Like literally you couldn't get a better, if you're a business podcast, there couldn't be a better writeup than the one that Ben and David they did for in the Wall Street Journal. It's excellent. Um, no, there's been like, like technology publications, stuff like that.

Ben: huh?

David Senra: But again, my thing is like super more, it's like more narrowly focused. I mean, it's called founders. Like, and even if you think of like, like there's a ton of business owners in, in, you know, America and in the world, but like, it's not, it's, it's, never gonna be like wide, it is not like Mr. Beast widespread.

Like you just never would be into this stuff.

Ben: It's interesting. I, I, I, like, I, I guess I started asking about fame a little bit just because it's, I forget sometimes because in my world, like you're pretty famous of like the people I interact with every day on Twitter. Like of the people that I associate with every, every day that I mostly talk to, that I read their stuff, I'm talking like 90 something percent of 'em know who you are, you're famous in that, in that

David Senra: Yeah, but again, I don't think about that. This is the best thing is the fact that like, I, all I did was for eight years I trapped myself in a room and read and followed my own natural interest, and then I, you know, exposed that to the world. But I don't, like, I feel the same. So, a, a good friend of mine actually pulled me aside the other day because what has been happening recently is there's some people that, like I've heard really grote, one of 'em went viral, like grotesque stories about how they treated other people like that dude, like I'm reading that story.

I'm like, that guy's a. That guy's a dick. Like this is crazy. And then I found out who the person is. I'm like, that guy is so nice to me. He's like, not even nice, but like sweet as can be. I was like shocked. I was like, he like nothing. And this kept happening. And one of my smartest friends, he pulled me aside.

He is like, I don't think you understand. He goes, what? He goes, everybody's going to be nice to you. And I was like, why? And he said, it is very similar stuff that you, that you said. And I was like, I don't feel that way. Like I never ever think about anything. I don't think this, this is a, a negative side.

There's a, there's a bad side to focus. So I think I have the, the one, one of my assets, like extreme levels of focus. But I also kind of like, don't think about other people and not in like a mean way. I don't think I've ever been mean to you. Like we talk all the time, whatever case is, but literally I don't think of the external world.

I just like burrow into my own world. I love this Max. It says mute the world and then build your own. That's what I'm trying to do. Like, uh, I'm gonna go on TBPN later on and they wanna talk about, uh, Nvidia or Nvidia, and I was like, I don't know anything about them. They're like, you did a podcast on it? I go, no, no.

I did a podcast on the founder. Like, I don't know any, like, I don't listen to news or press reports. I could talk about the founder all day long and he like how he was raised and how he thinks about his company and everything else, but like, I don't know anything that's going on in the world. Like I just assume if there's a war or there's a pandemic, that shit will come to me.

Right? But like, other than that, like, I don't know, like shocking. Like, I remember going on vacation with a friend of mine and he's like, watch this video. And they mentioned this guy in this [01:00:00] video. So it was a club, a clip from Lux Free. I go, who's that? And he looked at me, he is just like, I forgot who it was.

It was like somebody high up in like the Russian government. I was like, I don't know. I've never heard that name before. I don't know who this is. And he's like, everybody's talking about this guy. I was like, I don't know. So again, I, I like, I don't ever think about it. I think it's unhealthy to think about it.

I think I should just, you should just literally try to focus on making a product that makes somebody else's life better and just do that for as long as possible.

Ben: What about like, I mean, so like basketball, you like basketball, you used to like to watch basketball. You don't really watch basketball anymore.

David Senra: No. Well, no,

Ben: Do you miss it?

David Senra: no. I, once I pass something, I, I don't think about it. Like I, so it, it's funny, like this will happen. Like, uh, somebody will bring up something and it'll like randomly make me think of like a memory from like, I don't know, years ago. And I'll tell a story or like, I'll like, oh, that's kind of like this thing that happened to me in the past.

And my wife, who's known me for, I don't know, 15 or 18 years or something, she's just like, I never heard that before. I was like, I don't, I don't like thinking about, like, I study history. I don't like thinking about my own history. Like I I don't like thinking about the past. Once something ends, I just like, keep moving on.

I don't think about it. Um, yeah, so I don't have like nostalgia. Like I wish I, I actually went to a basketball game around over Christmas and. I was like, all they do is jack up three threes now. Like, I don't like this game. Like, this is not, I don't miss anything. Uh, no, man, I, I just like my mission. I like my mission.

Like that's really it. My mission, my friends, my family. Like there's nothing else in life other than that. Your health. I,

Ben: It's really interesting to me. Uh, I did an episode recently on Donald Trump and Bill O'Reilly said about him, he's fundamentally not an introspective person, and it just reminded me of so many other founders where it's just like this really odd personality trait that you just notice between 'em that just a reflexively not introspective.

Like the funniest is when people ask, uh, Steve Jobs about him being adopted and whether that had any impact on his psyche, and you'd expect him to either be like, yeah, that really changed who I am. Or at least be like, no, that had nothing to do with it. But instead he's just like very flippant. He's just like, completely not introspective, right?

He's just like, yeah, no, I don't, I don't know, you know?

David Senra: is, this is, it's the weird, like I don't have many controversial takes. And I would say like, I like our corner of the internet because like, we're just history nerds and we read books and like, I don't think I'm controversial at all. Um, you know, I'm not trying to be intentionally provocative. I think, like, I know you can get a lot of attention online like that, but it's like the shittiest attention.

It's like I, I, my entire life is organized to keep me away from like large groups of people. It's just like, you just absolutely look at what I'm doing. It's like, I don't, my friend, we were just in New York. He's like, let's go on the subway. He's like, absolutely not. And it's just like, I, he's like, the car is an hour long.

I don't, I don't care. Like I was raised around such bad people. Inside of my family and other people around us. It's like, I don't, I've seen enough of that. I, I'm work. Everything I do is to get me away and to be able to control who, how I spend my time, who has access to me. Nothing gets better in my life.

This is why I don't go to basketball games. So like 20,000 other, I just, I'm not interested in that. I'd rather be reading and with a small group of people. Um, and so one of the most controversial, weirdly controversial takes that people like, I don't even know why they get upset. It's just like a weird thing to get upset about is the fact that I've, it's obvious, which what you just said history's greatest founders, low to none introspection, not just low, none.

And what I mean is there's a lot, there may be a lot of introspection, but once they find what they want to do there, there's not a lot of dilly dowling. Sam Walton did not wake up every morning like, I wonder what I'm gonna do today. No, he knew. He's like, I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna solve some problems and I'm gonna make Walmart a little better.

And I'm gonna keep doing that, and then I'm gonna hunt some quail in the afternoon, maybe hit some tennis balls, fly my plane, look for, and try to build another store and just do that over and over and over again, and go to church on Sundays, spend time with my family. And that was his entire life. The the problem is, like modern humans, they, they're afraid of commitment because like, the act of committing is to, is not just that you're committing to one thing, it, you're saying no to everything else.

People want like this excessive amount of optionality. It's like, I'm not looking around like, what should I do for a living? I'm gonna do podcasting until I have a fucking voice. That's all I care about. Um, so I don't wake up like, what should I do today? I is like, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna read, I'm gonna make podcasts, you know, I'm going to, I'm gonna keep doing what I do and do this forever.

And that's like thinking about all this other stuff, like, are you gonna get recognized? What about this? It's like, I don't care. Like, I don't know. I'm just gonna keep doing this. And if that happens, then I'll come up with some kind of solution to it.

Ben: Yeah, I, I've always, the analogy in my head is, uh, it's like a, a shark that smells blood, right? When you find a great founder and you're like trying to stick a microphone in the shark's face and you're like, Hey, why are you chasing this thing that you smell bleeding? It's like the shark, even if it tried to introspect, it doesn't know.

You know? Like all it knows is it smells [01:05:00] blood and like, please stop sticking the microphone in my face 'cause I need to eat. You know? And I think that's true of like, when people find the thing that they were born to do, it's really hard to get them to think about like, why that is. I don't even know that they have insight on it.

David Senra: But this is why like me and you have talked privately, it's like, Ben, what? What's all these other distractions? Or you're like launching this agency and you're doing this other podcast. It's like, dude, do you understand how rare it is? So you, and the only person that can answer that question is you.

Nobody can help you. Figure out what you should do in life. It's like you just either know it or you don't. And sometimes you have hints that maybe people are still unsure about it. But one thing I told you, I was like, dude, the, the, the idea that you could even make a podcast and be good at podcasting is such a rare skill.

Like unbelievably rare with think about how millions of people have attempted it. Most of those millions have quit already. There's only 350,000 of them still going, and 99% are never gonna go anywhere. And you've already cracked this thing if you love it. I wouldn't, I would just keep pushing and, you know, as much as possible.

And the question is like, is this the thing that you want to do? And it's normal to waffle. Like some people waffle like, oh, I should like start a company or I should do this other thing. It's like the only person that can answer that question is you. And I find reading life stories very helpful because then I think of like, oh, I feel that way.

Oh, I'm like that. Like, oh cool. And like I'm almost like watching game tape on how they live their life. And then now I can adjust my life when I go out and play the game of life tomorrow by it's little tweak based on what I just learned yesterday. It's kind of cool.

Ben: Yeah, that's, yeah. It's interesting. Do you have like one or two people that you really think of that this, these stories have really stuck with you and you feel like you resonate with them and this is someone that, uh, you feel like their soul is like yours in some way and you really wanna be like them?

David Senra: Yeah. So, uh, I am obsessed with, so it's very different. Like think about in the entrepreneurship there, there, like in the entrepreneurship, there's like an entrepreneurship like ecosystem now, which never existed, especially when I was younger. And so now it's like, it's heavily dominated. Most of the, the media that founders and entrepreneurs consume is actually created by investors, which is like weird dynamic there, uh, because they don't always have like the same, you know.

Yeah, your, your interest arent always aligned. And what I'm obsessed with is not like the, the public company, CEO, um, that's cool. I think Jeff Bezos is, you know, one of the greatest living entrepreneurs, what he built in Amazon. Fucking incredible. I feel I'm one of the few people maybe on the planet that feel he deserves all the wealth that he's created.

He created a magic button that I can press in anything that I want, shows up in my house in a day or two later, not tuning all the other businesses, the cloud computing, everything else he's done. He's built one of the most comp, uh, like complicated, difficult businesses that have ever existed. And he did it better than anybody else by a long shop.

And I, I'm glad he has whatever he has, $200 billion, whatever. Um, what I feel is, for me, what would be the apex of entrepreneurship is like a privately held a hundred percent owned business, right? Like a James Dyson. So the answer to your question is, is like the idea, and I like the idea that he owns a hundred percent of his business.

He doesn't have to answer to a board, he doesn't have any shareholders to answer to. He answers to his customers and his and his employees. And he builds what are the best products in the world, in his category. So for me it's like, that looks a lot like what I'm trying to do on a much smaller scale. And then you take away from like how big these businesses get.

Michael Bloomberg's the same way. Uh, the founder of Red Bull, he only, only 49% of Red Bull, but he turned down multiple acquisition offers where his 49% would've given him $20 billion. You know, 'cause he had complete control. He didn't wanna go public, didn't want a board of directors, didn't want all that other stuff.

Um, and then some of these businesses can grow. Like the people I, some of, uh, entrepreneurs I most admire. I meet and they're like hidden. They'll never write a book. They won't do anything. And they're like family held companies. And when you get close to them, and I've visited them, I've gone to their offsites, I've gone to their offices, I've gone to their warehouses.

They look like they built entire worlds like. Entire worlds. They have, you know, they control everything. It's just fascinating. And then some of these businesses, like there's all these reports and you can never really know, but from what I hear on Good, a good account, like, uh, think about James Eisen. He's like 75, 76 years old, owns a hundred percent of his business.

I've heard, and I don't know if This's true that he's been pulling, you know, 5 billion a year out in dividends. And if you look, you could kind of, there's, there's hints because like he owns like more sheep than anybody in the world. He's like the largest green pea producer. It's like you've run outta things to invest in when you're just like, can't, your business is throwing up billions, billions of dollars.

It's like me and you taking a paycheck of $5 billion a year, year after year, after year, after year after year. And I know somebody that, that controls a large part, uh, large base of capital. And they're looking, their, their basic capital is getting so big that they keep having a, to buy bigger and bigger companies, right.

To move the needle. And from what I heard is they approach to see if Dyson was open to selling and. This is a paraphrase is not a direct quote, but I thought it was hilarious. The response to would you be interested in selling is, fuck [01:10:00] you. This is a fairly family heirloom. And so it's just like, I deeply admire that where he's just like, I'm not doing it for money.

I'm not doing it. So I can sell this and have the biggest, you know, I already have more money can than I know what to do with. Like, what am I gonna do with more money? And this is where like you can have a single podcast, a single book, or in some case a single conversation to change your mind. Where Sam Zell, the two hours I gotta spend with Sam Zell, literally more than any conversation I've ever had in my life, including the one I had with Munger, changed my life more than anything because that was his point.

He's just like at a certain level, you know? And he was not, he was very wealthy, but he wasn't like the richest person in the world. But he had already run outta things to spend money on to the point where like he was making money faster and he could give it away. And his whole point was just like, the things that you own tend to start to own you.

He's like, I have a place in Chicago. I have a compound in Malibu that he spends 38 weekends a year at. Right? And then everything else, he just rents right? He's like, it's somebody else's problem. And he goes, there's only one true luxury in life. And he's like, David tried to get to private jet money. And his whole thing was like, the only thing that's true luxury for him was the fact that he used his private jet like three hours a day.

So who knows what he, he might even spending like 10 million a year flying, but 10 million years seems like a lot of money, but not when you have $10 billion. Like, he's just never gonna come close to that. Um, so again, at the, at those kind of levels, what's the

Ben: Do you, believe that, do you live with, are you trying to get private jet money? You believe that that is the next

David Senra: So here, like, I think I, it's really smart to take the advice. Have you ever fallen private before?

Ben: Yeah.

David Senra: Okay. So,

Ben: twice.

David Senra: okay. Yeah. Like, it's like completely different. Uh, like it's not twice as good. It's not 10 times as good. It's a hundred times as good. So my whole thing is like, I, I'm not like, I'm not gonna do things that I don't want.

I don't, I'm not gonna like let people entice me. There's a great piece of advice in Chuck Eger, the guy that broke the sound barrier in his biography that I read like four years ago. I still remember. He's like, his obsession was just like flying in pilots. He would like fly and he'd like to handle pilots.

So he is like, I never, one thing I'm very proud of myself is like, I never let them tempt me with promises of more money or status or prestige to do something I don't wanna do. My point is, I think if I look at from an entrepreneur is like, yeah, podcasting is one of the most undervalued assets in the world.

Uh, I think like I'm gonna keep getting better at it. I'm gonna build better businesses around it. And I think there's gonna be multiple billionaire podcasters. I've been talking about this for years, and some people say you're fucking crazy. And then they see some of the numbers that Rogan makes and they're like, oh, maybe he's not that crazy.

Um, it's, it's just like, it's not even has nothing to do with podcasting. It's like, if you would've said there's gonna be billion, multiple billionaire musicians, people are like, no, you're crazy. Now. There's a ton of them. You know, you see billionaire YouTubers, no, it's never gonna happen. Yes, there's gonna be a ton of them.

Like, it's just everything. Billionaire athletes, of course. It's like that, it's just, it was just obvious to me sooner than it was to other people. So like, yeah, like I outta the things that I would want to spend money on to build wealth on. Yeah. Private. I don't even have to own my private plan. The funny thing

Ben: How much? money is private jet money? That's How

David Senra: well, it depends, like if you're Sam Z, like, he's like, I'm not, again, I think, uh, my goal as like, some people literally have like, they wake up with a burning desire to go to an airport and get on a plane.

I'm not one of those people. I'm, I prefer, like, when I spend my summers in California, I like those kind of trips. I. You fly, you stay there for two months and like you actually live there. I'm, I hate these like short trips. Yeah. The, the, these short trips. So like, but um, I mean there's a guy named on Twitter named Preston Holland and that can tell you all about this.

My point being is, you know, people can figure out the economics or whatever they want, uh, and how to do it on their own. My point being is like, I think the larger thing here is like optimizing for money after a certain level. This is like all your life is literally just the how you spend your time.

Ben: this is like,

David Senra: and I know a ton of people that, hold on, lemme finish that.

I know a ton of people that fly private that are fucking miserable. So it's like obviously not the solution.

Ben: I like, and I guess this is part of the wonder of entrepreneurship, is that like, and just life in general is people will get interested in stuff that I would just never be interested in. And that's okay. And, uh, if, if Todd, uh, what's his name? Todd Graves,

David Senra: Yeah,

Ben: like he has a chicken finger dream. And in my head I think.

Why, who cares?

David Senra: yes,

Ben: And I, it almost bogs my mind that you're not in it for the money. Why are you not in it for the money? At the end of your life, you're gonna die. And raising canes apparently makes good [01:15:00] chicken strips, but you're gonna leave behind a bunch of fast food restaurants that more or less resemble the the Chick-fil-A across the street.

And that was your dream. That was your dream.

David Senra: Yeah. I would say that somebody, A few people have said that to me since the episode came out. It's like. Uh, Todd, all that means to me is like Todd Graves is head of most of humanity. 'cause most of humanity doesn't even have a dream. I don't care that his dream is chicken fingers. I just care that he has a dream and he has a purpose, and he's identified that purpose and he's made a commitment to it.

And he also, for him, he, he, he believes it's a God-given mission. So he's giving a lot of money away to like charity to help people like, so chicken fingers, like, I'm really good at this. I can make a lot of money at this, and then I can use that money to help people. That makes perfect sense to me.

Ben: To me though, I almost feel like it's a symptom of a sick world that I read these stories of Horatio Nelson and Napoleon Alexander Hamilton, and I'm like, yeah, that's what a noble life is supposed to look like. Uh, founding something that really lasts and end endures and is beautiful and is a part of your identity.

And people like Todd Graves are probably have that quality of spirit, but live in a sort of sick world where instead of building something like a city or a country or something truly beautiful and enduring, they have to have a a chicken finger dream.

David Senra: Um, I don't have that same opinion. I think that it, you, like, we're obviously, uh, influenced by the circumstances we're born into. Like how many people are starting new countries right now? It is just like, just like, I think that same kind of personality, depending on where they're born. Same thing with Rockefeller.

Rockefeller was born and he came of age, he was born in 1830, came of age around the Civil War, right. There's a bunch of, uh, the robber barons were born in 1830s. There's something very special and dynamic about the US economy that, that they took advantage of then. And you place them 200 years before and, yeah.

Or, or let's go back 700 years and they're, they might be more like Janis Khan than they are, you know, entrepreneurs. I just think like, dude, how many people are starting cities and how many people are starting country sound? Nobody.

Ben: Nobody, but that's what I'm

saying. We gotta get back. We gotta take over the world. David, that's You. Must return. Return.

David Senra: I see. I, all I care about is like, for somebody like that, he, he's like, literally he's in hi.

Like, and people say, oh, it's unhealthy, whatever the case is. Like, I don't know. It brings me a little bit of joy. I don't, I'm not gonna eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you know, but like, I like the chicken fingers and he made my life. You know, a little bit better in that 15 minutes than I'm eating his and dunking his chicken fingers in the cane sauce.

Like I, I, I like stuff like that. I don't think there's anything wrong with him.

Ben: it's interesting to me, like I, so I'm doing an episode on Coco Chanel and I've been researching her story and to me she is emblematic of, you know, she's an entrepreneur who's very successful, becomes very wealthy, and

David Senra: Yep.

Ben: she's having all of these dalliances and affairs.

David Senra: the wealthiest woman in the world when she's alive, when you get to that part. Yeah. Not just very wealthy like that deal, the deal that she has, uh, where she gets like two or 5% of all the, the gross profits or gross sales, it'd be the equivalent of somebody came to you and said, Ben, I'm going to, uh, pay you $300 million a year and in our contract I have to take care of every single one of your living Expan expenses.

I've never seen. There's some crazy deals. That's one of the craziest deals in history.

Ben: Yeah. Although of course always is resentful of her cocoa or Chanel number five deal, where she's getting 10% of the, of what is the greatest product of her lifetime.

David Senra: When you're

Ben: One of the greatest products of all time.

David Senra: Uh, in terms of cost per ounce, it's pretty crazy. Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. Unbeliev, it's like, it's like gold. Um, but to me it's interesting because she's also obviously attracted to. Um, the, the, the power and the allure of old world aristocracy, right? She's always having these affairs with these barons and counts and British royalty and Russian royalty. And, um, to me there's this interesting tension of like, she comes along at the time, which is sort of turn of the 20th century and into World War I, where the old, you know, the aristocratic classes really were driven by conquest.

These were often descendants of the Norman Invaders who'd come to England, taking it with the sword, and then said, we own the land now, and we get the money from it. And that's where they got all their money. And there's still this attraction to it. She's, she's still attracted to that world, even as she herself is supplanting it with this new commercial.

World. And um, and so anyway, I just think that like, even as that world has been supplanted, we cannot really get over the allure and the attraction because the whole world is a series of games We all choose the games we play. Right. And I think there's this certain attraction to Yeah, but there's one game that's bigger than all the others.

And [01:20:00] those people who really feel like they are world beaters, that they're the greatest, they always have an attraction to that game. They wanna play that

David Senra: They wanna play the Game of Kings.

Ben: Yeah. They wanna play the Game of Kings. It's like that game isn't even being played anymore.

David Senra: No, definitely. It is like, you get, you get access in a different way now. Like, think about the, the power that, like a person like Bezos wields, he's got unlimited money.

Ben: No, he's got no, he's.

David Senra: political influence? Uh, absolutely. Like, it's not the same. Like, you're not gonna be like a dictator, like a, like a Putin kind of character.

Without that, but like in terms of if you're living in a free society, like the amount of power that you can wield through building one of the world's largest companies is like unbelievable.

Ben: Kind of, but he sees so restrained by social strictures and I, I, I almost by social strictures, uh, like, you know, his, his, his wife divorces him and takes half his money and there's nothing he can do about it. Right.

Nothing he can do about it.

David Senra: already made all the money back.

Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he's got plenty of money, but it just shows that like, there is a very strong limit to the actual amount of control he has in the world.

Uh, you know, he, he buys Washington Post. And what does it do for, like you say, he has all this political influence. What has he done with it? Maybe, maybe he just has no vision for the wider world and he doesn't really care about that. But, you know, I do think like one petty king in 1350 had more power.

David Senra: no, you're, this is not, no, no way.

Ben: yeah, wait. 100%. 100%.

David Senra: 0%.

Ben: I, it reminds me of Caesar who, uh, you know, he's going through some little alpine village and, uh, he's, his friends are making fun of this like little village in a, in a Swiss mountain side that, you know, there's scratching potatoes out of the, they didn't have potatoes, but you get it scratching wheat out of the hillside.

And they're like, this, this place is pathetic. And Caesar goes, I'd rather be the first man in this village than the second man in Rome. And uh, and I think there's like something to that, that like, um, Bezos has all this money, but

David Senra: no. I'm telling you, he Bezos has built his own world.

Ben: no, no. If, if, then, then

why is he with the,

David Senra: like I'm telling you, they've built their own world.

Ben: Just 'cause the point is, you know, you you, we talked about Croatia Nelson

David Senra: Yeah.

Ben: and he, like, he basically know, you know, he says to his, one of his captains who, who tells him, you know, I, I expect to see you after the battle with a great victory and in command of 20 prizes.

And he says, goodbye Blackwood, I'll never speak to you again. And, uh, and goes and gets shot at his moment of glory. Um, and I just think that a life worth like that is, I view the world essentially artistically.

And a life like that is so much more worth living than a chicken finger dream.

David Senra: Depends on what he does with the money. Um,

Ben: it though?

David Senra: I, I'm taking Ty Graves life over that like I have to say.

Ben: Because that, I guess that's my point. It doesn't matter what he does with the money because. Living a beautiful life is the end, is the

David Senra: It, I

Ben: whole sum of all of it.

David Senra: listen it like I, I think the problem that people have that I apparently don't is they're like, that person's like X, I'm not like X. So therefore I don't understand that. And my point is like, yeah, I don't wanna build a chicken finger, chicken finger dream, uh, restaurant. Um, but I'm just glad that he found something that he's so interested in and he finds it like addicting and fascinating and he is trying to do to be the best he can at it.

It is like irrelevant to me what people choose, you know, just like, I didn't wanna be a basketball player, I don't wanna be a public company, co there's all these other things I don't wanna do. And I'm sure people look at me like, dude, I went to dinner one time and there was, um, I was actually John Cogan, his two Lucy co-founders and this other guy who I think is a YouTuber.

And the whole time I talked about podcasts and after that, John's like, they thought you were fucking crazy. Like, because it was like, why is this guy addicted to podcasts? But like that, it's the same exact thing of you saying their opinion of me is the same as yours. Opinion of Todd. And my point is just like, it's not the actual like activity.

I'm just glad. I don't care what people get obsessed with or what they want to do. I'm just glad that they have some kind of purpose for their life.

Ben: See, and I, I do care because I just, Todd, if you're listening to this, this is what I want the message, uh, hoist, the black flag. Take a knife between your teeth, start slitting throats. Your life could be so much more

David Senra: Why aren't you doing that? Why aren't you doing that? Then?

Ben: Um, because I'm not that guy and, but I, what I am trying to do, that's why at the end of the day, and I know I talked to you about maybe changing the name of the podcast, but at the end of the day, that's why I've never changed it, is because that's what I really believe in is, uh, is taking over the world [01:25:00] and.

I'm not that guy. Like, I can read about Caesar and just look at him and say his character is not like mine. I could never be Caesar. If you threw me in that position, it'd be very bad for everyone involved, including myself. Um, but I, but I, I think, um, I want to, I'm very attracted to that type of personality and that type of person and that type of, of vision, and I want to inspire others to take that on.

David Senra: what do you mean by you look at the world artistically.

Ben: Um, I think good and bad is ultimately in aesthetic judgment. Like people try and quantify it. You know, you've heard of effective altruists who are like, Ooh, if I can. Chart the number of lives saved, then, uh, the best life is that which saves the most number of lives. Like, no, there's no value by which you can judge what is good and bad. It is a, a, a judgment of taste ultimately. And so I think everything is artistic. Like it can only be said to be good or bad, off of, off of taste. I find it beautiful is the ultimate judgment. I think on anything.

David Senra: How do you, so then how do you apply that to your own, like life and work?

Ben: The way I apply it

David Senra: that, does that like, I guess my better question, does that belief actually change the way that you go about building like your life?

Ben: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Which is to say if I didn't think that what I was building. Was beautiful. You know, I, I talk about how all these people are essentially addicted, right. And they happen to be bene at least beneficial addictions. Right. um, I, if at the end of the day it doesn't create something beautiful, then it really is just an addiction.

Even if it makes you money. That's the way I see it. Right. Which, you know, that's why I'm attracted to most of all founders like Phil Knight, Steve Jobs, because they, for them, it's not just about, um, making money For sure. And it's not even just about building business. Like they have to create something beautiful.

They do have that

aesthetic judgment.

David Senra: The comp, like I job says this quote that can't get, uh, like I'm not gonna get completely accurate, but directionally correct is like the point of companies only exist so we can build products. And this is like, and profits only exist. So the company continues to exist to build the product.

You know, it's just like, I, I wouldn't build companies unless I wanted to build products. And these, those are also the founders that I love. I just did this clip or a friend, I just hired this guy that does my clips now, and the first clip he did was excellence and it titled Anti-Business Billionaires and it's Yvan from Patagonia, James Dyson, Steve Jobs.

And it's like, they're so obsessed with the quality of their product and that is the first and most important thing. So like, let's say people have tried to actually hire me, like to, to work or run their company or whatever, and it's just like, no, that's a money decision. I'm like literally trying to build a beautiful product.

Right? That's why we talked to, I don't know if we were recording or not, but like why won't outsource the editing? Why? Like, I don't think I'll ever outsource the editing. Why do the things that I wanna do? It's like I wanna build the best in best product in my category for the, the most successful and productive people in the world.

That is how I think about founders. And so that is what I'm trying to do. And I would rather do that and make way less money than work, be hired as a CEO at your company and for 15 times or a hundred times the money. Because I also think, like something I talked about in that clip is like, if you actually build a great product and make somebody else's life better and you retain control, you'll get the money anyways.

Ben: . I, I, I find that you have created a very beautiful product in founders, even though it's so spartan. I. Knowing show music. The cover art is literally black background white text founders.

Did you create that background by the, that

cover art.

David Senra: somebody asked me the other day, they're like, what is the, uh, font of founders? I go, I have no idea. I created it in five minutes and I paid $5 to export a high res version out of an app.

Ben: That's amazing. That's amazing. You just like looked at some fonts and you're like, that looks good. Right?

David Senra: I literal, yes. I like everything I do is just off my personal taste. Like there's nothing, like, I don't think there's any other way to do it. What am I gonna do? Like remember when you were, I want you to finish your thought in one second, but like, I remember you were starting to put like in music into some of your episodes and you're like, Hey, read this.

Like, thread what, what, [01:30:00] what, uh, what should I do here? And it's like, one guy's, like, I love the music. The next tweet underneath, it's like, I hate the music. It's like, what? What should you do? Here is what you should have been doing the whole time. Which just like make what you like because like there, every single person, you put something in the world, they're gonna be people that love Exactly like it and, and like the exact opposite.

And it's just like, I just, everything's personal taste. I went through, I was like, this looks good. Boom. Done. And then people are like, what, what, what other process? I'm like, there is no other process. I listened to the episode before I, it goes out. If I like it, it's going out.

Ben: Yeah.

David Senra: So what about the, where, what point were you making about being Spartan though?

Ben: well, I just think that, that, like, I do think that what you do is like extremely worthwhile because I, I find, I, I am just interested in how much you put thought into that versus what it comes naturally to you. And it just, from what you said, it sounds like, comes very naturally to

David Senra: But it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, more than putting thought into it. You could think about something for few hours, few days. The ta, your taste and intuition is molded over your lifetime. And some of this stuff you won't even be able to stand 'cause it's in your subconscious. I love what Cormack McCarthy's point where like, he, he swore he's, you know, you say he's my favorite living novelist, he just died.

But if you just read, like Read the Road or read Blood Marin, he's obviously better than everybody else. And his whole thing, he's like, yeah, he's like, it all comes from my subconscious. And he is like, subconscious is actually older than language. And that's where like he felt it came from. And so, yeah, it's not about like, not thinking about it, but again, you think about it for a day or two, it's like that's nothing compared to the your, your entire life.

You've been molded and you're, you're things you can't even explain. There's not language for why you believe some of the things you do or why you like the, some of the things you do. Somebody said it one time. I had to look up, 'cause I didn't eat sushi at the time. Uh, they said it was, is it sashimi? What is it called?

Ben: You are the type of sushi the,

David Senra: Yeah, so it's a, they called it shimi style podcasting. And the fact that like,

Ben: that's very good.

David Senra: yeah, the fact that I don't have any, uh, like there's no inter music, there's no anything. There's just me fucking ripping through the book at two x speed.

Ben: So you're talking about intuition. L leads me, like, uh, it reminds me of, there's a phrase used by a lot of artists, poets around, um, this sort of early modernism. They talked about a spiritist, moonie, the spirit world, and they felt like there was a spirit world of ideas, images, music, whatever, that they were accessing.

And, um, and they felt inspired by it. Do you ever feel inspired? Do you, do you think, do you even think about the world in that way? Are you, do you, are you a spiritual person at all? Do.

David Senra: Spiritual. I don't know. Um, I, so I had, there's this idea, there's this guy named Jim Simons, who, who built this, uh, the most successful fund of all time called Renaissance, Renaissance Technology, the fund, I think it was called the Medallion Fund. He just passed away. He made more money than anybody else in investing by a long shot.

And, uh, 'cause it's really like trading more than investing. And his biography's very fascinating. I probably redo it now that he passed away and it's like been a few years since I read it. But one of the things that, one of the ideas that I got from that is, uh, he used to, people would walk into the office and there'd be like.

He'd be laying on his couch. The lights were off and his eyes were closed and they thought he was sleeping. He wasn't sleeping, he was thinking. And he had this insight that if you like, don't have any sound, like you have no input. Right. So I don't meditate, I don't really pray, uh, you know, I don't go to church or anything like that.

But like, what I do do is, um, I will make sure that like my eyes are closed, whether I have a sleep mask on or I, I just close my eyes and I'm awake and then I don't have, I can't hear anything. I can't see anything. And then I just kind of like, just see what is going on in my mind, you know? And it's just like there's this weird thing that's like all this computation is happening in the background and sometimes I'll actually fall asleep 'cause it's relaxing.

So that's a bad part. But a lot of times I don't, and it might be just doing this for like 30 minutes and there's just some kind of insight that was buried deep in my subconscious that I didn't give my brain enough time to like open it up and think. I also walk, like, if you look at my steps, it's probably like 15,000 steps a day, 20,000 steps a day.

And half the time it's just nothing. Sometimes I listen to podcasts, sometimes I'm making phone calls, but other time I'm just like walking and just like letting my brain just like no input. And I think what the problem is, like we're all addicted to these screens. People are like, people say, no one reads anymore.

Well you're reading, but you're reading like captions and tweet size stuff all day long. Just like, it's just too much information I desire to live in like an analog world. Like I, going back to the filmmakers who I draw inspiration from, it's like, uh, Christopher Nolan doesn't have an email address, doesn't have a cell phone, goes to City, will ask for directions, won't even use GPS, like lives a very analog world.

Um, and you know, that's why I always read, like, it'd be way faster if I read like Kindle books. Although a lot of the books that you cover on the podcast, there are no Kindle version. But like, I just would rather have like a physical book, just focus on that. Nothing else. And I think I do wanna get to the point where it's like, I don't wanna look at [01:35:00] any of these.

I don't wanna sit at screens all day. I wanna read books outside and go for walks and like, think, think about what's going on. So I don't know if you would call that like. Spiritual or whatever. It's just like letting, making sure that there's this open communication from my subconscious to like, like my active mind and making sure that like, you know, you, you leave that open, obviously long showers you sweat.

One of the reasons like swim laps, same things. Like you can't, I guess now there's like headphones you can listen to, but it's just like, you're just your, your head and your movement and you don't have to think of anything. 'cause it's just like, you know how to instinctively swim.

Ben: So you're like moments of inspiration when they come, they come from just those moments of quietude and you feel like it comes from your subconscious.

David Senra: Yeah, well it's just like, there, there's an interpretation that is, there's subconscious. It's like when I read something and I'm like, oh, that spawned this other thought I didn't like, consciously like, let's think about this one sentence and now let's think now that it is not like a, it's not a process, you know, it's just like, oh this is na.

It happens naturally. I. Um, and so, yeah, and I wouldn't say like, I don't know if I'm necessarily like, inspired all the time, like, um, like I'll watch and read the same stuff. Like I listen to the same songs and the same videos and stuff like that. I love, like watching the Last Dance of Michael Jordan Defiant Ones, which is one of my favorite documentaries.

Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. So I'll rewatch things and, and playing in the background, and I guess that's a form of inspiration, but it's, it's much more of like a, like a just a day in, day out kind of like access to interesting information that, that spawns other thoughts.

Ben: One of, I just, I was just re-listening to an episode that I did about Napoleon. I was really struck that, you know, he was a French revolutionary, kind of very atheistic, uh, very religious, um, or unreligious. I don't know if there's a difference there, but he, um, really believed so strongly in destiny. And Destiny was kind of his God.

And he just really believed that his life had a purpose that Destiny was carrying him towards and really his belief in a higher power. And it struck me that Steve Jobs was very similar, that he was not, he was kind of atheistic, kind of Buddhist, but like, did not have a strong belief in God, but really believed that a higher power was kind of carrying him towards something.

And I think that's true of a lot of these people. Even if they don't believe in God, they, they have to believe in some higher power that's carrying them towards some, some end.

David Senra: Do you admire that?

Ben: I really, I I, not only do I admire it, I think I find it necessary for truly great action.

David Senra: So. Todd Graves believes God,

Ben: Eating chicken in chicken

David Senra: times. They're like, why have you not sold your company for billings? He goes, because God made me great at chicken fingers so I can help people. And so like you agree with him, but then you criticize him wrongfully, I might add. It's like, I don't know why you're, you're being so mean to these people, but, uh, listen,

Ben: I'm not trying to be mean. I,

David Senra: one, one of my fa one of my favorite things about nap that Napoleon said that I believe, he says, destiny must be fulfilled.

That is my chief doctrine. And so like, I believe that like, so, um, before I record, and I haven't done this in a while, but for a few years, I listen to the same song over and over again before I record to get like, like amped up. And it's by this rapper named NF and the title's called Destiny. And it's like, I believe that I was meant to do what I'm doing.

Like this is, I was meant like it's the right, I think I'm the right person. The right time with the right set of skills. And I thought about this the other day where it's just like, I would've been so fucked if I was born 20 years earlier. Like podcasting didn't exist. Like, uh, there was some movie, oh, uh, my son had never, my son was obsessed dinosaurs and he just turned five.

And so I was like, let's watch Jurassic Park. Right. Because I was like, I love this movie. When I was a kid, I watched it over and over again. I didn't realize how scary it might be for a 5-year-old.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah.

David Senra: Yeah. I was thinking about this movie came out in 93, and I'm like, I thought about this yesterday. I was just like, dude, the, I'm so lucky.

Like a, a, an extra, like 20 years early. I was like, there was no podcast in 93 if I wanted to be. Essentially, you'd have to go on the radio, you'd have to go to a building and ask them to put you on so people can hear you speak. There were so many gatekeepers, it would've never happened. I'm so lucky to be built or to be, to be born at this time.

So yeah, I feel like I. This is my destiny. I think I like, people think it's like some, uh, for a long time never bought me. People like thought it was like low status. And I remember somebody telling me that like, you have a level, you're a level 10 talent chasing a level four opportunity. And I was just like, you're fucking completely wrong about this.

Like, they're so powerful. And then now you think about all the people, like the, the, the very successful and influential and, uh, you know, powerful people that listen to founders. And it's like they're giving me an hour of their time. [01:40:00] You know how valuable that is. It's like the opposite of what you thought it was.

And it's because I actually chased my natural drift. I followed my natural drift. I didn't do it because I thought that was gonna be the outcome. I did it because I was genuinely interested in it. And I was willing for people to say like, this is a stupid fucking idea, David. And we'd be like, no, it's not stupid to me.

It's not stupid to me. So like, I like it. I'm gonna keep doing it. Um, so I actually do think it's like my destiny and it's like, I think we, we um, have you ever read, uh, have you ever read Robert Car's? Biographies of LBJ?

Ben: I haven't yet.

David Senra: Oh my God. You got, you're the perfect person. To do. Um, who was the guy There is a, so there was a podcast? . Um, it's in the book. The, the, the books are excellent. I, I think there should only be, there's only one person alive that should be allowed to write an 800 page biography and his name is Robert Carro. So, um, most of them are just way too long.

So there's guy named W Leo Daniel. Okay. And w Leo Daniel is essentially kind of like Trump before Trump in a way. Uh, and the way the, the way this is tied to like podcasting is he became unbelievably successful because he had like 90% market share in the Florida Hill country, uh, or, uh, Texas Hill Country, uh, for radio.

So he had this, he essentially became excessively famous, uh, as a radio person, right? And then he's making all this money advertising, uh, on radio. And then he realizes, Hey, I should own my own radio show. So he starts on radio show he owns, and he goes, instead of advertising, you know, most of the people at home during, during that time were like, housewives.

And what did all Housewives need? They bought flour, cooking flour. And so he is like, I made all this money for this flower company. I'm just gonna start my own show, and then I'm just gonna like do my own flower. And he winds up like building this huge fortune, like $40 million ba back way a long time ago.

And it was just unbelievable. And then he's like, okay, well what, what am I gonna do with this? Like, power next? And they're like, he's gonna run for governor. And people make fun of him. Remember when all that you, you did the clips at the beginning of your Trump episode. Where they're like, Trump's gonna run.

They're like, please run. We would love it. Please do this exact same response. And exactly what happened with Trump was like, people would go out and they were like, wait a minute. All these like rallies, political rallies, like you have his competition that has like a thousand people and w Leo Daniel, it's like 10,000 people.

Exactly what was going on with Trump. Same exact thing. So then he wins the governorship, which is hilarious. And then he moves his radio show and he's recording broadcasting live from the Texas Governor's office. And then again, what is he gonna do with this? Like, what do I do next? Then he goes and runs for senate against a young LBJ and and beats LBJ two.

Um, so the point being is it's like I was naturally interested in podcasting. I thought it was interesting. I thought they were beneficial educational tools. And then I started to realize like how influential they would be. And then what happens is we just had this election where they called it the podcast election and the Trump, I talked to people in the Trump, uh, uh, campaign before this.

They knew. They were calling it the podcast election before anybody year, a year before anybody else was. And if you look at like the, the amount of free, you know, attention he got compared to the Democratic, the person that, you know, his competitor, it's like you can just pull the public numbers. It's just absolutely insane.

Um, so yeah, I, I think like, so when I, when I say, Hey, I think podcasting is my destiny, I think like, you know, I have a chance to like be one of the best people in the world at it. I'm personally obsessed with it. Uh, I think for a long time people thought that was very odd. I'm sure pe still, people hearing me say this thing's a little odd.

I think it'd be as obvious to as it is to me today to other people, you know, five, 10 years from now, if not already, based on what should happened.

Ben: You segued perfectly into the last thing I want to ask you because he talked about this guy. Radio show, huge public influence, starts his own show becomes governor. Uh, when is David Center running for Governor of Florida?

David Senra: Never,

Ben: Never I.

David Senra: no, because again, like my whole thing, uh, one, I think you just have way more influence. Like, I think the, you, you nailed it earlier. It is just like there's certain people, I don't think fame is the right actual way to describe it. So like, I did this episode on Oprah, which I was actually really proud of.

I think it was a good episode, and this is something that she understood is, you know, she was on air five days a week. Same people were watching her for years, and they're like, you know, I could have, she, she mentions this since she talks about Parasocial relationships and she's like, I can have like an A-list actor.

I can have Brad Pitt on the Oprah Winfrey show. And I see how people react to him. Like, they're like, oh my God, I love you, everything else. Right? And, but they don't actually know him because he's like an actor. They know who he is and who he looks like, but like he plays a different role and he's like, you know, essentially onscreen very distant from them.

Ran, you know, every few years. Playing, acting as somebody else reading, uh, saying words written by other people [01:45:00] where with Oprah, they would come up to her and be like, so good to see you. Do you wanna come over to my house for lunch? It just like the relationships, like they don't, I see how they act with a-list.

Celebrities, they don't act like that with me. It's completely different. And so like, I actually think you would have more influence outside of it. I also think that, especially in, if this was like, so I listen to the Hamilton soundtrack all the time, I think it's like excellent. I love hip hop, I like history and everything else.

And that would be different if you're like the opportunity to create something from scratch, like a founder, I'd be very interested in that to, to take over the, the, the as governor or president or whatever the case is, you're like running something that was built by somebody else. It's like being a CEO of a 200 year old company.

There's way better people at that. Than I am, than I ever will be. I like starting shit from brand new. I like having control. I like being like the creator of it, not running something. You know, I told you people have offered me literally the co position of a company. They started. This is like never tempting at all.

Ben: Yeah. Great. Well, I support you, Dave, whether you choose to run for governor or not. If you run for governor, I will support you, but I, uh, I think you're making the

David Senra: No, I think you're outta the two of us. It's obvious who should be the one that's in political office and that's

Ben: No, I, I feel, no, I actually feel the exact same way that you do. I, I could not echo what you said anymore of like, what, what would be the point at the, at this point, I really admire men like Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, um, and you, you, and you do have to say, I do admire people like Trump and Obama a little bit, that at least start a movement.

It feels like a new thing that they have created, right.

David Senra: Yep.

Ben: But to just come into office and wield the office, uh, that doesn't feel that exciting to me.

David Senra: Yep. not artistic enough for you?

Ben: No, not at all. Uh, David, oh, actually, I did wanna ask you one more question, which is, I had a tweet the other day. I said, if, uh, if I was put in charge, I'd have every young man in the United States read these four books, and I had the Wright Brothers by David McCullough. I had the Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I had, um, endurance by Lansing, Alfred

Lansing, and, uh, the Wright stuff by Tom Wolf. Uh, what, and you've got kids. So you probably think about this. If you had to put together like a book list of three to five books for every young man in, in America to read what would be on your list,

David Senra: That's a great question. , okay, so your four were endurance. Excellent book. I read that. Wright Brothers excellent book educational bodybuilder. The first like 114 pages of that

Ben: Yeah, exactly.

David Senra: yeah. Um, those are excellent and then the right stuff. So four. That's a really good question. So four. Let's do this. Let me make it very specific.

Not like, let me say, what are the four books that I'd want my son to read? Yeah.

Ben: Great. Perfect.

David Senra: uh, against the Odds by James Dyson, because the book is all perseverance. It's, you know, the 14 years of struggle, 5,127 prototypes, just being stubborn about what you want outta life and just not willing to. What was the line you said earlier about Americans over, uh, Americans?

Ben: their problems. They overwhelm them.

David Senra: I think that's a, like a great example. Even though j Dyson's not American, so that would be up there. Um, I think the Wright Brothers would also be, uh, one of my picks because one, if you really think about, it's like they were able to do ingenuity. Ingenuity and unbelievable, like relentless resourcefulness.

They solved one of the longest standing human problems ever. You knew this like for thousands of years, humans had been writing about and trying to figure out how to fly. And even during, and it was, it was really, you know, a lot of ton, a ton of people were that the book does a great job of explaining, it's like the ton of people were doing exactly what the Wright brothers were trying to do as well, but they were way better funded.

They were, had some of the most famous scientists and engineers on their team and the Wright brothers came out on, were the first ones to do it. And they did it with like $1,500 of profits from like their bicycle shop, which is just like unbelievable. You know, arguably the most resourceful people that have ever lived.

Um, so I'd have Wright brothers. Um, I would have against the odds. I, I, I mean endurance is a good one just because I do think like by endurance, we Conquer is one of the best mottos I've ever heard for a long time, for years. On my lock screen, it was a, it was a picture of Ernest Shackleton with that beard where he is just covered and crusted in ice.

Um. So I think like, again, but I think against the odds kind of gets that, like, don't give up on your dreams. So I'm, I'm not gonna use that slot, but that was you, you, you picked really good ones. It speaks to again, that you, you have a talent for this and that you should just be working on your podcast night and day when you, you should be [01:50:00] making babies, which you're already doing.

'cause you're about to have your fourth kid and you should be working on your podcast and then you're still working out. Are you injured?

Ben: Uh, I actually, I took a month off to just get my back 100% right. So I'm gonna the sauna every single day and, uh, I'm, I'm only doing like stretches and work on my back for this month and the, and then in April I'm gonna start working out

David Senra: Yeah. 'cause last time I saw you were in phenomenal shape. So you, you got podcast baby making health, there's nothing else that you need to do. Um, okay. So Gen The Odds by James Dyson Wright Brothers, um, I'm going to mention the Carro book, the the second in his series on Lyndon Johnson. Uh, the Means to Ascent, um, it, it really talks about like, have you ever read Robert Car's book called Work?

Or goes into how he does his

Ben: No. Uh, I

would love

David Senra: there's a phenomenal story from that book. I'm gonna read it to you real quick. Um, so the reason I I'd put that up there is because, I mean, the, the whole series is excellent. I, I think Masters of Senate is probably the one I like the least in, in the, the series.

But l BJ's per, I'm, I'm really big on personal mottos. And so l BJ's, um, personal motto was, do everything and you will win, do everything, and you'll win. Very similar to, to Napoleon, when he says, you know, all the events hang on the, like, the, the, the tiniest, uh, like little detail or whatever. And like most people, and I for forgot the exact, uh, way he says it like, most people don't actually seize like the opportunity that's in front of them.

Ben: By the way, you talking about that quote someone, uh, who was it? Anyways, one of my friends brought up his favorite quote of Napoleon, which was really good, which is kind of similar idea, but it's just something simple and it's just a, in a letter and he's writing to one of his generals. And, um, he just says, um, energy, energy, always more activity.

Everything relies on you. And he said, he just tells himself that like, there's almost nothing that can't be solved with more energy and activity.

David Senra: yeah, I think, like, I'm obviously, like I study people for a living and so I think people are powered all the best ones to change everything. Napoleon's version of this is, he says in war men are nothing. And a man, um, a man is

everything.

Ben: man does everything.

David Senra: One man is everything. So the, the line I was looking for is Napoleon says, all great events hang by a single thread.

The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity. The less clever man by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. So lb j's version of that is if you do everything, it'll win. And a means of ascent, like goes into, um, like ex exactly what he was willing to do to, and in some cases, like lack of scruples, like he's very, like, you know, people call him corrupt or dishonest, whatever the case is.

I think there's a, obviously I'm not trying to get my son to be that way, but I think there's, it just explains that there's a lot of people that are out there like that. And if you can channel that in, in a positive direction, that's great, but also you have to be very careful because other people will do that to you.

So it's like, al, there's an offensive element to it that I want to be in a more positive direction and then also a defensive element that I'd want him to, uh, be aware of like the world that he inhabits, especially if I'm, uh, if I'm not here anymore. So there's a great line, uh, in the end. In Lyndon, um, in Robert Carl's book work, which is again, talks about his process of, you know, being the greatest living biographer, but also talks about his two people he's dedicated his life to studying, which is Robert Moses and, and, and Lyndon Johnson.

And he talked about, he was interviewing all these people and, you know, Lyn Johnson's born in unbelievable poverty in, in the Texas Hill country. And he gets to, as a young man, he's probably in his early twenties, something like that. And he gets to the position of power where he wants to be or where he eventually going.

He's just working in Washington, dc he has no power yet. And they were talking about, I'm just gonna read this to you. He goes, I wasn't fully understanding what these people were telling me about the depth of Lyndon Johnson's determination. That is really why I'd want my son to read the book. 'cause it describes the depth of his determination, how, how determined you can be about the frantic urgency, the desperation to get ahead and to get ahead fast.

And if the passions and the ambitions that he brought and about the passions and ambitions he brought to Washington Strong, though they were, were somehow intensified by the fact that he was finally there in the place where he'd always wanted to be. This is the how I feel about podcasting. This is, if you listen to the episode I did on this book on Robert Car's work, if you wanna listen to this after we talk, it's not about Lyndon Johnson.

I realize like that's about me. That podcast is about me, um, just using Lyndon Johnson as a a, as a, like a, a way to tell that story. So he says, I wanted to show, I wanted to show the contrast between what he was coming from, the poverty, the insecurity, and what he was trying for. And so what would happen is one of Lyndon Johnson's, the people's working in the office with him, would see him every morning like, just like running full fled, like five 30 in the morning.

Right? And I'm gonna read this section to you real quick. She goes, uh, as Lyndon Johnson came up, Capitol Hill in the morning, he would be running. [01:55:00] No one else is running. Okay. He's not jog, he's not out for a jog. He's in a fucking suit. Okay. He says the, the woman who worked with him coming to work in the morning would see this Gangling figure running awkwardly arms flapping past the long row of columns on his way to the hot house office building at first, because it was winter, and she knew that he only owned a thin top coat.

She thought he was running because he was cold. But in spring the weather turned warm and still, whenever she saw Lyndon Johnson coming up Capitol Hill, he would be running. Well, of course he was running from the land of dog run cabins to this. Everything he had ever wanted, everything he had ever hoped for was there.

It's a beautiful writing and it's like, and that's just an excerpt from the book. The entire section is incredible. Um, and so I think, again, Lyndon Johnson in many ways, a very flawed person. I would not want my son to turn out thinking, but I think reading about his like story and understanding the levels of determination would be good.

So, so far I have against the odds means of ascent. Wright Brothers, the fourth book that I'd want my son to read.

Lessons of History Will and Aero Durant

Ben: Very good.

David Senra: biography. A hundred page Biography of the Human Species written by, you know, the greatest, when were they alive? 20th century. Uh, historians, they, Yeah. dedicated 50 years of their life. Literally just talking about what human nature is, what our history is. And then they did this ridiculous goal, which they even said was ridiculous when they did it, but it turned out beautifully, uh, you know, to essentially summarize what they spent half a century learning.

And uh, yeah, I think reading that book and rereading it over and over again is unbelievably important.

Ben: Have you read the, or even any book within the bigger series

David Senra: Uh, the last one, uh, Napoleon, the a, it's not the last one. It's like the, the 10th or 11th version. The age of Napoleon. Yeah. No, I have, in fact, I got, somebody had shipped it to me and there wasn't a note and it was just like the entire, it was like the heaviest thing ever. And I found out later on who did it, but it, it's like, not even note here.

This is incredible. But yeah, I have every single one of those books in the living room.

Ben: Well, David, thanks so much for taking the time. I really do. I appreciate it. Is there anything else that we didn't talk about that we should have talked about? I.

David Senra: No, I, we should do this every once in a while. I enjoyed it.

Ben: Yeah, I did too. This was, this was great. So,

David Senra: Good luck to you and your wife, man. God bless you. And the, the new baby, uh, just again, super happy for you and super, super envious.

Ben: thanks dude. I appreciate it. And everyone who's listening, go uh, go listen to founders. It'll change your life. It's great.

David Senra: Thank you brother.

And of course, one last shout out to Speechify. I find that listening while I read, really helps me comprehend and retain more for my reading. .

Speechify is the best in the business at text toe ai, and if you want, you can even listen in my voice. So go to speechify.com/ben to get 15% off Speechify Premium. You won't regret it.

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