How To Lose A Few Billion Dollars: The Life Story of Samuel Insull

1. 0:00 – 3:02

   Who Was Samuel Insull? The Forgotten Electricity Industry Builder

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      Do you remember Sam Insull, the billionaire utility tycoon from Chicago? Do you remember how his empire collapsed and how he lost $2 or $3 billion? How the newspapers at the time called it the biggest business failure in the history of the world? You may remember the battle that the United States government had to extradite Insull from Greece. But chances are you don't remember that Insull had been in the electric business as long as there had been an electric business, that he had started as Thomas Edison's private secretary in 1881, that he more than any other man was responsible for founding the business of centralized electric supply, that he organized the Edison General Electric Company, now known as GE, and that he worked out a model of nationwide product distribution that virtually all other American industry copied, that he practiced and popularized mass production and selling at the lowest possible cost long before these ideas were attributed to Henry Ford, that he was the first to successfully apply on a large scale the concepts of the load and diversity factors on which all utility rates are based today, that he brought into effect the natural monopoly principle of utility companies, that he helped create the open-end mortgage that's used in financing expansion of many businesses outside of the electric industry today, that he was the father of effective government regulation of public utilities and the creator of rural electrification, that he pioneered successful welfare programs years before most of business, labor, or government took any significant steps in that direction, that he helped develop the idea and techniques of modern public relations, and he was the crucial link between P.T. Barnum and Madison Avenue, and that he devised methods of marketing securities that made possible gigantic modern corporations. Next to Thomas Edison, Sam Insull is the name that you should remember as the most important and perhaps the most notorious person in the electricity business. That was an excerpt from the book I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Insull: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Utility Tycoon, and it was written by Forrest McDonald. This is a very old book. It was first published in 1962. And what the book, uh, lays out is that Insull was not just a company builder, but he was actually an industry builder. So you could think of what Rockefeller was to oil, what Henry Ford was to the automobile, uh, what J.P. Morgan was to finance, and what Carnegie was to steel, Sam Insull was to electricity. But unlike Rockefeller, Ford, Morgan, and Carnegie, Insull made terrible, drastic mistakes at the end of his career, and he dies broke. And so for you and I, this is going to be one of the scariest books, uh, that we could talk about because the idea that you can be wildly successful, maybe the most successful businessman in the 1920s, have an amazing 53-year career, and still be over-leveraged and risk everything and die with no money is ter- absolutely terrifying.

2. 3:02 – 3:03

   Opportunity Handled Well: Stenographer, Bowles, and Service First

   1. DSDavid Senra3:02

      So I'm going to start with

3. 3:03 – 13:10

   Demonic Energy and a Self-Help Upbringing

   1. DSDavid Senra3:03

      the relationship that he had with his father. Insull is born and raised in England, and what is most interesting is that he had all of his dad's positive traits and none of the negative ones. So his dad was described as imaginative, clever, and enthusiastic. What his dad did not have was energy, practical sense, and fortitude. Sam's father was idealistic, impractical, and intellectual. That is not how you would describe Sam. Sam was very smart, but he was pragmatic, very much like Thomas Edison. And another way Sam differs from his dad is there's a line in the book where it says his dad was not interested in earning a living. Uh, Sam was the exact opposite. He loved operating companies. He was a workaholic. It says when he was-- His standard workday was 16 hours a day from the very beginning of his career and all the way up until when he was in his 70s. He was still working 16 hours a day. Uh, he loved operating companies, and he was, as we'll see, he's very, very gifted at operating companies. And after finishing the book and then rereading all my highlights before I sat down to talk to you, I think his, maybe his mo- most important trait is that he had [chuckles] the, the author says that he had near demonic energy. I'm gonna read this paragraph to you. This is in- incredible. Th- and this starts out when he was really young, and he had incredible energy and work ethic up until, uh, the very end. "He was small, but his physical endurance was boundless, and his energy was inexhaustible. He had a peculiar metabolic makeup. He awoke early, abruptly, completely, bursting with energy." Think about that. [laughs] He's, opens his eyes and he jumps out of bed, uh, with a burning desire to achieve mission success is the way I put, I would put that. So he'd be bursting with energy, yet he gained momentum as the day wore on, and he would work long into the night. Later on, much later on, as a mat- as a matter of fact, uh, as an adult, he learned to relax, but relaxation was a learned thing to be reserted, resorted to only when he r- was on the verge of physical collapse. This sounds like Thomas Edison too. Uh, relaxation was an act of will. His body always told him to go and go and go. Because he came from the lower middle class and sometimes he was cl- very close to poverty, uh, from his dad's, what I would call laziness, uh, he had to s- he started working really early. Starts having to support the family. I think he's, he's working, uh, more than full time when he's 14. And so there's a description of him, uh, early on, but this is something, again, characteristics that he maintains throughout his entire life. The way I would think about when you analyze and read about Sam is he had a very gifted and deductive mind. Uh, so it says, "Sam's most obvious attributes was a capacity for racing through large quantities of reading material, effortlessly perceiving its important assumptions and generalizations, and thoroughly assimilating its salient details." The way his mind worked, it said he reasoned from particulars to generalizations about all the information that he was able to consume. He learned to see to the heart of relations between things and to grasp the underlying principles so clearly that he could perceive ways to shift them around and make them work even better. As we'll see when he goes to America to become the private secretary of Thomas Edison. I think he's 21 at the time. Essentially, his job was, "Hey, we have this gifted inventor. Now systematize all the businesses around him." And so that's exactly what Insull did, and he's gonna wind up working in that industry for the next 53 years. But when he's a young boy, he's reading... They call them, th- they would call them self-help books. In fact, uh, one of the, these authors, uh, this guy named Samuel Smiles that Insull was reading about, actually wrote a series of inspirational books that we'd call self-help today. In fact, one of them... [chuckles] So it's, it's like a combination of self-help and, like, uh, biographies. So w- he's, like, reading biographies of lives of great engineers. But one of the actual titles that he read and had a, a ma- a huge affection o- on h- on his life was a book called Self Help. And these books, in their day, sold a ton of copies, so it was like th- they inspired thousands of young, uh, English men with this idea that if you exercise lifelong learning and self-discipline and honesty and thrift and prudence, then fortune would follow. And so he would take some of these lines. He would have these maxims that he'd repeat, and he would repeat them throughout his life, uh, ever since he was a young man. So I just wanna list a couple of the ones that, that stood out to me. So the first one is, "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." Number two, "Time is money." Number three, "Things are simply done or not done." Number four, "One reveres one's family." Number five, "Only that which is useful is good." That reminds me of one of my favorite Thomas Edison quotes. He says that, "Sale is proof of utility." Edison was famous for only wanting to invent things that had actually a commercial application, and his whole point is, like, you know it's useful because people will buy it. Sale is proof of utility. So again, only that which is useful is good. And six, "Survival of the fittest." And so Sam's first job, he's 14 years old. He gets a job, uh, at this firm of auctioneers, and he's just an office boy, basically having to do whatever it is they need done. Just like Carnegie before him and Rockefeller, we see this over and over again. He'll just start acquiring all these skills that make him more valuable to the company, even at a young age. So Rockefeller would learn bookkeeping. Carnegie would learn how to be a telegraph operator. Insull's version of that, he's, he just becomes a stenographer. And just like Carnegie, who would stay up late into the night learning, uh, how to be a telegraph operator, Insull was doing the exact same thing. It says he worked at it long into the night every night until he had become an expert stenographer. The other night, I was having dinner with two founder friends, and we had, we ended up having this very interesting discussion on Sam Zell. And I actually went... It, it inspired me the next morning to go and reread all my highlights of s- from Sam Zell's autobiography. And there was a description of something Sam was doing early in his career. It might have been at one of his first projects where he was building all that student housing, uh, in Michigan, if I'm not mistaken. And there was a note I left myself that I had forgotten, and it says, uh, "Do the best you can with the opportunity in front of you. Opportunity handled well leads to more opportunity." Opportunity handled well leads to more opportunity. So he becomes a stenographer, realizes, hey, this is a very valuable skill set. These older, more successful businessmen are in need of it. So I will not just learn it, but I will st- spend nights and weekends becoming the very best, uh, stenographer I can be. He's, like, 15 when he's doing this, right? And as a result, his boss at this auction, auctioneer company actually knows the editor of, the founder and editor of the magazine Vanity Fair, and he needs help. His name is Thomas G. Bowles. So he actually needed a person to come at night and be his stenographer. And so because Sam did the best he possibly could with the opportunity that was in front of him, and opportunity handled well leads to more opportunity, he winds up being a very close and important nighttime employee for this well-connected and powerful founder and editor of Vanity Fair. And so if you think about this, Sam Insull at this point is a PSD, which you and I have talked about over and over again. Poor, smart, and determined. He doesn't, he's not connected to... He doesn't know high finance, high business. He doesn't know, uh, the most powerful people in the country, but Thomas Bowles does. And now he is r- at the right hand of Thomas Bowles. So it says, "Bowles was intimate with many important politicians and able to gain entrance almost anywhere through his personal and family connections. Insull would go to Bowles' home four nights a week to take dictation from 8:00 until midnight." He would s- he would [laughs] ... This is something that Insull was f- was famous for. Remember they said he had demonic energy. He said sleep was unimportant, so he would arise at 4:00 the following morning, right? So keep in mind, he's working all day. He's got a full-time job at the auctioneer, right? Then he goes and he works for Bowles, uh, from 8:00 until midnight. Then he sleeps for four hours, wakes up at 4:00 in the morning, transcribes all the notes that he took for Bowles, and then delivers that to the printers on his way to his day job. Now, this is very important because you and I talk about this. Relationships run the world. And so the way that Sam Insull is going to build a relationship, and the, really probably the only path to build a relationship with extremely influential and powerful people that can help you, right, is service first. He's not like, "Hey, gimme, gimme. Let me go pick your brain." No, it's like, "I'm going to work excessively hard for you. I'm going to provide a valuable service for you first." And as a result, Thomas Bowles teaches him about the highest end of business and politics and finance, and more importantly, maybe, maybe more importantly, or just as importantly maybe is the way you think about this, Sam starts to become very comfortable around, in the presence of very powerful people. And so now Sam starts to see, oh, this is a path to advancement. What does he do? He doesn't like, "Okay. Well, I'm just gonna keep, you know, being an office boy and keep being a sto- stenographer." He's like, "No, I need to, to acquire more skills." So then he starts to teach himself bookkeeping. Uh, he winds up buying a bunch of, like, essentially almost like a course is the way you could think about this, that would teach him bookkeeping and accounting, and then he starts keeping an imaginary set of double-entry books to practice. Then he's reading every spare minute of the day, and it's not like this guy has a lot of, uh, spare minutes, right? He devoured classic works in political economy, history, literature, and biography. He had the ability to commit to memory everything he read. He also had the ability to focus, which is again, is, I think, is becoming even more and more rare in the world, the modern world that you and I live in today. It says he developed the ability to concentrate on a singble- single subject. And to completely shut out everything else, no matter how pressing. He learned to systematize and render efficient whatever he dealt with. And so that is a hint to what is probably his greatest skill in operating businesses. People would bring him in from other companies, and just like he could come into your company and just build systems to make every single company he was in- involved in, he found ways to systematize it and to make it more efficient. Without that skill, you and I would not be talking about him today. This book would not have been written on, because essentially what like his main achievement is that he developed, right, the business model for the modern electric industry, and he winds up... He does this by turning a luxury product into a necessity. His like flagship accomplishment in life, him, more than any other person in history, made electricity universally cheap and abundant. What blows your mind is when you go and read these books, especially in like this robber baron era, it's, they, they essentially had a very similar idea, even if they didn't put it into words. It's like, how do we turn a luxury product into a necessity?

4. 13:10 – 20:42

   Getting Fired and Studying Everything About Edison

   1. DSDavid Senra13:10

      Okay, so I wanna fast-forward a few years. Insull is 19, and he still has this habit of reading and then using the best, like absorbing as much useful information as possible. He winds up coming across this article that talks about a 31-year-old American inventor named Thomas Edison, and Sam Insull is blown away. And after putting that article down, he goes and finds every single possible thing he can find on Thomas Edison, and he reads it all. In doing so, Edison becomes Insull's hero. And a 19-year-old Sam Insull does not know. He's about to get fired for no fault of his own. He doesn't know this is going to be probably the best thing that ever happened to him. So his boss that he's been working there for, what, fo- four and a half years, gives Insull a review. He's like, "You're incredible. Uh, you're diligent, and unfortunately, we have to fire you." And he was like, "Well, what's going on?" Their most important customer that was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and that's in the 1870, 1880s, wants his son to enter the business. So he's got... Essentially, Insull gets fired because the, the company he's working for, the most important customer, the son needs a job, and that job that he gets was formerly done by Sam Insull. And as you can imagine, he's crushed. He's humiliated. He's somewhat depressed. But he doesn't stay depressed for long. He's like, "Okay, I gotta find another job. I gotta support myself." And he winds up getting a job. His new employer w- is this guy called Colonel George. Why did I say this is probably the most important thing that ever happens to him? Because Colonel George, it was the European representative of Thomas Edison. This is one of Thomas Edison's companies. This is not, has nothing to do with electricity yet. This is when he was making innovations in the early telephone industry. So Colonel George hires a young Sam Insull. He's like, "Wait a minute, this guy can do everything. Not only can he be my stenographer, he can be my bookkeeper." And so what he does is he allows Sam Insull to read every single thing inside the company about all these contracts and all the businesses they're doing for Edison. This is-- Rockefeller did the same thing, if you remember, on the multiple Rockefeller episodes I've done. He becomes like the, the bookkeeper at this like produce commission house. Uh, it's called Hewitt & Tuttle. And what he does is he's like, "Hey, I'm just gonna read through the history, the complete, uh, history of the company." So he goes back and reads all the books and everything about that. Uh, they say by the time Rockefeller was done, he knew more about the company than the founders did. You're seeing something very similar in Sam Insull's life. And so here's a description of that. He says, "He went through systematically, uh, every scrap of paper concerning Edison that he could find in the office, and he committed most of it to memory. When Edison's chief engineer ca-" His na- his name's Edward Johnson. "When Edison's chief engineer came from America to London to supervise the installation of the first European telephone exchange, he found that Sam Insull," who again is 19 at the time, "he found that Sam Insull knew more about Edison's business affairs in Europe than Colonel George did." And so if you think about what's happening is this is really incredible. Step one, learn everything about Edison. Step two, build a relationship by serving Edison's chief engineer. So, uh, by this point, Edison's already Insull's hero, right? So he's like, "Okay, I'm gonna tie my fate." He thinks Edison is so special, he's like, "We need to tie our fates together. How am I gonna get a job? How can I work? How can I meet Thomas Edison?" And so this is what he says. He's like, "Well, to do, I must do two things. I have to learn everything I could about the technical aspects of Edison's businesses, and I need to build a relationship with Johnson." And so how does he do that? Same way. He's, does acts of service. He doesn't ask for something. He's like, "These people are really important. I, how can I, what can I do to help them?" So he spends every single minute with Johnson's engineers as they're building this, uh, European telephone exchange in London, right? And he's like, he asks them a bunch of questions, but he'll do anything. He's like, "Hey, can I carry your pliers? Can I help you string wires?" Every single aspect of the business, and this is something that Sam does for his entire life. He probably knew more. I mean, he's the one that vertically integrated the electricity industry, so he definitely did. He knew just, he knew every single aspect of the business. That's just his modus operandi in whatever he's, whatever he does, and you see it at 19 in this telephone business. And so after a few months of this, Johnson becomes familiar with him, right? He's like, "Okay, I know who this guy is. He's obviously smart. I'll spend some time with him." But he al- was also complaining, [chuckles] this is funny. Uh, Edward Johnson, remember Edison's chief engineer, complained loudly about the laziness of Englishmen who refused to work on weekends. And so Sam hears him say this. He's like, "Hey," he volunteers. He's like, "I will come to your home on the weekend, and I will work without pay." And so w- of course, uh, Johnson accepts. He's like, "Okay, cool." And Edis- uh, soon, Sam Insull is doing all of the secretarial work for Edison's chief engineer. And Johnson realizes, "Hey, this kid is gifted. I need to find a job for him." It says, says, "Johnson was soon con- uh, vinced, uh, conceived of the ideal function for Sam Insull. Edison was always doggedly sy- systematic and practical regarding his inventions, but he conducted his personal and business affairs in a slipshod manner. Johnson believed that Sam Insull was just the sort of fellow Edison ought to have around him as a private secretary and general business partner." And so by this point we're, you know, 19, what are we, 19, 20 years into Sam Insull's life. It's very obvious. The book has just started, and there's a great line that Lyndon Johnson has said over and over again that are in the biographies of Robert Caro. I also talked about on episode 305 that I did on Robert Caro and LBJ. It's, "Do everything and you will win." That's one of my favorite maxims I've ever heard. Do everything and you will win. If you heard my episode on The Mind of Napoleon, right? That book is so hard to find. It's episode 302. It is obvious when you study Napoleon, when you study LBJ, when you study a lot of the people you and I talk about. If they didn't say it out of their mouth, their actions are showing that do everything and you will win. Most people will do- will not do everything. And so we see he, he, he wants to go to America. He wants to work for Thomas Edison. There's no opening yet. Johnson's trying to figure out how can I get him in, and during this window of uncertainty, this time period, right? It's not like Sam Insull. I think you already know by now this guy's not gonna sit down and do anything. He wakes up with demonic energy. So this is what he did. During this wait, he was neither idle nor waiting. He reread every one of Edison's European contracts and then took it upon himself to write weekly letters to Johnson summarizing the fluctuations in the telephone situation and outlining Edison's shifting interest in connection with it. These letters proved to be the best selling points Johnson could have in recommending Insull. And when Edison's private secretary suddenly resigned, Insull was on his way to New York. Now, this is incredible. Everybody around Insull's like, "You are insane." Because he's like, "All right, I'm out of here, guys. I'm go- I'm jumping on a boat and I'm going to America." And they're like, "What do you do? What's your job?" He's like, "I don't know. There's no job description." "What are you getting paid?" "I don't know. I didn't ask." And so you have all of his family and friends like, "You're nuts. You can't go. You don't even know what your job is. You don't know what you're gonna get paid, and you're gonna get on a boat and go and cross the Atlantic?" And this description of Sam Insull is one of my favorite ones in the entire book. Doubting yourself is very, very dangerous, something that's come up a bunch. To have been swayed by such, such objections would have been completely out of character for him. One of his most deep-rooted traits was that he was absolutely unable to imagine the possibility of his own failure. He entirely lacked the sense of caution of those who doubt themselves. Caution, like relaxation, was unnatural to him.

5. 20:42 – 27:37

   Crossing the Atlantic to Work for Edison

   1. DSDavid Senra20:42

      Insull gets on the boat, right? He gets on the boat, he lands. He gets in New York, you know, this after a few week journey. He gets in New York. It's nighttime. The sun had just set. Johnson meets him there. He's like, "Hey, we have no time to wait. Like, we're pushing," right? "We're pushing the pace here." We're-- He takes him straight to where Thomas Edison's at because at this point in Edison's career, he had just completed his successful experiments on electric lighting, and so this is when he closes, temporarily closes Menlo Park, moves to Manhattan, and he's getting financing from J.P. Morgan, and he's trying to build out... This is direct current, right? So this is the very early days. I mean, it is the earliest days of the electrical lighting industry. And again, going back to this idea that there's a, something that happens over and over again. Can you turn a luxury product into a necessity? And you do that by making it universally cheap and affordable for everybody else. They knew what they were trying to do because Insull, Johnson, and Edison said things like this. "We will make electric lights so cheap that only the rich will be able to burn candles." So Johnson brings Insull to Edison, and they look at each other and like, "Oh my God, this guy's so young." And at the time this is, Insull was 21, right? But he looked a little younger, and Edison is just 34 years old. This is... You know I'm obsessed with this because I talk about this all the time. Because if you Google, Google image search Thomas Edison, you're gonna see the old, like the, the, the white-haired Edison, you know? And this idea it's like, oh, we get insight, and there's a bunch of, uh, like super old books, uh, mentioned in this book, and one of them is like, it talks about like the very early days, like when Edison was in his 20s, and it was written by a guy that was like one of his helpers, so I just ordered it. It should be here in like two or three weeks. It's like very hard to find. But I, I'm obsessed with this idea. It's like, okay, yeah, Edison at the very end of his career, that's fascinating. He's the, he's the, you know, the, the elder statesman. Uh, he's going on these road trips with Henry Ford. He's probably the one-- You know, he is one of the most famous people on the planet. This is Edison before that. This is 34-year-old Edison still trying to figure things out. Now, that did not mean that he wa- he was already, you know, pretty famous, and he had a bunch of inventions under his belt. And so there's this great paragraph I wanna read to you from the book because it really like allays some of the fear that Insull's fa- family and friends had. Like, "You're crazy. Don't go on the boat. Like, why are you doing this? You don't know what the job is. You don't know what you're getting paid." He's like, "Yeah, but I get to work with Thomas Edison." And so here was Edison's resume at 34. Here was the man who had invented the stock ticker, the multiplex telegraph, the mimeograph machine, the phonograph, and the transmitter that made the telephone practical. The man who said he had invented and was about to give the world electric lighting, electric power, and electric transportation. The man who would invent, in the next decade, the motion picture and discover the principles that made possible radio and television. And so of course, if you're a tw- young 21-year-old, or really any age, and you have the ability to sit, to literally be the private secretary, to go everywhere, to, to be his linchpin to the world, you of course you do it. This was a, a genius idea, uh, and risk that turned out to not, not be that very risky that a young Sam Insull did. So the first thing Edison's doing is like, "Hey, I'm having..." He's like fighting with J.P. Morgan and a bunch of his financiers. They won't give him the money he wants to extend, uh, his electric invention. So he's like, "I don't, you know, I don't care. I'm going to... I have to figure out how to do this myself. Take a look at all my resources," young Sam Insull, because remember, he had been writing... The, essentially what he's gonna do, he's gonna sell off a bunch of like his patents and, and licenses for his telephone business, and he's like, "Can you go through this and tell me what I should do?" Now, how would Thomas Edison and Johnson know that he should do that? Well, remember that Insull was writing these weekly letters. I said, "I'm reading every single thing. I'm reading all the contracts, all your licenses. I know the lay of the land over here. This is what you should do." So the first job he does, he says, "Hey, listen." Edison tells him, he goes, "I got $78,000. Uh, I need to finance my new undertakings, and I'm ready to sell everything that I own." And the most valuable thing that Edison owned at this point, that he believed, was his European telephone securities. So the first job is Insull has to go through all of this paperwork again and say, "Okay, where's the best play- place that we can sell the dozens of..." And they have all these different securities, different kind of securities. "We have, you know, dozens of these. Where do we go? How do we do this? And how much do you think we could make from them?" Remember, this job is starting the first night that he gets there. Let's say the sun sets. This is in February, so what time would the sun set? Maybe, you know, 5:00 in the afternoon, something like that. He works all the way through the night. By 4:00 in the morning, he had gone through every single one of these transactions and had a plan on how to distribute them and sell them for the highest poss- possible price. Edison's like, "Okay, this is the guy." So he goes, "Hey, what, what do you wanna make?" And Insull's like, "I don't care. Just pay me whatever." And again, think about that. It's like, "Pay me whatever. I'm going to prove my worth to you." And then it's not like Edison had... E- Edison's not, uh, organized. So if someone asked, if someone was to go back in time and ask Sam, "Hey, uh, what were you doing for Edison?" Uh, "Whatever was necessary," is the w- is the, the answer. Whatever is necessary. And so there's just one paragraph I wanna read to you that describes this. "He systematized Edison's office without attempting to systematize Edison's own activities. Edison wh- Edison's whole method of work," Insull later recalled, "would upset the system of any business office. He cared not for the hours of the day or the days of the week." And so what I wanna talk about, th- it's not like he, he, he had a set schedule, right? He would work on whatever he thought was most important or most interesting at that time. And so sometimes it's, he would talk to all, all the people on the staff for two or three hours about an invention or a thought that he had, uh, the night before. Or he'd spend two or three days in a row trying to say, "Hey, I just got... I just created something. Now I'm gonna spend two or three days just running experiment after experiment with as little sleep as possible to try to push this idea into some kind of practical application as soon as possible." And then once he figured, like he solved the problem, he would hand it off to somebody else to turn it into a product. But there was no, like, organization or rhyme or reason to, uh, like the way Edison spent his time. And there's a great description of this a few pages later where it says, "Systematic as Edison..." [chuckles] So well, first of all it says, "Edison possessed a colossal ego," of course. Uh, "But systematic as he was when pursuing his own ends, he had an almost pathological hostility to any form of sister- system, order, or discipline imposed from without." So the mandate is clear. Build a business around me. Systematize that business. Do not try to systemize the way I spend my time. I do not want input from others on how I'm doing that. And so I mentioned earlier, I really think of Insull and a lot of the, like Carnegie and, and Rockefeller and, uh, and Ford, th- they're definitely company builders, but even more bigger than that, they're industry builders. And so Insull was the same way, uh, because remember, Edison's gonna give up on [chuckles] electricity. Uh, Insull stays, stays with it for his entire life. He works with... Well, let me just read this line to you. It says, uh,

6. 27:37 – 30:18

   Building an Industry Around Edison and Rising at General Electric

   1. DSDavid Senra27:37

      "That was to be Insull's job for nearly 12 years with Edison and 40 years thereafter, to make Edison's system work." And so why do I say it's really industry building? 'Cause th- listen to what they, all the things they have to invent, uh, that you just wouldn't if you're not building an industry. The, the inventions, the electricity inventions could not be immediately used with existing devices. So to make his electric light u- usable, Edison and Insull had first to invent every component of an electric generating and distribution system, and then to create the manufacturing industry to make them, an engineering organization to install them, and a central station industry to buy them. Hundreds of minor parts of a complete electrical system had yet to be devised. They had to develop practical switches, sockets, cables, junction boxes, wires, insulators, fusers, meters, filaments, voltage regulators, and scores of other devices. This is company building on hard mode because it is industry building. So the great thing about Insull, especially from Thomas Edison's viewpoint, is like you could just drop him in anywhere. It's like, "Hey, there's a problem over here. Just go fix it," and then you can just know that he's gonna fix it without, uh, having to think about it. So this is where he drops him into the company that eventually becomes, uh, General Electric. Now, what's fascinating here is the value transfer that happens between Edison and Insull, and the value is not in money. Uh, Insull's not making a bunch of money. He's 25 years old at this point. But he is building a world-class network, and then, like, priceless experience. So he's gonna take this network and experience that he builds, or that he, he picks up working for Edison, and then apply it to his own business a few years later. But I do wanna s- point out, because y- it's kinda crazy is like how much time I had spent, uh, with this book. So first of all, the book is not easy to read, and it's not 'cause it's bad writing. It's because there's so much, it's so high, like information dense, and there's so much going on 'cause, uh, Insull's gonna wind up having hundreds and hundreds of companies, and it's very complex, uh, structures. So let's say the book is 350 pages. It's not. It's probably 700 pages 'cause I had to reread, uh, [chuckles] several pages multiple times. But what is happening is while I'm reading the book, I forget... Like the intro is, "Hey, this guy..." [chuckles] The subtitle's "The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Utilities Tycoon." He is so gifted, uh, and has such great ideas that I had to remind myself over and over again while I'm reading this book, this has a har- terrible, unhappy, disastrous ending, and you just cannot believe. And that's why I think it, it's really gonna resonate in my brain and why I wanna talk to you about it, is

7. 30:18 – 35:31

   The Fatal Flaw: Leverage and the Warnings of Buffett and Munger

   1. DSDavid Senra30:18

      because it doesn't matter how many great decisions you make throughout your 50-year career. If you over-leverage yourself, you can ruin your entire's life work, and you can die with no money, and no, like, all your accomplishments wiped out. So I'm gonna get to that in a minute because you see his fatal flaw, that borrowing, excessive borrowing and excessive leverage just became this deep-rooted habit with him. And you'll see that 'cause he's gonna mention it in a minute. So this is all the stuff that he's accumulating just in the short four years. So now I fast-forward to four years in the story, he's only 25, but he's met virtually all important finger, figures in the business world. He had accumulated a bunch of experiences which would ultimately prove very useful in the business that he's gonna set up and run for the next 40 years after that, that. He knew everybody who was anybody in the electric business. Uh, he had picked up first-hand knowledge of urban politics on a depth and a scale that was rare. He had learned enough about manufacturing, selling, promoting, administration, and organizing, and he had also learned the meaning of credit and what it could do. Borrowing became a deep-rooted habit with him. He would say, "Never pay cash when you could give a note." And so I just wanna pull up a couple things that came to my mind. They all come from Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, uh, when I got to this part because he owned a bunch of different companies. One of them, let me just give you the idea of, like, how, how highly leveraged he is. After the Great Depression, this guy's gonna wind up borrowing, like, another $200 million. Again, he had gone through a bunch of... This is the very difficult part about this, is, like, he had gone through a bunch of different financial panics. He didn't ne- he didn't really believe. This was his fatal, one of his fatal flaws, I should say. He didn't believe the Great Depression was anything different. He's like, "Oh, this is like, I've been through a bunch of financial panics. Everything will be fine. It'll be back in, like, a couple months, a couple years." And so he, he literally called to the, the White House with a bunch of other, a bunch of other, like, prominent American businessmen, and Hoover's like, "Oh, this is, you know, just do, conduct business as usual." Now, all this falls. The weird thing is when you read about Insull in, in the biography too, and I, I watched a couple videos on him as well, they're all like, "Oh, it wasn't his fault. It was the Great Depression." It's like, no, no, no, it's always, it's always the founder's fault. It doesn't mean he was... I don't think he committed fraud. Uh, he, he winds up, uh, being, uh, I'm not even gonna talk about that. Uh, it's later on in the book though. He winds up going to trial. He, he beats every single trial. From what I, my reading of this, and it's very hard to tell, I don't believe that he did this. I just thought he made a bunch of terrible, terrible decis- decisions and had way, way, way too much leverage. So I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me just read this because this idea came up to it. It's like, "Oh, never pay cash when you can give a note." And so what I did is I went to Founder's Notes, and I searched leverage, and specifically this note that I had in my mind on the dangers of leverage and the fact that this is coming from Warren Buffett's shareholder letter. And he says, like, "Most people won't heed history's warning." So I just wanna read, 'cause this is essentially exactly what happens, very similar to what happens to Sam Insull. Warren Buffett says, "Unquestionably, some people have become very rich through the use of borrowed money. However, that's also been a way to get very poor," which is exactly what happened to Insull. "When leverage works, it magnifies your gains. Your spouse thinks you're clever, and your neighbors get envious. But leverage is addictive," and he was addicted to it from a very early age. And maybe you had to. I'm not, like, again, I'm not sitting here, "Oh, I wouldn't have done this if I was him." I would never have that. Like, highly likely that Sam Insull's smarter and more talented and more accomplished than I am, and so it'd be very arrogant to think that if I was presented in the same situation that I wouldn't have made his same decisions. The point is, like, we need to, we're learning from history 'cause hit learn- as Munger said, learning from history is a form of leverage. It's to know this shit so, oh, I don't do this if I'm ever presented with that opportunity, right? So I wanna be very clear. Uh, "When leverage works, it magnifies your gains. Your spouse thinks you're clever, and your neighbors get envious. But leverage is addictive." It seems that he was very addicted at an early age. Maybe he had to be. I don't know. "Once having profited from its wonders, very few people retreat to a more conservative practices. Uh, and to repeat, as we all learned in the third grade and some relearned in 2008, any series of positive numbers, however impressive the numbers may be, evaporates when multiplied by a single zero. History tells us that leverage all too often produces zeros, even when it is employed by very smart people." It's impossible to read this book and not think that Sam Insull was very smart, right? That is the dangerous. That is why it's going to latch onto your and I's brain. It's like, oh my God, this happened to him. I need to avoid this. "Leverage, of course, can be lethal to businesses. Companies with large debts often assume that these obligations can be refinanced as they mature." This is something that happened with Insull. He was guaranteed, "Don't worry, you have unlimited credit," and then the bank said, "Oh, you don't," and Reynolds Wrap. "That assumption is usually valid. Occasionally, though, either because of company-specific problems or a worldwide shortage of credit," which is what he goes through, what Insull goes through, "maturities must actually be met by payment. For that, only cash will do the job." End of Warren Buffett's shareholder letter. Two quotes that I always think about on the dangers of too much leverage. Charlie Munger said, "Smart men go broke three ways: liquor, ladies, and leverage." Uh, Sam Insull was married to the same woman his whole life. He never drank a drop of alcohol in his entire life. He did not go bro- go broke betri- because of ladies or liquor. He went broke because of leverage. Warren Buffett: "Whenever a bright and rich person..." That is what Sam Insull was. He was a bright and rich person. Warren Buffett: "Whenever a bright and rich person goes broke, it's usually because of leverage."

8. 35:31 – 39:23

   Running GE and Insull's Operating Principles

   1. DSDavid Senra35:31

      And so this is a very important six years in Sam Insull's life because he is now essentially saying, "Hey," s- s- Thomas Edison's like, "You, you have to run the company." And Edison is, he, he's not interested in elect... He, he's off on other things now, right? He got it started and then goes off and does something else. And he does, it's not like he's gonna give you a list of, like, "This is what you should do." This is what he tell [laughs] This is what he tells him. Edison says, "Do it big, Sammy. Make it either a big success or a big failure." And so he takes over a company. Uh, the stock is around $25 a share. They have 200 employees. Six years later, the stock will be $150 a share, and he has 6,000 people. And so not only does he have to be a manufacturing of all this electrical equipment, but he also has to become, this is where he has to learn how to be a financier, and he says at almost times a magician. Because of this rapid growth that the company is, is having, they're perpetually short on cash, and so that is why they're always having to... They have no operating capital, so they're constantly having to borrow, borrow. A lot of its debt, uh, l- actually way more of its debt than, than was equity, which was, was, uh, interesting as well. It actually had a lot hard time to get people to invest in the, the company. And so this is a description of this problem he's having. He spent almost half his time going from bank to bank to borrow and to beg money on short-term notes, and juggling his available cash and credit with extreme dexterity in order to make ends meet. This experience was frantic, nerve-wracking, and disgusting to him. Now, these companies are going to be essentially taken over and recapitalized by, uh, a combination of Henry Villard and J.P. Morgan. There's more about the details of that in the book. Um, but I really... The reason I wanna bring this up is 'cause I really want to hammer home how Insull operated, 'cause I think these principles, again, minus the leverage, are, are very valuable to this day. Fortified for the first time with working capital, Insull reorganized and integrated the manufacturing operations, rendering them vastly more efficient. Insull followed a set of basic principles that he would follow throughout his career. Remember, he is somewhere between 25 and 31 years old, uh, that they're describing him here. The first was to expand. Expand by raising new capital whenever possible. Expand by plowing profits back into the business. Expand by borrowing every nickel he could lay his hands on. The next was to treat his workers generously and hu- generously and humanely. So I need to pause there. Th- this concept expansion, remember, he's trying to turn a luxury product into something that is universally cheap and abundant, and he knew from the very get-go, like, scale is the key to that. I have to be, I have to build, in some cases, the biggest, uh, electricity generating plants in the world. And obviously, to do that, he's gonna need a ton of, of cash. Uh, the next was to treat his workers generously and humanely, not out of sentimentality, but for the sound economic reason that discontent breeds stoppages, and stoppages are inefficient, irrational, and costly. Another principle was to spread fixed costs. This is related to his desire to expand and scale, okay? Another was to spread fixed costs as thinly as possible by diversifying operations in order to keep the plant busy at all times. Keep that idea in your mind for later on, this idea of like, okay, how do we spread fixed costs, costs as thinly as possible? He's gonna vertically integrate. This is wh- It's like it'll make a lot of sense. Like, why does he keep buying electric part companies and then these electric traction, um, and, like, these elec- like, electric, essentially like trolley or train companies? It'll make more sense in a, in a little bit. But really, the, the main point is because he wants to spread his, spread his fixed costs as thinly as possible by diversifying operations in order to keep the plants busy at all time. And then another one is sell products as cheaply as possible. Before he had any proof, it was his belief that lower prices would bring greater volumes, which would then lower unit costs of production, and thus yield greater profits. Okay. So everything I just described to you, he was doing in New York. But at the very beginning of the book, it mentions, hey, it's that billionaire utility tycoon from Chicago.

9. 39:23 – 44:34

   Moving to Chicago Edison and the Case for Monopoly

   1. DSDavid Senra39:23

      How did he get to Chicago, and why did he go? So because he's one of the most prominent people in the early electricity industry, people ask him for advice. Uh, he gets a letter from the Chicago Edison Company, and they're looking for a president. And so they're like, "Hey, do you know anybody that'd be good for the job? Like, who's the best person we could hire?" And I don't think they wrote this letter thinking that they would get him because at the time, he's running General Electric. That's a $50 million company, which is insane, and he's making $36,000 a year just in salary and with, you know, obviously other compensation in there. And Chicago Edison Company is 1/50 the size. It's not even a million dollar company. And in the letter, they're trying to find somebody that would work for $12,000 a year. So a third of the salary, uh, 1/50 of, like, the market cap value. But they are offering something that is enticing, and whoever they hire gets to run things the way they, they want it to run. Like, they're looking for an operator, right? These are just investors and, and board, uh, and members of the board. He's gonna take the job, and when he's leaving, he says... Let me actually get there. I'll skip ahead real quick. Uh, he gives this toast, and he says that one day he's gonna make the, the Chicago Edison bigger than General Electric, and everybody else except him laughed. He was not joking. [laughs] He did. He believed that he was going to do that. And so it says the job opportunity, uh, if he took it, would be bound only by the limits of his own ability and ambition. I don't think he believed he had any, uh, limits on his ability and his ambition. And he wasn't gonna actually s- offer himself up for the job, and he's actually having a conversation with his mom. And, and he's like, "I would take the job, but you know, they're asking me to f- to best, to fi- help them find the best, like, possible fit." And his mom's like, "What are you talking about? Like, you should do that." She goes, uh, "They asked him in his capacity with Edis- as, uh, with GE to recommend the best available man. Did they not?" Well, then he was the b- Was he not the best available man? And so he should sit right down, and he obviously believed that he was the best available man, right? And so his mom's like, "You should sit right down and write them a letter saying so." And so he sends the letter back, and they're like, "Oh. Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't even know this was, uh, this was a possibility. Yes. Please, take the job." And so he accepts the job, and then he says, "Hey, I want you to do... I have one, uh, like, demand. Uh, you need to issue $250,000 in new stock." Remember, the stock, the market cap is $885,000 at the point that he takes the job. He says, "You need to issue $250,000 more in stock, and you need to sell it to me." Uh, to buy the stock, Insull borrowed the entire sum from Marshall Field, who was this older, successful entrepreneur, who in his old age figured that the best possible place to invest money was in bright young men. So we still see the exact same thing to- today. You have, you know, wildly successful people. Jeff Bezos is still making investments, right? And what is he doing? He's like, "The best possible place to invest is probably in bright young entrepreneurs." And so we see the same, exact same, uh, same thing here, where Marshall Field's like, "Yeah, I'll loan you the money because this is a great investment for me." And so this is the point in which Insull goes, and this is what he's going to... This is his starting point for the next 40 years. This is, he's going to turn this company and other companies into this giant- ... holding company conglomerate, whatever you wanna call it. And, uh, it's going to be phenomenally successful worth, you know, a couple billion dollars right before it collapses. And so he comes to Chicago, and he's like, "Hey, we're gonna invert the way other people think about electricity. We're gonna try to make electricity cheaper, not, uh, more expensive. And to do that, I need the largest possible base of customers, and so we have to aim for a monopoly." Now, you and I know today, like, utility companies are-- it's not like I can shop around. It's like, oh, I want my electricity s- th- their, their government mandated, like, uh, monopolies, right? That was Insull's idea. The world we're living in was influenced by this guy that we're, you and I are talking about. So it says, "Insull was thinking differently from the others in one vital respect. To most others, monopoly was desirable because it would enable them to charge higher prices and thus make more money. To Insull, it was imperative because it would enable him to build on a broader base of customers. All of his thinking was therefore inverted. Their thinking was based on the premise that electricity should be considered a luxury product and that it should be sold at the highest possible price. Insull's thinking was based on the premise that electricity should be considered for everybody, even the smallest consumer, and that if we're able to fulfill that goal, it should be sold at the lowest possible price." And it is for that reason that Insull set out to do, to, to build a monopoly before it was mandated by the government. And you see this at the very beginning because the very first meeting he has with the executive committee for this new company, Chicago Edison, that he's taking over, he's like, "All right, uh, we need to buy our second-largest competitor." And so they help raise the money, and they do that. Uh, three months later, he goes, "Okay, now we're gonna buy our biggest competitor." And those first two moves. Now, this is why key, I know I've repeated this a lot, why he, you can really think of him as like the... One way to think about it is like the Rockefeller of the electric utility industry because Rockefeller believed that too. He's like, "Listen, y- if you're gonna, you're competing with a bunch of people, let's say you have 20 competitors, don't go for number 17 and 18. Go for the top. Try to knock out the first guy." In this case, he, um, Insull knocked out the second guy and then the first guy. 'Cause he's like, "If you can achieve that, then the rest of them fall- follow."

10. 44:34 – 48:59

    Rockefeller-Style Consolidation, Focus, and Vertical Integration

    1. DSDavid Senra44:34

       And so after h- the combination of Chicago Edison and then his two largest competitors, uh, he is running at the time, uh, the largest electric power station in the world, and he would continue to do so for the next 40 years. And another thing that he had in common-- This is why, like, I always say the, the, the, the most important lesson from his entrepreneurship is the importance of focus. It's not like this guy was like, "Hey, I know more than anybody else in the world about the electric industry. Let me go diversify into something else." Like, why would you do that? He understood the potential of his industry in a way that others did not. You could say the same thing for Rockefeller and oil. Like, Rockefeller is the, the, he just pops up off this page over and over again. I think of Edwin Land when, you know, he created the, the, his, the-- Not only, like, his invention created his industry, which then he had a monopoly on for, for 40-plus years. He's like, "No one else in the world, because we're patent protected, can make instant photography, and you want me to go make a copier? And you want me to go make a printer?" And so there's many examples where he's talking to people inside his company. He's like, "No, we're only gonna do things that other people cannot do." And that is just one of the main, main benefits of focus. And so what does he do? One of his earliest decisions is, like, he's buying these electric, uh, these other, uh, electric generating companies, but then he goes and he buys Fort Wayne and Chicago arc light companies. Why is he doing that? This is his first step in vertical integration because these people are manufacturing electrical equipment that el- the people generate, these generating plants need. He's like, "Oh, I'm gonna buy this company," because all the other smaller companies of him have to go to these companies to buy stuff they need. And listen to this. This is gonna be Rockefeller too. The, this policy quickly paid off. Caught between bad times and difficulty even in buying replacement light bulbs, six of the small central stations in Chicago gave up in 1894. This is the Cl- this is... Cleveland Massacre is when? In, like, a couple months. I think Rockefeller swallowed up, what, like 17 or 25 of his competitors, smaller competitors or something. This is something s- it's very similar to what's happening here in Chicago in 1894 and 1895. These, all these six smaller stations sold out to Chicago Edison. So he knocked off two. Then he knocked off, or he knocked off the second-biggest competitor. Then he knocked off the first. Now that, that company combined with those three companies, right? He's the biggest player in town. Now he's found, found a way to get six other smaller people to sell to him. So they sell, they sell to Insull. When he won, Insull was always generous to the losers, paying them f- more for their plants than they were worth. Rockefeller did the same thing. This is incredible. Uh, this was not, uh, this was not him being benevolent, but good business. This is a great line. Insull recognized that while money may not buy friends, it will keep many a man from becoming an enemy. And people, while they're watching him do this, are like, "This is dangerous. You shouldn't do this. This is a, a little boutique. You know, this is a tiny little business. What are you doing?" Optimists at his time, right? They're like, "Okay, how many possible customers can you have in a c- a city of Chicago?" The, the most optimistic in the early, uh, electric, uh, lighting, electricity industry, right? They guess that maybe, maybe one day you might be able to get 25,000 customers, Sam. 25,000 customers. Like, you're spending a lot of money for only 25,000 customers. You know what Sam thought that number was? He's like, "Well, how many people live in Chicago?" And they're like, "A million people." He's like, "Okay, so I'm gonna get a million people." Think about that. His guess for how big his market is, and he actually shot underneath that. He's gonna get way more than a million people. I think he winds up, uh, I think his companies wind up combined producing all the electricity for like one-eighth of the entire country's population. But think about this. Everybody around him d- Again, this is why I tied it in with focus and the importance of, like, you, if you understand the potential of your industry in a way that others do not, why the hell are you diversifying into something else? Just keep going down that curve, right? Because the other people that thought they understood maybe somewhat as much as he did, they were 40 times... He, their most optimistic projections were 40 times smaller, right, than Insull's. And Insull's were even, what, maybe 10? I don't even know how many people were in the country at the time. Let's say if he's one-eighth and there's 100 million people in the country, that means he was off on his own estimate By what? 12, 13 times. And so look what he achieves in his first six years. Oh, and I didn't even mention this is, he's doing this during a financial panic. So again, I think you can learn the wrong lessons from your own experience, because like I've been through a bunch of financial panics. I survived them, and I even prospered in them. What's, what, how different can the Great Depression be? Ooh, yikes. Could be very different actually.

11. 48:59 – 54:02

    Regulation, the Open-End Mortgage, and Massing Production

    1. DSDavid Senra48:59

       And so he, uh, half a dozen years, so he's got six years. Many of these are during some kind of, uh, like bad financial depression, but not the Great Depression. Uh, his company was 10 times as large as it had been when he took it over. And during this period, so that's 24 consecutive quarters, he was able to pay a quarterly dividend of at least 2%, 24 times in a row. And so he has a great understanding of what we would call public relations, even though there was no such term as public relations in his day. And this is what he realizes is like, "Well, okay, the, the bigger I get, the more scale I get, uh, the cheaper I make..." Remember, he's, he's going for monopoly so he can make it cheaper. And as a result, his customers love it. They go from, you know, having to, to burn, uh, you know, kerosene or candles, and now they have electric lights. And so he's a beloved person in his community. He's built a lot of relationships with a bunch of politicians. And he has a great line about this. So he says, "More profound than his organizational ability was Insull's sense of public relations. To him, the moment of applause was the moment for action. The moment of applause was the moment for action." And so he's beloved, and he goes, "Hey, these should be government-regulated monopolies." That was his idea. So he goes, he initiates, and he brings to successful conclusion the movement for utility regulation in the United States. And he believes this is necessary because he believes that you have to expand, you have to spread all your cr- your fixed costs over the, the largest customer base as possible. This is the most effective way to do this. Some people have described this as regulatory capture. And so this push to, for this like legalized monopoly, it helps him expand, which obviously was what he, his goal is. He's like, "I have to spread all my fixed costs over the largest customer base. Uh, if I have a legalized monopoly, that's going to... The, it's the best way, the best tool I have to extens- extend my customer base." Now, here's the problem too, where this is, uh, this constant expansion is the way they thought about the, the constant raising of debt. If you go back to what, uh, Warren Buffett said earlier, "Companies with these large debts often assume that these obligations can be refinanced as they mature. That assumption is usually valid. Occasionally, though, either because of company-specific problems or worldwide shortage of credit, maturities must actually be met by payment, and for that only cash will do the job." When that happens to Insull, he doesn't have any of the cash, and so he loses everything. But the way they looked at it was, "Hey, we, to expand this new industry, we, we're gonna need vast quantities of debt capital." And it says, "Electric companies, like modern governments, borrow money that they, that they cannot and do not intend to repay except by perpetually refinancing. They are borrowing money that they do not and cannot intend to replay expect, except by perpetually refinancing." And so this constant need for more money, uh, that's ever present, 'cause he's, this guy never stops expanding, uh, it actually leads to the invention. They credit him with the invention of the open-ended mortgage. And that's the, I think the, the main, um, like lesson here is the way you position and frame things actually matters, and it can actually get people to comply with your request, uh, for something that they previously declined. And so he goes to the, to the board or the executive committee, uh, and he says, "Hey, I need $100 million in bonds." This is 1896. They're like, "Are you, are you crazy? What do you... Is he... $100 million in bonds?" And a year earlier, he had tried to get them to do $6 million. So this is like, again, how fast this guy moves and like how his ambition is, and his scale. Like think about that. Last year he goes to them. He's like, "I need six, $6 million in bonds." They said no. Comes back the next year, he goes, "Okay, I know you said no on 6 million, but I need 100 m- 100 million in bonds." And they tell him no again, of course. And so he winds up talking to a friend of his who actually had a lot of experience in financing the early railroads in the United States. And they had this idea. He goes, "Hey, um, you're gonna have a hard time convincing your, your, your board to, to accept that. I have a way you can like reposition this." He says, "Why don't you ask them for a mortgage with no limit?" And he says, "A mortgage with no limit might seem much smaller and more conservative than one with a limit of $100 million." And you sound like, "That sounds crazy. How could that possibly work?" Insull proposed to them a mortgage with no limit, and they accepted. Under this mortgage, Insull would issue half a billion dollars in bonds before he was through. So you come and put a number on it, that hundred, that 100 million scares the, the crap out of him. Then you said, "Hey, I essentially have like this open-ended mortgage. I'll draw from it, you know, little by little," or whatever the case is. They accept it, and then over the long term, he actually gets five times the amount that he actually want- that they initially, uh, did not approve. And this is where, this is the interesting thing. He was describing to other people, like when he was raising capital and the people inside of his company, like what is he doing? And he called it massing production. According to this book, they say he is the one that came up with the term mass production. Insull soon began describing what he was doing as massing production. Uh, think about it as amassing production, right? A phrase that his publishers shortened to mass production long before historians mistakenly ascribed that term to Henry Ford. Massing production turned into mass production. Another very fascinating idea.

12. 54:02 – 1:00:51

    Acquiring Talent, Selling Low, and Public Relations Genius

    1. DSDavid Senra54:02

       Remember, he was acquisitive by nature, right? So he's buying all these companies. And what he realizes is like, "Okay, well, I'm buying them. Sometimes I'm, I'm paying more than they're worth because, uh, money is a good way to avoid people being em- enemies with me," right? "I want people on my t- on my side." Think of how Rockefeller essentially built a, a company full of founders, right? He just bought their company, and then he's like, "Hey, you guys are talented. Come advise me, and then you'll be rewarded with Standard Oil stock." Now, this is fascinating. So he, he starts buying all these new properties. He's like, "Oh, wait, I'm not only appl- applying scale. I'm acquiring customers. I'm acquiring equipment. More important than that, I get talent." So he's like acqui-hiring people back in the day, right? He would devise methods, and he would detect talented people. And if he thought they were talented, he would partner with them or buy their entire company. And so he said new properties were the most prolific producers of executives inside of the Insull organization. That sounds a lot like Rockefeller. Another Rockefeller-esque thing, sell at the lowest price possible. Sell ridiculously low. Uh, he sold so low that no one could afford not to have electricity service. To win customers, Insull sold electricity at rates so low they appalled other central station men. That's like Rockefeller trying to buy you out, and you're saying no, and then he just shows you your b- his books. He's like... And you're like, "Oh my God, this guy can make a profit at prices that would drive me out of business." To win customers, he sold electricity at rates so low that they appalled other central station men. Now he is building a public utility, so he's gonna need an advanced understanding of public relations, and he understood that you must craft the story and you must educate your customers. So there's three separate examples I think all go together that talk about this advanced understanding of public relations, and I think there's just a lot of good ideas in here. And so it says, uh, he displayed a, an advanced concept of public relations. "I care not," he said, "how good you operate." He's, uh, "How able, uh, may be the management of your property." So he's talking about to all these... He's got, I don't even know, 150 subsidiaries. It's... This is where it gets so complicated, and I think led to his downfall, was how complicated his organizational structure and how many different, um, uh, entities were involved. "Or how good your engineer may be and how perfect your plants are. Unless you conduct your business as to get the goodwill of the community in which you are working, you might as well just shut up shop and move away." He's talking about public relations. Convinced that the vulnerability of utilities derived from a lack of popular understanding, Insull attempted to educate his customers. He began making public appearances at every opportunity. He was instructing employees in pu- uh, in public relations. He established an advertising department, which soon expanded into one of the first full-fledged public relation departments in existence. He published a magazine called Electric City and, and distributed, uh, the magazine free of charge by the tens of thousands all over Chicago. But he said, "By far the most effective device Insull had for winning the, over the public was rate cuts." This is exactly what Henry Ford did later on in his career when the Model T was up running, up and running. He sto- he, he effectively was able to stop paying for any advertising, 'cause all he did was try to, uh, root out any inefficiency and any waste, and just keep making his, his automobile manufacturing plants more efficient, thus allowing him to drop the price of his car. And so every time he dropped the price of the car, it would be picked up in the newspapers, and that made him beloved because, uh, you know, this thing that used to cost $6,000, $6,000 and only be available for the rich, I can buy it for $250. So again, the most effective device that Insull had for winning over the public was rate cuts. The cuts were simply good economics, but they also created immense publicity, just like I described for Henry Ford. Uh, immense publicity value. Who had ever heard of a public utility voluntary, voluntarily cutting its rates? He hits on that idea that you need to pay attention to public opinion. These are your customers. This is very important to you. The customers, obviously, he's, he's heavily regulated, so it also influences... The customers are also voters. For, from Insull's position, the task ahead was thus one of swaying public opinion. And at a time when public relations and mass selling were in their infancy, in this art, Insull had few peers. And so they make the point later on in the book. It's like, listen, say there's 50,000 people who understand the necessity of the service that you provide, right? But there are 100 million Americans that have not even thought of it. He says, "Our task is to see that the figures are reversed." Right? So it's 50,000 people that understand the importance and all the work that goes into what we're doing, but there's 100 million. Those 100 mil- those are potential customers. We need to reverse that. We need to make the people that understand and are customers of ours the majority. And one way to do that is to, one, make your product as valuable as possible, like as the value to cost ratio excessively high, right? But also tell them what goes into making and delivering the service that they enjoy. So he had later, much later on in the book, he has these two rules. They, they say it was a concise summary of, like his principles of public r- public relations, and this is now Insull writing, right? He says, "Practically everything that a public utility company does affects the relations between the company and its customers, and anything it does is therefore an item of public relations. The first objective in public relations work is to produce the best possible service at the lowest predictable rates. Why? Because that is of the greatest interest to the public." And then once that's taken care of, that leads us to the second. "The public is in no position to judge service and rates when it knows nothing about the multitude of details involved in furnishing the service." So, uh, let me read this. Finish reading this. "Hence, the second objective in the public utility industry's public relations work," right? "Is a public well-informed on the tangible details as well as the social and industrial significance of an in- of the industry in all its ramification." What is he saying? This is exactly what David Ogilvy said in the 1960s, what Claude Hopkins said in the early 1900s, 1910s, which is s- apparently Sam Insull had derived from his own experience. You need to tell your customers what goes into making your product. It may be normal to you because it's your everyday thing. It is not normal to them. And if you explain and you educate your customers, they will find it fascinating. And as a result, they will, it will make the service and the product that you, you provide more valuable in their eyes. That is absolutely incredible that he understood that at the time in which he did. So this is the end result of his career before the collapse, right? By the time it was over, electric power would be so abundant and cheap in the United States that people who had never expected to use it found it as natural and as necessary as breathing. So there is going to be a ton of regulation, uh, that is put into, to law after the collapse of his empire. Uh, it, there's a, there's a, there's something that takes place that I have to tell you that sh- was shocking to me, might be shocking to you Uh,

13. 1:00:51 – 1:07:06

    Easy Credit, the Crash, and Doubling Down on Debt

    1. DSDavid Senra1:00:51

       every employee of Insull's, uh, companies were stock salesmen. So what does that mean? Like, the employee that would come and check your meter would also, like, knock on your door and try to sell you stock in the company. This is crazy. Uh, he would see his personal, personal fortune increase from around $5 million in 1927 to $150 million in 1929, and then tumble by mid-1932 to zero and below, to a net indebtedness so large that as one banker put it, he was too broke to be bankrupt. With him went hundreds of thousands of stockholders who shared his faith in his own invulnerability. And so they set the context where I could see a lot of people that like essentially say, "Hey, you know, Insull was like, uh, this is a macroeconomic environment. The Great Depression is kind of out of his hands." Yeah, but it's your choice to take this. Like this is, when I read this paragraph, it's gonna sound very familiar. Uh, like, you know, we've gone through many times where like credit and money is essentially free, and that was happening in the late 1920s. And so you have all these bankers, they come up to him, and they're, they, they try to like essentially just fill, like they're deluding him with easy credit. And they really, in many cases, like beg him to accept it for any purpose. And so one of the banks that's gonna wind up screwing him over later because they're like, "Oh, the money's there, the money's there. We'll back you," and then they wind up losing their ass so they can't back him, is Continental Bank. And they would come up to him and they're saying, "Hey, just so you know, if you fellows ever wanna borrow any more than the legal limit, all you have to do is organize a new corporation and we'll happy lend, we'll, we'll be happy to lend you another $21 million." They said that at a party. Like, like, "Please take 20. Like set up another company. Doesn't even know, matter if you know what you're gonna do with the money yet. Let me just, let me wire, let me wire you. Let me send you this 21,000, 21 million, please." Uh, another banker, "Mr. Insull, isn't there something you could use our $10 million for? Anything? Anything, something? Just let us give you $10 million." And so at the same time this is happening, there is a corporate raider by the name of Cyrus Eaton, who is starting in late 1920, uh, '27, and for the next several years, he s- begins buying up large blocks of stocks in Insull's companies. And so he's got three main companies. And this is where the story gets really, really, really confusing. Uh, somewhere between 1920 and 1929, Insull realizes that he did not control enough stock in his operating companies to prevent a takeover. And so he creates two investment companies through which he could control the utilities. And that may have been the case if it wasn't for the Great Depression. But those become over-leveraged, and as the prices go down, he keeps having to put up more and more collateral. Uh, we'll get there in one second. So I'm gonna give you like a brief overview. You have the Great Depression, and again, like without his act- his actions after the Great Depression, he, his companies could have survived. You know, it's not like you're gonna cut, uh, like you're gonna cut your electricity unless you absolutely are in complete dire situations. But it's what he does. It's like how much money and debt he takes on after. Like dur- in the beg- after and the beginning and through the Great Depression. This, this is, I don't have any words to describe this. I don't understand this. I don't understand how somebody so smart and so accomplished and with so much experience does this. So it says, "Then came the great crash in October. The first thing he did was go to the rescue of his employees who were caught with margin brokerage accounts by supplying him from his personal portfolio whatever additional collateral they needed. Ten days later, as if nothing had happened," 10 days after the, the, the crash in October, right? Black Friday. Or Black Tuesday rather. Sorry, not Black Friday. Black Friday's the sales. [chuckles] Okay, so Black Tuesday. So it'd be October 29th, 1929. Uh, "Ten days later, as if nothing had happened, he proceeded with the long-planned opening of the palatial new Civic Opera House. He undertook a huge new venture, uh, of a construction on a natural, uh, gas pipeline that he was running from Texas to Chicago." That is a project, that one project alone would cost $80 million. Remember, this is $80 million in 1929 dollars, okay? "What he did next would suggest that he was possessed of delusions of grandeur. Supremely confident that this depression would be either neither longer nor more severe than those he had weathered in the past, he expanded far more than turned out to be prudent. He returned to debt financing, and he bought Eaton's Holdings." So that's that corporate raider. Insull's company spent $200 million on capital investment during 1930. Most of that is debt. So 200 million, times that by 20 to get a rough estimate of today's dollars, and he did that in one year. I don't understand this. I kept-- Every page I'm like, "Why is he doing this? Why is he doing this?" He doesn't know, so I'm leaving myself, and then I get to this point, it's like this is a 50-year successful career destroyed. This is terrifying to me. And so people around him were shocked that he was willing to take on more than $200 million of new debt in the wake of the great crash. This reminded me of, if you listen to the episode that I did on Ted Turner, it's episode 327. He winds up getting, having to get bailed out, uh, by John Malone. And John Malone says something in that book that's, that I think applies to, uh, Sam Insull. John Malone describing Ted Turner says, "He took his leverage too high, and the structure of the leverage was a problem." So he spends that 200 million debt, right? Then he's gotta buy out this corporate raider. They agreed a $63 million transaction. Goes back to the bet- to the bank, right? And then they pull. Four times in the month of May and June in 1930, uh, the, the president of Continental Bank, uh, said that they'd be behind him all the way. Four times Insull refused. Then he came back a fifth time, and Insull said yes. He says the only way to finance this purchase was through bank loans secured by the stocks from his two holding companies. So six, 50, somewhere between $56 and $63 million more of debt, right? Secured by stocks from his two holding companies. Uh, they get, the, the, Chicago can't, he's usually dealing with Chicago banks at this time. Then he has to go to New York. He hates the New York bankers. He has to go to New York because Chicago can't fulfill this, right? And he says the various loans were extremely complex. What did John Malone just say about Ted Turner? He took his leverage too high and the structure of the leverage was a problem. This is exactly what's taking place in Sam Insull's life and career at this point. And he's doing this in a market that's dropping like a stone.

14. 1:07:06 – 1:10:50

    Collapse, Trials, and Death

    1. DSDavid Senra1:07:06

       Each drop in the market would force the investment trust to put up more collateral against their bank loans. If the market were driven down far enough, the bankers would have as collateral the entire portfolios of Insull's company. With that, control of the whole Insull empire. And so as this is happening, what do you think the reaction is? They keep buying. They ignore, they're ignorant of the danger. And so this is what they were doing. In essence, they would buy up Insull securities on the exchanges and then try to sell as much as possible in small lots through their secondary market, which is like the customer ownership. Uh, and then the guy that is doing this for Insull said very sim- said this, "It's very simple," he said. "You can't go on buying your own stocks forever. Sooner or later, you run out of money." In spite of everything he knew, Insull could not, as late as midsummer 1931, bring himself to believe that he was in serious danger. But he was. The end was very near. Uh, to keep the market up through the summer, they tried to keep the market up through the summer of 1931. But in September, England went off the gold standard and the New York Stock Exchange reacted with complete hysteria. Short sellers spread a rumor that Insull was dead or dying, and in that week alone, the stocks of his three companies dropped by a value of $150 million. As the market declined, they had to put up ever-increasing amounts of securities as collateral against their bank loans. By mid-December, the well had run dry. Every nickel of the combined portfolios of the two investment trusts were in the hands of bank creditors. That is a Reynolds wrap. The creditors then in turn demand that he resigns. On Monday, June 6th, the deed was done. Insull dictated and signed papers all day, drafting resignations from chairmanship and presidencies and receiverships of 60-odd corporations. All afternoon, as the orgy of registrations and resolutions went on, newspapermen swarmed around Insull's door. When it was over, he emerged. His statement to the press was a single sentence. "Well, gentlemen, here I am after 40 years, a man without a job." He eventually flees and is extradited back to the United States, put on trial multiple times, beats every single trial. They can never prove any fraud. I do believe his statement that he made. He says, "I have erred, but my greatest error was in underestimating the effect of the financial panic on American securities and particularly on the companies I was working so hard to build. He didn't even understand the danger he was in. I worked with all my energy to save those companies. I made mistakes, but they were honest mistakes. They were errors in judgment, but not dishonest manipulations." I do think that's, that is true. For 53 years, for his 53 years of labor to make electric power universally cheap and abundant, Insull had his reward from a grateful people. He was allowed to die outside of prison. He does not live for long. The only remaining enemy of Insull's was boredom. Like Napoleon, Insull was required to spend his declining years in well-fed inactivity. For two more years, his life dragged on. He followed the news of business and politics with keen interest, but there was rarely anyone with whom to discuss these subjects, and Insull was ill-equipped to play the passive spectator. On the morning of July 16th, Insull entered a Paris subway, and while waiting for a train, he had a heart attack and died. His body remained unidentified for several hours, and the official police statement reported that he had nothing in his pockets. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. Highly recommend getting the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 336 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.

15. 1:10:50 – 1:25:57

    Founders Only Conference and Founders Notes

    1. DSDavid Senra1:10:50

       Okay, so two quick things before you go. Number one, Founders Only. I'm doing an in-person conference for founders and CEOs with founder mentality in Austin, Texas, March 12th through the 14th. If you have not yet applied to go, go to foundersonly.com. That's founders with an S. Everything I do is founders with a S, okay? So foundersonly.com. Uh, make sure you apply. I'm going through all the applications. It's listed, it's limited to 150 slots. I'll probably send out like 200 invites, and then whoever just finalizes their registration fastest will get those. So if you already applied, make sure you check your email. Uh, I'm emailing, I'm sending messages on LinkedIn. So check both those places and just try to finish your registration as fast as possible. If you have not yet applied, there is still time. Jump in, um, and then every single person that applies will obviously go on the email list in case I fill this one out, uh, before I get to your application. And therefore, you will automatically be notified. I'm doing a bunch of in-person events and conferences 'cause my goal is to help other founders build relationships with other founders. It's been, there's two things that I'm asked for the most, right? Uh, is, let me get, for years I was asked, "Can I get access to your notes and highlights?" [chuckles] Uh, that's Founder's Notes. And then, "Hey, can you build some kind of community? Uh, can I meet other founders that listen to Founders? How can we facilitate that?" The way I do this is, like, I build relationships in person. I just think it, it helps jumpstart things. Um, and so anyways, there's a bunch of people speaking at this conference that are a perfect example of this. These people are unbelievably impressive. They are very important to me, and we've built a relationship over the last three years because of the podcast. And so I'm calling in favors. These are people that, in some cases, have never spoken publicly, uh, and in, in other cases speak publicly very, very rarely. We're not going to be recording anything. This is you have to be there or you miss it kind of thing. So if you are interested in doing that, if you're a founder or a CEO, uh, there'll be other events that are, you know, open to m- much more people. But for the very first one, 150 people just, uh, for founders and CEOs. foundersonly.com. Apply if you haven't, and then if you see a message from me, just try to respond as fast as possible. Uh, I'm dedicating the next... I'm g- this will be done within the next, like, seven to 14 days maybe, something like that. So time is of the essence. The second thing, uh, is if you have not yet subscribed to Founders Notes, go to foundersnotes.com and get access to what I believe is the world's greatest and world's most valuable, uh, notebook for founders. I was sitting here thinking today as I was r- listening to this episode, 'cause I listen to every single episode before it goes out again, um, and I was just sit, sitting here thinking, I was like, imagine a young Sam Insull, right? You have somebody that's super smart, super determined, super dedicated, they... He will, no matter where he starts in life, he's going to make his life a success. And so he finds people he admires and then reads every single thing he could find about them. You know, Thomas Edison being the, the best example of that. And I was like, imagine if a- Sam Insull's life, uh, alive today and he had access to, to Founders Notes. So what Founders Notes is, in case you don't know, is for years I have been adding every single highlight and every single note on all the books that I read for this podcast, uh, into this app called Readwise, right? And then I've gone for years on other people's podcasts and I tweet about it, I link- I post on LinkedIn about it. I was like, "Readwise is the best app I pay for. I could not make the podcast without it." That is legitimate. People think... I say this over and over again, people are like, "You have such a good memory." I promise you I don't. It's 'cause I reread and reread and reread same book, same highlights over and over again. And the reason I'm able to do that is because this app allows me to put all of my notes, all my highlights, everything on how I make this podcast, right, all the research, um... And if you really think about it, I've essentially sat in a room by myself for eight years like a maniac, uh, documenting the best i- best and worst ideas from the history of entrepreneurship so we can all learn from them, right? And like Charlie Munger said, "Learning from history is a form of leverage." And so for the first few years, like, it was really hard to keep track of all that. And then I discovered Readwise, like, oh, this is genius. And then for years people were sending me messages like, "I w- can I get access to this? Could I get access to it?" And I said no every time. Like, uh, I don't know, 1,000, 2,000 pe- I, I didn't count, but it was a lot of people asked for this. And I said no because I thought it was like a, my secret sauce. Like, oh, like what if you get access to it and you like start a competitor to Founders? I don't think people are gonna start a competitor to Founders. Like, I realized that was a very like zero sum, uh, mentality I was having. And because what would happen is like I would talk to other founders and like we'd be on the phone, they had a problem, and I was like, "Oh." I would just be searching. I would bring something up. They'd say something and I'd search my, all of my notes and highlights. I'd come up with something that was like really helpful. I was like, oh, well, not everybody can be on the phone. [laughs] Like, why don't... And I'd do this in, in person in conversations too. Uh, in fact, I just had a dinner the other day with three other founders that listen to this podcast, and we sp- sh- essentially spent like two or three hours just talking about all the biographies we were reading, uh, like Phil Knight and Cornelius Vanderbilt, Steve Jobs, Edwin Land. We were talking about all this, and so I pulled out this app over and over again. In fact, all three of them subscribe to, to Founders Notes, so they had it too. But i- in any case, uh, I was like, oh, this is like a superpower. This is why it's the most valuable, uh, notebook for founders in the world. So it is, right now it is, I would not sign up, and this applies to Founders Only and Founders Notes. This is only for people that already have successful companies. Uh, there's obviously no free trial. You'd have to pay for it. What I consider a free trial is like the podcast is a giant free trial. [laughs] It is free. You can listen to 336 episodes as much as you want, listen to them over and over again, take your own notes, whatever the case is. So what I am trying to build is excessively high value, and I would only do it is, I would only do this, this is only for people that have, uh, already successful companies because those are the people that are gonna get the most value out of it because they already have a way to turn that knowledge that's in Founders Notes into profit. So y- think about like a young, uh, Sam Insull or anybody, anybody running a company that's like, "Hey, I wanna learn every single thing I can about Steve Jobs." So there's a, a few different ways that I, uh, I use Founders Notes. Um, and then, uh, there's, when you sign up you'll get a welcome email and it goes into detail about this, so it gives you, uh, an idea and oh my God. I saw a preview of the Founders GPT [laughs] that is going to be another feature in Founders Notes. Uh, I'd sign up now because as I add features obviously the price will go up. I don't even have a landing page yet, [laughs] so, uh, y- you just have to go off this description and do you think like it's valuable if I use... I use the product every day, so that should tell you something, right? Uh, this is, this is, [laughs] this thing's gonna be nuts. I have so many ideas for it. It's gonna be incredible 'cause, uh, it's... I'll, I'll get there. Like, I'm getting excited. So I'm gonna be testing it for the next few weeks. It'll pop up. If you're already an existing subscriber, don't worry. Uh, I'll, you'll be notified that, when this feature's available. Um, I don't know if I've ever been more excited about anything. So the way I use Founders Notes right now is when you log in, right, and you sign up, you're dropped onto this page. And at the very top page it's gonna be self-explanatory. It says search highlights. So this is put in any s- you could put in a name, something you're thinking about, a problem you're having in your company. How do I build a sales team? What should I do about marketing? Hiring, recruiting, advertising, anything that pops to your mind, you search highlights and it'll pull back every single time that that's been mentioned either in a note or a highlight of mine. So that is something I use every day. So right now there is no app. This is just in your browser, so you can use the browser on your computer or your phone. I leave, if you s- I would, once you log in, just leave it up in your browser. Um, I search this thing every day multiple times a day, okay? So that is by far the most valuable feature. This is where, but like what I... Again, I know, I know it's the most valuable feature, but what I think is like excessively special is this thing called the highlights feed. And- Again, this is, th-this product is for... Think about who I, who I had in mind when, when I wanted to make this, right? When I contacted the team at Readwise and I said, "Hey," uh, both of the founders listened to the podcast, and I was like, um, "Hey, we should build a product together. I wanna essentially give people access and see exactly what I see, and I want it to be a, a new product, and I wanna call it Founders Notes." And so that's, that's how this thing came to be. And I knew already the people that are gonna get the most value out of it already have a successful company, so that's why I say it's for them. So those people also read a ton, [chuckles] right? There's a high positive correlation between success, entrepreneurial success, and reading. And so the highlights feed is very special because think about all the other platforms that we're giving our attention, right? It's like kinda just these algorithms throwing things in our face. You're seeing like random posts from, you know, somebody you went to high school with 25 years ago or, you know, somebody angry about something else. And it's just like, you know, anything that gets engagement. And the way I think about highlights feed, the highlights feed feature, right? It looks like, this is what my friend Morgan, me and my friend Morgan Housel, the bestselling author, uh, talked about. It's a smart Twitter feed is what it looks like, or a smart Facebook feed. And the highlights feed is random highlights and notes, right? You go on it and instead of scrolling, this is, like if obviously the reason I said you should have a successful company, 'cause usually, you know, those people also read as well. And if you could read this thing for 10 or 15 minutes a day or whenever you want to really, uh, sometimes I read it for a couple minutes. I've been lost in here for hours. Uh, and what happens is like, it's almost like a random... It's like history's greatest entrepreneurs, a random sampling of history's greatest entrepreneurs speaking directly to you. Like I just clicked on it and there's two quotes from poor Charlie Mu- uh, poor Charlie Munger, right? Then there's one from Ted Turner, then there's one from, uh, John D. Rockefeller, then there's three in a row, uh, from Sam Zell, then there's, uh, two from Napoleon. There's one about Balenciaga, and like it just goes on and on and on. And some of them, you know, it depends on the context of what's going on in your career. Some of them aren't gonna be meaningful for you, just like when you're scrolling any other feed. Uh, but they're really good prompts for your thinking and reminders of the lessons that we're learning on the podcast. 'Cause you can listen to every single episode, and I know a ton of people that have, but you're gonna forget a lot of stuff. Our, our mind is meant to like forget, you know, 99% of the stuff we take in. So that's why I think repetition is the mother of learning. It's so important. I think that's what the highlights feed does. I'm sitting here scrolling away. I'm talking to you. It's like, here's another great idea on [chuckles] uh, David Ogilvy, for example. Uh, he took an idea from Henry Ford, and he says, "Following Henry Ford's advice to his dealers that he should solicit by personal visitation, I started by soliciting advertisers who did not employ an agency at all." So he's talking about the, how he started his, his agency when he was like 35 years old. And the fact is, is like, yeah, I can go and say, "Hey, hire me and fire your existing agency," but I, or I should just do what Henry Ford did, and so like go to the people by personal visitation that don't have any... Like it's easier to sell somebody that doesn't have an advertising agency already, uh, partner, as opposed to like getting them to switch to some unknown entity. And you'd be shocked at how much like you, you... And you'd be shocked at how much either you didn't know or you had forgotten. Uh, here's another one that's, that's fascinating that he's talked about. This is the book, my friend Jimmy Soni, he's a good friend of mine now. Uh, he's the author of this book called "The Founders," which is on the beginning of PayPal, and it talks about how competitive in the end of... It's really competitive all, at all times, but especially during the top dot com, uh, bubble, how competitive it was for, uh, engineering and like really A+ talent and something that Musk, uh, that helped Musk out. He's just like, "Hey, I got a lot of my own money in this." [chuckles] And so, uh, there's the unexpected benefit of putting so much of your own wealth in helps with recruiting 'cause they're like, this guy has, [chuckles] I think at the time, I don't remember how much of his, of Musk's net worth, but he had a ton. I think he got like after selling Zip2, you know, $28 million. What is that after taxes? Who knows? 15 million, something like that. And then he's telling this guy, "I have 13 million. [chuckles] I have $13 out of my $15 million in this company. It has to work." Uh, so there's just these weird ideas that happen. And what happens, which I've heard over and over again from a ton of founders, is like an idea or a comment on the podcast or reading in a book or reading Founders Notes will go into your brain. It'll go, it'll go through everything else that's particular to your company, and on the outside it's something unique and usually beneficial to your, uh, company. So that's the way I think about highlights feed. It's like, it's very interesting and special. Um, I don't even wanna confuse you, but almost feel like it, it could be like a separate app, which whatever, maybe I'll test that personally and see if that... It just, it's fascinating. It's very, very fascinating. And then finally, uh, 'cause I don't wanna talk your ear off, um, books. You can go to the book section and just go buy books. So last, last week I talked about you can go read all of the highlights from Brad Jacob's book, and in Brad Jacobs, when I was reading about Brad Jac- Jacobs, I was really thinking a lot about Danny Meyer, and I hadn't read Danny Meyer's autobiography, "Setting the Table" for years. But it is excellent. And so then you can go, and I think there's what? 59 I said? No, 29, sorry. 29 highlights. And so those 29 highlights, you know, probably take 10 minutes to, to read and really think about, and it's shocking how much you can learn, you know, just by reading 30 highlights from a book or 44 highlights from a book or 71 highlights from a book. So that's a brief overview of how I use Founders Notes. You can sign up, invest in a subscription for what I think is the world's most valuable notebook for founders at foundersnotes.com. Uh, they're annual subscription. So every day the... I'm adding more highlights. Every day the product gets better. So if you think about that now, you sign up now, within the next year I'll add another 50 books and probably, I don't know, 4,000 more highlights. The more highlights and notes that are added, the deeper the ideas go, and I think the, the context around them, uh, only get more valuable with time. So, all right. That's enough for me. Uh, if you have not yet subscribed, highly recommend doing that. I think that is, uh, for sure, subscribing to foundersnotes.com is the best way to support the podcast. If you want to travel to Austin, Texas and hang out with me for three days, it's all inclusive. That means if you get to, you have to get yourself to Austin, but then the event, uh, is everything's included in the price. So the event, all the talks, um, all the lodging, all the food, everything. It is a private... I rented out this entire private venue. It is, is not open to the public. The only people that will be on the property will be people taking part in Founders Only. So if that sounds interesting to you, that is foundersonly.com, foundersnotes.com. Both of those, uh, links will also be in the show notes. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much for listening to Founders, and I gotta get going and read, start reading again for the next episode. I'll talk to you again soon.

Episode duration: 1:25:57