Texas Oil Billionaire Monty Moncrief

1. 0:00 – 4:02

   Monty Moncrief at 84: The Patriarch of a Family Oil Dynasty

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      In 1978, Monty Moncrief was 84 years old. He was still very much the patriarch of his clan, the man who made the decisions in his family and in his family's business. Family and business were, in fact, the same thing with him. The desire to found the one being inseparably tied to the desire to found the other. When speaking of his business, he never mentioned himself specifically. He would always say, "We signed this deal. We figured out what was best." "This is a we kind of business," he explained. "We don't tolerate any of that I stuff around here." In Texas, in the oil business, one sees, as nowhere else, that the ideal of capitalism is the ideal of founding a family and conferring the right of inheritance upon it, passing a legacy on. "We're oil men," Monty Moncrief would answer when asked about ranching or about real estate or about anything else. "We're oil men" meant that anything which extended beyond the realm of oil was not a proper Moncrief concern. We're 100% family-owned, unincorporated, and independent, and we intend to stay that way. In the world of oil promoters, one sometimes meets with independents who have bought and sold their way through six or seven businesses, who indeed start those businesses with the aim of going public and selling out as soon as possible. To Monty Moncrief, such a strategy is unimaginable. Moncrief Oil is synonymous with himself, his dynasty. Continuity is what his blood demands. He was, at the age of 84, as big and as strong as a bull. He possessed the directness and the utter simplicity of the old and truly great. He walked without a stoop, and he carried his large frame without a trace of fat. He seemed impervious to age or to changing times. His unquestioning confidence in the worthiness of his enterprise made him seem impervious as well to the doubts and the questions about motives and meanings that inevitably beset the later generations of his family. He kept his faith in the absolute value of building, of progress, of getting things done. When he spoke of his belief in the enterprise of producing oil in America, one could almost forget that he had made hundreds of millions of dollars doing so. Such benefits sounded almost incidental to the task of settling the land and mining its resources. Perhaps this confidence is what set free the huge energies of this first generation of giants. The stories told about Monty Moncrief all reveal him as tough, canny, given to understatement, a man of action who wastes few words but can, when he wishes, move mountains. That is an excerpt from the book I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Wildcatters: A Story of Texans, Oil, and Money, and it was written all the way back in 1981 by Sally Helges- Helgesen. There's a bunch of characters in this book. They talk about other, uh, oil families. But once I got to that part, that's when I realized, oh, no, no, what I wanna talk to you about is Monty Moncrief. And so I think that excerpt gives you and I a good idea on why we should focus on Monty Moncrief and the shadow that... Because at, at the time the book is published, he's still alive, his son is still alive, and his grandson is still alive. And so I was- I'm always curious, like, well, what are they up to now? So after I read the book, started researching to see what I could find out about them. And there's a line in the book that I think is very fascinating 'cause it's like, why is this guy so interesting to me? He reminds me, Monty Moncrief, he reminds me of a lot of other people we studied, and there's just this random sentence, and it was talking about the fact that his grandson was essentially, like, measuring his life and his success based on his grandfather, which I think is, uh, honestly a bad idea. Um, but it says, "The shadow by which Dick Moncrief measured himself was cast by his grandfather, Monty."

2. 4:02 – 7:09

   The Founder's Shadow and Why Texas Blood Matters

   1. DSDavid Senra4:02

      And I think that word shadow is really important. In fact, I went back and searched, uh, Founder's Notes for the word shadow because, like, this sounds very familiar to me. There's two things that are fascinating here that I think, uh, you and I should spend some time talking about. And it's, one, that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man, and so that, that, that's from, uh, Edwin Land's, one of Edwin Land's biographies, right? So it's not only the founder is the shadow of the company that they found, but you'll also know, uh, that's true for Monty for the, the company he founds, but his shadow also looms over his entire family. And Monty's shadow loomed over his entire family while he's alive, and it still has an effect in present day. I wind up looking, uh, up the characters in the book to see what, like, if they were still alive. Monty's son winds up living to 101. He passed away r- relatively recently. Now the whole family's essentially fighting over this fortune, this multiple billion-dollar fortune, that really stems from the work that the grandfather did 60, 70 years ago. And this usually ends one of two ways. Most of the time, the, the s- the future generations cannot obviously live up, uh, to the shadow or the example that the, the founder of the family, uh, usually sets. So I was thinking of, as I was going through searching Founder's Notes for shadow, came across an idea. Uh, when you study J.P. Morgan, you realize, I said this on the, the multiple J.P. Morgan podcasts, uh, that I've made. He's very, you know, obviously an impressive figure, but I found his dad to be even more impressive. And so there's a line from The House of Morgan written by Ron Chernow that talks about this. He says, "The Morgans always believe in absolute monarchy. While Junius Morgan lived," that J- that's J.P.'s dad, "he ruled the family and the business. Until Junius died, his massive shadow dominated his son's life." And so I think the importance of the family business aspect of this is really important. So I wanna read this section to you because this is what's part of what makes this story unique, is the setting in which it takes place and the belief that family is destiny. So it says, "What makes Texas different is not so much its money as its blood." And it's awareness of that blood. Bloodlines, human bloodlines. In Texas, there's always an awareness of exactly whose blood runs through a man, man's or woman's veins, and what that blood demands. And so I'm gonna pause right there before I continue. His grandson, which we'll talk a, a little bit about, but there's a lot more detail in the book, and I'd highly recommend getting the book. It was a really fun book to read. Uh, but I feel his, this pressure that he has where it's like, "Oh, you're Monty's grandson," causes Dick to maybe do things that, like, take risks that were unnecessary because he was trying to not only match what his f- grandfather did, which is nearly impossible, uh, but also try to go one step further, basically supersede his achievement, which he obviously failed to do. So let's go back to this. Uh, you understand the blood that runs through a man or woman's veins and what that blood demands. People in Texas are raised to be what others in their families have been. Family is destiny here. Success is measured by what one achieves beyond what those who went before achieved. Future generations of the family feel the need to surpass them in order, meaning the founders of the family, surpass them in order to prove themselves worthy of their blood. Okay,

3. 7:09 – 12:10

   Opportunity Without Limits: Spotting the Early Frontier

   1. DSDavid Senra7:09

      so with that background, I wanna jump into Monty's life. And really w- what's fascinating is, 'cause he's born in the 1800s, right? He serves in World War I, then comes back and gets into the oil business, and that's a really important decision because he essentially picked, uh, uh, an industry or a field where the opportunity before him was really without limit, and that's not what his, that, that same opportunity was not open to his son and his grandson. And so when I read the stories like this, what I'm... I'm obviously not trying to build an oil company, but I am very interested in finding these areas, like where today, like what I wanna know is like today, where is opportunity without limits available today? And I think reading history like this gives you insight into like what these opportunities look like and what to look for. And so just a little bit about that. The old bulls in this story, so people like Monty Moncrief, Sid Richardson, there's a bunch of oil, uh, w- wind up becoming oil billionaires in the story. But the old bulls in the story, the giants, the men of Monty Moncrief's generation came into the oil business in the wild old days of the open frontier. Everywhere they looked, they saw opportunity without limits. The land itself was empty, and so these men built cities upon it, and they founded dynasties. They left behind them a world made in their own image. They gave shape to a business and to a way of life, and their deeds made them legends. The major oil companies, which one day would almost destroy the independents, so think about that as like they're gonna talk about Exxon. Uh, Exxon was once an independent, so these giant, uh, major oil companies, right? And then the independents are like the startups or the family-owned businesses. Obviously, the Moncriefs at this time are independents. The major oil companies which would one day destroy the independents had not yet consolidated their power. Those companies were still independents themselves. And so they mention at this time in the story where Monty Moncrief is setting out, what, what is gonna one day turn into Exxon was just this company called Humble, Humble Oil. And the way people would describe it at the time was like, "Oh, Humble is just a fly-by-night little rinky-dink company." And so one of the first takeaways there is, okay, if you wanna look for opportunities where there's, uh, essentially, uh, or industries that where there's opportunities without limits, you c- it can't already be consolidated. Uh, second thing, as frontiersmen, the old wil- wildcatters had neither the time nor the inclination to question their own purposes or to agonize about what the future consequences of their efforts might be. They just went out and did whatever there was to be done. Teddy Roosevelt has this famous quote that he took from his dad as his life motto, and it's called get action. There's people in the book, their, like life motto is make action. They're at the very beginning of an industry, so they're going to have to learn by doing. That's another telltale sign that you might be in an industry where it has essentially unlimited opportunity. The second is the opportunity has to be open to, or the third, I guess, the opportunity has to be open to small teams without a lot of money. And so when they're drilling right now... In fact, you know what? Let me pull this up real quick. This is one of my favorite lines ever. I think, uh, I, I did another podcast and read another book ar- around a similar time period. In fact, some of the characters in that, uh, in this book are in that book. It's called The Big Rich. It's one of my favorite books I've ever read. But what was fascinating is there's a line in the book that I never forgot, and I use it as a metaphor all the time. And they said, "The trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface. If it was near the top, it wouldn't be any trick to it. You've gotta drill deep for oil." And my interpretation of that or how I apply it to my own life is like ev- there, there's an essentially an u- inexhaustible supply of people that wanna get the most for doing the least, and there's a lot more competition for things that are easy. And so in my own life, I wanna get the most by doing the most. And so what's fascinating is that, that quote was about the oil business, you know, maybe 20 or 30 years, uh, in the future from where we're in this book. But at this time, it was very possible for a young wildcatter, and that's why the book is called Wildcatters, essentially just like these little startup oil companies, to go out, raise some money, and then try to drill some wells. Over time, that ability becomes cost-prohibitive, and the only people that are able to drill wells are these giant oil companies like we see today. So at the point, at this time, you could buy, at, at this time, you could try to drill a well. The oil or the gas that you're looking for might be 5,000 feet underground, right? So it would cost you, it would cost a wildcatter about $20,000 to drill. And in Oklahoma and Texas at the time, there, there was a ton of oil at five, at only 5,000, uh, feet underneath the ground. And so that was the advantage that Monty had, right? But it says 20 years later, everything near the top, right, is gone. So now you have to go 30,000 feet underground to get the same amount of, uh, oil or gas out of there, and that's gonna cost you, the cost goes from $20,000 to $750,000. If I did the math correct, that is 37 times more costs. 37 times more investment required to do similar work. So if you're looking for fields with limitless opportunity, how they look in the very early days is they, that opportunity has to be open to small teams without a lot of money. And eventually as that opportunity is exploited, it'll usually just be open to people with a, a lot more resources and you'll see the cost of doing the same things drastically skyrocket.

4. 12:10 – 16:35

   Surfing the Wave: Private Mineral Rights and Staying in One Business

   1. DSDavid Senra12:10

      So something that's been on my mind for the last few months since I reread, uh, the new version of Poor Charlie's Almanack, uh, that Stray Press, uh, just republished, uh, the episode's 329 if you wanna listen to it, was, uh, Charlie has this thing that he talks about a lot which is this model of surfing. Um, and he uses it to when he's trying to examine, it's like, okay, well why was Sam Walton so successful? Why was Les Schwab so succe- successful? There's a bunch of factors, and one of them he says like they had to surf some kind of wave. And so as I was reading this book I was like, "Okay, well what wave?" I was looking for the wave. I was like, "Okay, well what wave did Monty surf?" And I wanna read this. This is fascinating. Like, why this was available to, uh, basically at this, at this time in history and at this specific place, the fact that he was lucky enough to be born in America because America's the only country in the world in which the, the mineral rights underneath the ground, right, in which your, these wildcatters need to buy or to lease are privately owned. Everywhere else, a, a state or a crown will hold the title. And so it says, "In America, mineral rights must be purchased from thousands of individual landowners. The big companies very naturally preferred to make their deals with a single sheik or a tyrant or whatever of the country for the wealth of an entire nation instead of dicking around with countless farmers in order to beg- to put together a field." And this is the punchline right here. "The wildcatters' competitive individual way of working was compatible with the private ownership of the land." Okay, so for the fact, for the fact that America's the only country in the world where such rights are privately owned is the main wave, and then the second thing is the fact that let's say he buys, you know, sh- 100,000 or 100, uh, excuse me, 1,000 acres. There might be 50, 60, 200 different farmers or, uh, landowners that he has to go and negotiate with. And so a larger oil company was like, "I'm not gonna do that. I'll just go and see if like, let me go, let me go to the Gulf or let me go to Russia because if I can sell that one person or if I can convince that one person to get access to essentially sovereign level assets." And then there's a second thing that Charlie, uh, Munger said about surfing, um, that I think w- one is useful to you and I, but also a- as you heard Monty in the opening, and I also have a bunch of other highlights I'll, I'll most likely read to you, where he was anti-diversification. Remember they're like, you ask him about cattle or real estate, he's like, "We're oil men." Uh, [laughs] his future generations are, you know, diversifying in all kind of assets and he was very against that. Although it was good for him not to diversify, but you could argue that it was beneficial for his descendants to because the oil business vastly changes in his lifetime. But this is what Munger said about it. Um, let me pull that up again. It's from Poor Charlie's Almanack. In fact, I found my note too that I'm gonna read to you. So he says, "There's huge advantages for the early birds." So this is Charlie Munger talking about surfing, obviously applicable to way more, um, people and industries than, than Monty and oil. "There are huge advantages for the o- the early birds. When you're an early bird, there's a model that I call surfing. When a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go for a long, long time. But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in the shallows. But people get long runs when they're right on the edge of the wave, whether it's Microsoft or Intel or all kinds of people. Surfing is very powerful." And then I'm looking at the note, uh, that I left myself when I read that, um, when I read that in Poor Charlie's Almanack. It says, "Charlie's surfing model. One thing I learned from having dinner with Charlie was the importance of getting into a great business and staying in it. There's a tendency in human nature to mess up a good thing because of an inability to sit still." So Monty understood that and was only interested in the oil business for his entire life. Let's go back to this idea of what does limitless opportunity look like. Limitless opportunity usually found in environments with little to no regulation. At the time that Monty starts, there's n- almost nonexistent, uh, regulation. By the third generation it's becoming increasingly difficult, and so this is the difference between what Monty had, which is essentially little to no regulation, and what the third generation is having to deal with. There was an increasing number of bureaucratic considerations governing everything from the distance a well can be from an old Indian burial ground to the number of portable toilets that must surround a rig site. These regulations continue to increase as government agencies proliferated.

5. 16:35 – 21:29

   Grandfathers Who Never Leave: Prickly Individualists and Modest Living

   1. DSDavid Senra16:35

      I wanna continue with 84-year-old Monty Moncrief before we go to his early life, which is actually absolutely incredible. And it's really, again, uh, main part of the book is the fact that this guy's l- shadow is over his entire family. All these oil dynasties are controlled by, you know, this one y- what do they call him? Uh, prickly individual. I'll get there in one second. But one of the reasons that their, their shadow looms so large is 'cause they never exit. He's doing oil deals until he dies, way past. He's decades past the need, uh, to work for money. And so he's, he's not only d- are the every, his entire family working in the business that he started, but his physical presence is still there. And so it says, "These grandfathers," so they're, you know, these patriarchs of these family dynasties in Texas, "rarely abandon the towns where they raise their families, and they don't venture forth into senior citizen, uh, senior citizen communities in Florida or Arizona. They live where they've always lived, and their daily presence keeps their legends alive. The mystique of grandfather heroes exists partly because the grandfathers play a special in-between role in this land of men that are impossibly hard. All over Texas the story is the same. 'My daddy was a tough old bull, but when he told me it was time to quit law school and come to work for him, I did it, even though it was the hardest thing in the world for me, and even though he told me I'd have to run him out of business before I could get my share.'" That's funny because that's happening in Texas. Also, I don't think it's exclusive to Texas. When I got to this, the note I left myself was, "Oh, this, this could be, this quote could be from Ted Turner." As you and I learned in episode 327 on Ted Turner's autobiography, you know, he, he tried to rebel His dad st- had started that company. It was very successful, one of the largest, I think it was the most successful billboard company in the, in the, in the Southeast. And, you know, he took off running. But eventually, exactly what they said, you know, he called him. He's like, "You just... Now's the time. You have to come." And even though Ted wasn't sure, he's like, "You know, I'm gonna go do this." Back to this book, this is also something that I've noticed, that the entrepreneurs that you and I study are way more similar to each other than, uh, you and I are to maybe, like, the, the, the general population or, or, or the population that are not entrepreneurial. Uh, traveling through oil country, one becomes aware of a similarity among the tales told of grandfathers who first subdued the land and claimed its riches. Like mythic heroes, the men of the first generation began to seem interchangeable after a while, like figures cut from the same rough, magnificent fabric. They call them prick- [chuckles] They had, they said they possessed prickly individuality. Pr- That's a great line. They were [laughs] they possessed prickly individuality. All the stories seem to be about the same prickly individual. [laughs] I s- I say this over and over. It's like the same personality type that reappears over and over again throughout history, different industries, different parts of the world, different times, s- basically the same shape, same shape. More description of them. These are, they are giants. They are successful predators, acute and astute tamers of the untamable and defenders of vast treasure. That is a description of Monty Moncrief. Another thing where the second and third generation, they start to love luxury. They're spending, they're, they're making it rain. They're balling out of control. They're spending a ton of the family mon- money. Monty was not interested in that. He lives in the same house that he lived in for his entire life. Old wildcatter's attitudes seem to be much like those of the original cattlemen, who preferred their familiar ranch homesteads to the palatial quarters that their heirs built in town. The allegiance is not to pleasure or luxury, but to comforts won by sweat and handed down with an understanding of the duties that entailed upon them. What drove Monty was achievement, not money, knowing that if I chase achievement, the money comes with it. But it's also about being able to live up to your own ideals. And so at this point in the story, Monty's ob- obviously very, very wealthy, so he winds up knowing a bunch of presidents. And this was a very fascinating, uh, insight into him. Monty Moncrief is quick to tell the visitor that he's got pictures in his office with, like, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson and all these other people, right? This is very fascinating. Monty Moncrief is quick to tell the visitor that Nixon was a weak man destroyed by his own a- avarice. He speaks of Lyndon Johnson as a compassionate man, but greedy like Nixon and much prouder than he. Such judgments are not political, but personal. They are moral sentences passed upon men who were not large enough to live up to their offices. But at the same time, he still respects them because, for this reason, but to whom a measure of respect is nonetheless owed simply because they won and held those offices. They exhibit personal pantheons across which fall the shadows of men who shaped American destiny. And so I need to explain that a little further. So it's talking about th- this first generation of frontier settlers, which is what w- what, uh, Monty Moncrief was, right? They have a sense of honor even for those who have disgraced themselves because even when a great man falls from grace, their actions they did before that helped shape America's destiny.

6. 21:29 – 27:04

   From Landman to Independent: Early Career and Funding

   1. DSDavid Senra21:29

      Okay, so then the book goes into his early life. I think this is the way... I, I think I can essentially tell the entire story in just two sentences. And so this is not a direct quote from Monty Moncrief, but this is my interpretation. If we were able to talk to him, this is what he would say: "My dad got to Texas in a covered wagon. I made hundreds of millions of dollars in my lifetime." And so when Monty is a young man, he serves in... He goes to Europe to fight in World War I. While he's doing that, he actually becomes friends with the son of an Oklahoma oil family. And so after the war, when Monty gets back to America, he decides to head for Oklahoma, and he starts working for his friend's family's oil company. And so his first job in the oil industry, he has this job called a landman. So it says, "He worked first as a landman, as many future independents often did. Landman, landmen do not buy land. Rather, they lease the right to produce minerals upon it from the land's owner." So this is what I mentioned earlier, how a lot of larger, uh, companies, oil companies are like, "I'm not doing that. I have to go, you know, in- negotiate individually with 50 people, 25 people, 200 people. I'd just rather go straight to the ruler of the country." So this is how it works. Rather, they lease the right to produce minerals upon it from the land's owner, who takes a share. A lease, which is what he's negotiating, right, gives the operator access to that tract of land for five or 10 years. If oil is found before the lease expires, the operator may continue to produce it for as long as that well lasts. If not, the mineral ri- rights revert back to the landholder, who then may sell them to the next bidder. But if the land proves productive, the lease, the person that's doing the leasing pays a royalty to the landowner, right, uh, which is a share of his profits before costs. So share of his revenue before costs, rather. The share is usually one-eighth, and this is, this is fascinating. The share is usually one-eighth, and it is called a royalty because it was once paid to the crown. So after a few years, Monty decides to sc- strike out his own. He wants to work for himself, and he's gonna go from Oklahoma to West Texas. Now, a huge part of this early industry, it's like, well, where are they getting the money from? And so there's two interesting sources for funding here. One is the oil industry at this point is completely dependent on the railroad industry. Remember this for later because there's this huge dispute between two separate oil companies, and wait till you hear the name of the led- [chuckles] of the actual governing body It's, it's not named after oil, if you just put it-- Let me just tell you that. So the earliest, some of the earliest American oil financiers were actually Easterners, right? These are very far away from the frontier in Oklahoma and Texas. They're actually Easterners who controlled the railroad lines. And then the second source, which was uniquely Texan, is before oil came to Texas, they were, their massive industry was, uh, a lot of the, the richest families were actually cattle ranchers. Uh, so there's this guy named Pappy Wagoner, for example. He was Texas' first billionaire. He obviously made his money in, in cattle ranching. And then he takes that money and then, uh, actually founds a bank, and then he would fund a bu- It's kinda like angel investing, [chuckles] if you really think about what's going on here. As a billionaire, he's like, "Okay, I'm willing to go ahead and issue a- and invest these, in these speculative, like, oil startups," [chuckles] is the way to think about this. And he does it through Fort Worth National Bank, which he founded. And so one of the main things that jumps out is like, okay, well, why would you do that? You have a good job. Like, why would you quit? You move states. And th- this is this idea where it's like he had r- unbelievable self-confidence. I don't even know if that's the right word. Th- this, a lot of these early wildcatters, they, they were default optimistic by far, but they also believed that they were born lucky. This is not a joke. So he says, "Monty Moncrief believed that he had a gift, a special talent for finding oil. He believed that he had been born lucky. When asked why he set himself up as an independent oil man, he said, 'I'd always had it in my mind to better myself,' and to better himself has always been his quest in life." And so these wildcatters raise money, and they start, start drilling holes. Monty's first 29, his first 29 wells all come up empty. So at the beginning of his career, remember, he still thinks he's born lucky. He was destined to it. "I have a gift." This is the way he's talking about, "I have a gift for finding oil." Imagine believing that, right? Quitting your job, moving states, raising money. First 29 times, they're all duds. They start calling him Dry Hole Monty. That was the situation right before he hits one of the largest, uh, oil discoveries ever. There is actually... Let me read this to you. There's a great line I think about all the time in the book "The Fish That Ate the Whale," which is about Sam Zamari, and it talked about this. Essentially, he goes and, and accumulates assets when he does not have the money to do so because he believed if he did not get those assets, his business in the future wouldn't work out anyways. There is some, some degree of... For some reason, when I'm, when I got to this section of the book, I was thinking about this line, this paragraph that's in "The Fish That Ate the Whale." So let me read that paragraph to you first, and then we'll get into this incredible discovery that Monty is, [chuckles] a young Monty Moncrief. His son is, I think, 11 years old when this is about to happen, but this is the line from "The Fish That Ate the Whale." "There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to."

7. 27:04 – 31:23

   Dry Hole Monty and the Big Discovery

   1. DSDavid Senra27:04

      And so when a real estate trader by the name of B.A. Skipper comes and asks Monty if he wants to buy these leases, this is what happens. So B.A. Skipper was trying to unload the leases that he held on 4,000 acres. These 4,000 acres just happened to be near Dad Joiner's well. So Dad Joiner is this guy that sold out to this other guy named H.L. Hunt. H.L. Hunt is in that book I referenced earlier, which is "The Big Rich." Dad Joiner's site is the foundation of the H.L. Hunt family dynasty. Should've went to Dad Joiner, but he sold out. I think that's a huge, important thing to remember. So B.A. Skipper comes, and he's like, "Well, I got 4,000 acres." He's u- under fin- financial pressure. They're kinda near Joiner's well. Do you want them? No geological survey had been made in the land, but the acreage was cheap because Skipper hadn't paid off his leases. He had taken them on an open draft from the, the bank instead, hoping to get rid of them fast and turn a profit by doing so. So there's a bunch of these people where they'll, they'll get a lease, and essentially they just wanna sell paper. They have no issue. They're not wildcatters. They're like, "Oh, we got these. Let's say I paid, you know," I'm making up a number, "I paid 1,000 for them. I will give you my rights for, you know, 5X." They're like short-term, you know, short-term traders, I guess, is the way to think about them. Very different than what, uh, Monty was interested in doing them. Uh, Monty Moncrief thought it was possible that this site may be sitting on top of the northeast running trend and on an impulse, meaning that it's close to the Dad Joiner, uh, discovery, and on impulse, he bought the leases. And he bought the leases even though he didn't have, uh, the money. So what does he do? They, they do this over and over again. They take on partners. Uh, to, to save himself money, he went partners with a ban- man named J.T. Ferrell, who worked down the hall from him. Moncrief and Ferrell didn't have enough money to permit them to expand their holdings and undertake the expense of drilling at the same time. So they did what independents have always done and then sold off pieces of their enterprise. They gave up some of their interest to Getty. Uh, that's Getty Oil. So think about what just happened there. B.A. Skipper comes to Monty with a, with an opportunity. Monty's like, "Okay, I'm gonna take another flyer. I've, I've drilled 29, uh, duds. Uh, I don't have money for this. What do I gotta do? I gotta walk down the hall, knock on some doors [chuckles] and see who wants to go in on this deal with me." So now we're 50/50 partners. We're like, "All right, we got the leases. We, we ain't got no money to, to drill. What are we gonna do here? We'll go to a bigger oil company, say, 'Hey, give us some money to drill,' and if it works out, we'll obviously give you some of, uh, you know, the interest in, in a good well." And then I love his relentless optimism here because the first well that he drills gushed forth 18,000 barrels of oil a day. And then his response was h- was hilarious, right? 'Cause it's like, it's like y- to be delusionally optimistic, you just go from one setback to another setback without any loss of enthusiasm, [chuckles] which I love. And it says, like, he-- So, you know, he has all this struggle for years. Doesn't have the money, winds up figuring out how to do it. The first well they drill on this other thing, so this would be, what, his 30th attempt. Uh [laughs] the first well is 18,000 barrels a day, and then it says, "This further convinced him that the good Lord must be looking out for him." In other words, that he was born lucky. Now, what's fascinating is how fast his fortunes change. So it says, "Monty and his partner held onto their leases until the end of 1931." If I'm not mistaken, they actually hit it... I can't find the exact year. I'm pretty sure they hit it that same year. I think they held onto it for a year, maybe two. It was not lo- the, the point, whether it's a year or two years, something like that, it's not a very long time. But the value obviously increases dr- dramatically. And so it says, "They watched their worth increase many times over. Finally, they sold out to a larger oil company for $2.5 million." That'd be the equivalent of, you know, something like 50 million today. A few years later, uh, the company that bought it for 2.5 million sold it for 37 million to Standard Oil. And so a bunch of other people like were like, "Oh, you," you know, "you sold too early," or whatever the case is. But again, this is gonna be the foundation of a... which present day is a multi-billion dollar family fortune. So a lot of other wildcatters are like, "Oh, you sold too early." But I loved what Monty Moncrief said here. He says, uh, "In the oil business, there's no what if, there's only what happened." And another interesting thing is, one, he sold, so now he doesn't have to worry about any money. He's gonna keep-- He's gonna be in the same business, uh, for the rest of his life, and he's gonna keep having a lot of success in that business.

8. 31:23 – 32:45

   Real Assets and Distrust of Paper Fortunes

   1. DSDavid Senra31:23

      But also be- what was fascinating is because, uh, his wealth was based off, like, this tangible resource, he was able to survive and thrive in the Great Depression. So it says, "Unlike the oligarchs in New York, rich Texans were not necessarily forced into diminished circumstances by the Depression. Texas fortunes had been built upon the bounty of the Earth," this is their words, "and the memory of this advantage during a time of crisis has made many Texans mistrustful of paper fortunes ever since." Mistrustful of paper fortunes ever since. Remember that sentence, uh, for later on when his grandson is, you know, essentially like peacocking. Like, "Look what I did," and when this deal, he's drilling oil for Israel, uh, on like disputed land between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s, and we'll get to there later. But his, his, his, uh, grandfather wasn't buying it. He's like, "Until the money is in the bank." It remi- You know what? It, it reminded me of something that Sam Zell said, I think it was in his autobiography, where, you know, somebody had said to him during the dot-- the original dot-com boom in the late '90s. It's like, "Sam, you know, it took you 40 years," or something like that, "to be a billionaire. Uh, what do you think of this guy that, you know, started his company 18 months ago and he's a billionaire?" You know, this is like '97 or '98. And he goes, "Tell me when he has the money in the bank." And I'm pretty sure, if I remember the cor- the story correctly, that the, that was always just a paper fortune. It wound up, uh, booming and then busting and then I think going bankrupt.

9. 32:45 – 38:05

   The Wildcatter Mindset: Luck, Debt, Risk and Irrational Optimism

   1. DSDavid Senra32:45

      So before I move on, I wanna go over some of the characteristics of these early wildcatters. Because I'm f- choosing to focus on Monty Moncrief. There was a lot of other characters in there. Uh, H.L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, Clint Murchison. In fact, what brought this book to my attention is I've been doing research. I wanna do, uh, a podcast on Richard Rainwater, a very influential, uh, investor and company builder, and yet there's surprisingly, as influential as this person was, uh, there's, there's no biography on him. And so I found, uh, this podcast, and it's called Rainmakers Podcast. I'll leave a link down below. Uh, turns out, uh, Raem, who runs the Rainmakers Podcast, has been, uh, listening to Founders for a while, and I sent him a message, and he gave me all of his research. He's in... That-- I'd recommend listening to that podcast, 'cause the level of research that went into it is incredible. I've been trying to find stuff on Richard Rainwater all the time, and Raem just came up with an... Like, his sources were just way better than mine, and I, uh, one of his sources was this book. And so I immediately ordered all the books on that list, and I started reading this, like, this is actually incredible. Um, and so my interest in this was I was like, okay, I wanna learn more about... 'Cause Richard Rainwater, how he got his start was that there's an oil man who winds up becoming, uh, I think the richest person in the United States for a certain time. He's more like a gambler, though. His name's Sid Richardson. Uh, he passes away. His fortune goes to... He didn't have any children. His fortune goes to his nep- nephew. This is the Bass family, and then the Bass family hires Richard Rainwater. And so the podcast I'm telling you about talks about how Richard, I think, turned 50 million of the Bass' money into five billion. But Sid Richardson, just like Monty Moncrief, they were a big belief in luck. In fact, uh, Sid's credo says that, uh, he'd, he'd always been-- Uh, his credo had always been that he'd rather be lucky than smart, because a lot of smart guys go hungry. Uh, another trait that they had was they were not afraid of debt. [laughs] This is not advice, by the way, 'cause there's a lot of people that did the exact same thing they did but did not survive. And so Sid Richardson's, uh, his partner was this guy named Clint Murchison, who's also fascinating. He's in "The Big Rich." I highly recommend. I, I'm gonna leave links for this book, but I'd also go back and listen to episode 150. Oh, no, it's not 150, is it? I don't know why I'm guessing. I can just look it up. Uh, it is episode 149. 150 is Sam Walton. So 149. I'd listen to that episode, but also read the book. "The Big Rich" is excellent. It's g- I'm gonna wind up rereading it and doing another podcast on it in the future, 'cause I thought the, the book was, uh, fantastic. But, so Clint Murchison's in there as well. They were one-time partners, uh, with Sid Richardson. And you might find this interesting. Clint Murchison's son was actually the founder of the Dallas Cowboys. But, so what they have, uh, in common, they believe in luck. They have an absence of fear of disgrace, as we just saw. Like, they're failing over and over again. They just keep getting back up and going at it. Uh, as we just saw with Monty, ch- he was 0-29, and he was still going at it, and, and 30 was, you know, changed his, his life and really not only changed his life, but changed the trajectory of many generations of his family. Uh, they're also not scared of, of having tons of debt. There's a great li- uh, there's a great exchange between Sid Richardson in this, uh, and Clint Murchison in the book, and Sid tells Clint, "I must be the richest one between us, because I owe more money than you, you do. They've got paper of mine floating all the way to London." Sid believed that [laughs] this is crazy. Sid, uh, had an attitude that, uh, there was no innate shamefulness in going broke or in borrowing, as long as there was a reason for it. They all were delusional optimists. They believed that optimism was the personal quality that nurtures luck. They hated timidity. They said you cannot, you simply, an oil man simply could not afford to be timid. And then [chuckles] they did not feel, uh, the need to apologize, uh, for the occasional big losses. They believed that if you were not having big losses, that means you weren't trying enough. And in many cases, they operated in legal, like, gray areas. Uh, they built concrete bunkers around wells and hired armed guards to defend their turf from government inspectors. They smuggled oil across state borders. They operated unregistered refineries in backwoods. They processed crude in excess of what each operator was allowed. This is later in the oil industry. Uh, it says chaos, and they believed in chaos and defiance, and they refused to be controlled. They were not afraid of risk. They said the risk is always there. And then Clint Murchison has a great saying. He says, uh, so the risk is always there. And as Clint Murchison was fond of saying, "After the first hundred million, what the hell?" And so what he's talking about there is, like, after $100 million, you gotta have 100... At this point, you gotta have 100 million or a billion. The difference in your lifestyle is negligible, so you should be going, like, you should be building businesses, going for risk. Uh, in Clint's case, he was, he would spread money all around. He would own oil companies, railroads, cattle ranching. Obviously, his son, uh, eventually, uh, started the Dallas Cowboys. But really, this is the, I guess, the punchline for this entire section. They were motivated to found dynasties to which their sons and their sons' sons could succeed. This is more about their mindset. Uh, West Texas, where all these, these guys are operating, was settled by optimism, by pure booster spirit, by the willingness to go on faith and instinct, to believe that hard work and the taking of high risk must inevitably bring reward. Only something as stubborn and unreasoning... Remember, this is not, like, an intellectual thing. In many cases, they're, they're being irrational, and people around them are telling them they are. Only something as stubborn, as unreason, and unreasoning as faith could have inspired men and women to settle and remain upon this harsh, unyielding land. These Texas wildcatters were optimists without equal. They had to be.

10. 38:05 – 41:40

    Defying the Experts and Starting from Nothing

    1. DSDavid Senra38:05

       This was very fascinating. Uh, so keep in mind, Clint, uh, or not Clint, uh, Monty gets in the business right after World War I, so we're talking late 19, 19-teens, right? In the years before and after the First World War, the US Bureau of Mines had begun issuing a series of pessimistic surveys. They estimated, these are the quote-unquote experts saying you're, you're wasting your time here. Why? Because we estimate that 40% of America's petroleum reserves had already been exhausted. That is insane. That is an insane statement. This is over 100 years ago, right? So 100 years later than the, the, this report by these experts was issued, right? Over 100 years later, there's more petroleum produced in America. There's hundreds of thousands of barrels a day in the 1920s. So at that time, and let me, let me be clear what I'm saying here. In the 1920s or 19-teens, when this, this report is issued, it's like, "Hey, we've already, we're estimating that you guys have already tapped 40% of America's petroleum reserves. We're already producing hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, right? It can't, like, we're gonna run out." 100 years later, we're producing tens of millions of barrels a day. This is why I keep bringing up this, like, irrational optimism and the belief in luck that they have because ev- like, the industry report's like, "Nope, we're 40% of the way through." Uh, and the report concluded, right, that the domestic oil business was not far from dead. West Texas oilmen refused to take these reports at their word. And it was a good thing they did because when they start drilling, all of these findings, it's gonna happen over the next 10, 20 years, right? It was the greatest frontier gold rush of all time, and they, th- they make a great point in the book that this, these discoveries in Texas in, you know, '20s, '30s, '40s, uh, were 10 times the size of the gold strike that brought the 49ers to Northern California in the 1800s. And I think there's some needed context around this, right? Like, why could you have this default optimism? And, uh, it goes back to this, this theme that I was thinking about as I was reading this book. It's like, okay, let's, let's study this not to, like, try to start an oil company, but I'm really curious, like, where is there opportunity without limits today? And can we derive insights into, like, what those opportunities look like and what to look for? And part of this was that these are... There's a, actually a dual theme here. It's like these are poor men. Monty Moncrief, when he was doing this, was not a rich man. When his grandson or his son try to do that, they are rich men. And so I think the benefit that, like, a Clint Murchison or, uh, Sid Richardson or Monty Moncrief had is the fact that it really, they really, they could speak as, uh, growth as an inevitability because there's nowhere to go but up. They had begun their lives, and a lot of these wildcatters, they began their lives in hovels and had nowhere to go. And so they were willing to sleep in tents. They would pi- in some cases, they would titch, uh, they would pitch a tent right next to a, a derrick, right? And they're out in the open. They describe this environment as ungoverned backlands with a climate that was predictable only in its violence. So you got either the freezing, there's storms, there's mud, then there's heat. And the only thing pushing them through is, one, they're broke, and two, they're very optimistic. Such harshness put to the test the willingness of people to put aside all thoughts of present comfort and pleasure and live exclusively upon hopes for the future. This same stern ability to ignore their present circumstances and live upon their hopes. As one descendant of a wildcatter said, "My granddaddy was born in a hole in the ground. You can't start life much lower than that." And

11. 41:40 – 44:25

    Railroads, the Railroad Commission and Suing Humble

    1. DSDavid Senra41:40

       so I mentioned the surprising role that railroads, uh, played in the, not only the growth of the oil business, but also the regulation of it. So it says, uh, "Growth meant railroads. Some West Texas fields had to be shut down after they were discovered because," so it means they struck oil, "because there was no means for hauling barrels of crude out of there to the refineries." And if the discovery was big enough, they would actually be able to influence railway- railroads to lay tracks. So it says they became a bonanza for railroad schemers as much as for wildcatters. So that was-- that set the stage. It was very interesting that, uh, you know, the-- there's a kinda like symbiotic relationship between independent oil wildcatters like Monty and these larger companies. Like, they're kinda doing deals with each other. Their fields are next to each other. They, they become partners for a little bit, then they break up. Uh, if an independent sc- usually sc- it's going to eventually sell out, he's going to sell out to a major. So this was fascinating. This was really surprising, and it, I think it speaks to the influence that, that railways or railroads had on the, uh, early American oil industry. So independents like Monty Moncrief, they're, they usually are rarely willing to jeopardize their relationship with major companies by taking them before regulatory boards. Monty Moncrief had to do this because he feels that he thought that Humble was decreasing the value of his oil fields because they were draining. Essentially, like, let's say he was on the outskirts, they own the middle. They were draining things that were not in the middle. And so if an independent wanted to file suit against a major, he would go through the regulatory board of the oil industry at the time, which was called the Railroad Commission. That was surprising. Again, y- it's not the oil board, oil regulations. The Railroad Commission. And, uh, in this case, this wind up making him over $100 million. The Railroad Commission ordered, uh, Humble to compensate him for his fields. They were forced to pay him, uh, $100 million along with percentages and residuals on tho- on those percentages. And so it said it was a victory for his dynasty and a means for its perpetuation. And there's just a great line in the book about this, you know, 'cause y- you think you're nuts for, you know, essentially suing a potential partner in the future. You're nuts for doing all, you know, all of the behavior that the wildcatters are doing, uh, seemed nuts at the time. And it says, "Being crazy is something that majors just don't understand." And being crazy and having imagination is actually a huge asset for the independents. This, this stat blew my mind. Independent wildcatters find 80% of the oil and gas in America, despite the fact that most of the mineral leases they acquire have been rejected by the big companies. And so when the book ends, Monty's in his 80s, and he's still at it, and I think this is a good description of why.

12. 44:25 – 59:38

    Closing Thoughts and Podcast Announcements

    1. DSDavid Senra44:25

       "Monty Moncrief grew up amid the harshness of a developing frontier land and made hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of his 80-odd years. He had realized his ambitions in a town that he helped to settle and shape and make grow. He had been able to trace his shadow, leave his mark upon an empty land, and set a standard for those who were to follow. He created a dynasty. For Monty Moncrief and for men of this pioneer generation, achievement, not refinement, is the measure of all things." And that is where I'll leave it. For the full story, highly recommend reading the book. If you buy the book using the link in your show notes or available at founderspodcast.com, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. There's only a few limited copies of this, so in case you can't get this, I will also leave a link below, uh, to read "The Big Rich," which tells a lot of, uh, similar stories and is an excellent book. That is 338 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon. Okay, just a few quick things, and in fact, a few quick new things, uh, before you go. First one was asked for and requested, uh, for many, many months. Founders now officially has merch. If you go to shop.founderspodcast.com, or you can just go to founderspodcast.com and click on Merch. Uh, a few months ago, I did an, a live show in New York City with my friend Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like The Best podcast. And we sold, for the first time ever, like, Founders merch, like sweatshirts, hats. People seem to love it. I've been wearing that. I have, I actually took, like, four of them for myself, and I've been wearing them for the past few months. They are super, super comfortable. Uh, I would definitely order the sweatshirt. The hat that we have on there right now, I'm actually going to replace soon with a hat that's, uh, the, 'cause the Founders logo on the hat is big. Some people like it. I personally like it if it's a little smaller. But if you happen to like the bigger logo, get the hat soon because eventually they'll be replaced with the hat with the smaller, uh, logo. So if you wanna buy some Founders merch, go to shop.founderspodcast.com, or go to founderspodcast.com and click on Merch, and you can do that. The second new thing, and this one is incredibly important, me and Patrick are looking for partners. If you are building products, if your company is building a product that makes somebody else's business better, so B2B, and you would be interested in becoming partners with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best, email partnerships@founderspodcast.com. That is partnerships with an S, partnerships@founderspodcast.com. Tell us about the company you're building, obviously any important links that we need to know, and why you think we would be good partners. So we're able to obviously help with distribution. We're looking for partners that we can actually partner with and then help advertise across both of our podcasts. We can also bring capital and then access to talent as well. And the r- one of the reasons this came, uh, this, this idea came to mind is because I keep having this experience where, whether I'm touring a company 'cause I've been invited to, or I'm giving a speech, or I meet somebody, uh, through, like, a, a friend of a friend that listens to the podcast, I keep coming across these unbelievably talented and formidable, uh, founders that listen to Founders, and in some cases have been listening, like I j- I just met one last week. He's incredible, and he's like, "Yeah, I've listened to 200 episodes." And so it's very apparent to me that I'm doing something wrong where, because these supremely talented people, there's no mechanism for which, for them to, like, reveal themselves to me. And that's important to the podcast because supremely talented people usually build supremely impressive products, products that can make your business better. And I would like to use the podcast to essentially highlight founder-led companies from founders that listen to Founders that would benefit other listeners of Founders. And so Patrick and I don't know what shape this is gonna take yet. All we know is we have access to a lot of resources. We have very unique assets that no one else probably on the planet has. And if you're, you think you're a right fit, just email partnerships@founderspodcast.com. There'll be more details in the future. I just wanna put out, put that out there for now. So if you're building something and you would wanna partner with Patrick and I, email partnerships@founderspodcast.com. And I think you'd be surprised about all the kind of unexpected benefits that could happen. So this, this actually just happened, um, because I've told you about this company Vesto, uh, V as in Victor, E-S-T-O. It's vesto.com. And I partnered with them for a while. I knew the founder. Uh, uh, two of my close founder friends were both using Vesto to get higher returns on their business' idle cash. And so I was like, "Oh, this is..." Uh, I knew Ben. I'd spent a bunch of time with him, went out to dinner with him a bunch of times. And then I had two people I trust where, and they were both in very opposite, uh, situations. One was, uh, had raised a bunch of venture capital, and so he had a long runway, and he was using Vesto to, uh, lengthen his runway. And the other one had this giant bootstrap business with a bunch of companies, and he was using it to get a higher rate of return than his bank was offering him. And so there's a bunch of people that heard about Vesto, uh, from the ads I was doing on the podcast. But what was fascinating, and this is an unexpected benefit, they actually pulled a product out of Vesto that didn't exist and now exists because of that. And this is also the benefit of founder-led calls, uh, sales calls, if you can do that in your company, because Ben, Ben was taking all the calls, right? Explaining, getting to know who the prospects were, explaining the business, explaining why the business exists. You know, he built the, the, uh, from, it from the ground up. So he's the person in the best possible position to, uh, explain to, explain its value to potential customers. But he was having a bunch of these conversations, and what was fascinating is people didn't know e- that didn't even know each other were asking for the same thing. 'Cause they're like, "Yeah, I have excess cash, and I would like a higher return," obviously now that interest rates are higher, "but there's this other problem, uh, that I really wanna find a solution for." And a lot of people have, uh, i- in many cases, multiple bank accounts spread across multiple banks, in some cases multiple countries, and in some cases multiple currencies and multiple entities. And the only solution they could find, and this is what they were asking Ben to build for them, was, "Hey, I have to hire somebody," right? They're paying somebody every morning or every day to log into all their accounts, in some cases there was like 10 to 30 different accounts, uh, reconcile all the balances, and in some cases convert the currencies just to figure out how much cash does all my businesses have right at this exact moment. And so as a result of founders in the founder community, in the Founders Podcast community, this product now exists. If you have this problem, you can go to vesto.com, V-E-S-T-O. Everybody says I slur my words. I know I don't pronounce things correctly, so it's V as in Victor. And obviously I will leave the links in the show notes, and the links e- for everything I talk to, uh, talk about is at founderspodcast.com. But if you wanna see all of your company's financial accounts in one view, uh, Vesto, this, this version of Vesto will connect and control all of your global business accounts from one dashboard. And then if you choose to, they can al- automatically also help you earn higher rates on your business' idle cash. And then when you go to Vesto and schedule a demo, you actually talk to Ben. So just make sure that you tell him that David from Founders sent you. So, uh, two more quick things I wanna talk to you about. Founders Notes. Founders Notes, uh, is the best way, the single best way. Uh, first I think it's, it's the world's greatest, [chuckles] the world's greatest notebook for founders, but it's also the best way to support the podcast. I think last week, uh, the Napoleon episode really honed in on the value proposition from just reading and rereading, uh, all the n- uh, the note, all of my notes and highlights. So what Founders Notes is, is for, j- just, what is this now? Six years? Since 2018, uh, I've been cataloging all of the notes and all the highlights. I've been putting in this app called Readwise, which allows me to search by book, search by keyword, uh, constantly review my highlights. There's this thing called the highlights feed, which I think is incredible, which is essentially a random generated, it's like a smart Twitter feed, but instead of reading the psychotic delusions of these crazy people that are, that hang out on social media all day, you're reading notes and highlights from history's greatest founders. And so I went to the team at Readwise and was like, "Hey, uh, people have been asking for a long time to have access to my notes and highlights. Is there any way we can build a product together where we can, we can essentially mirror what I see?" So when you subscribe, when you go to Founders Notes, that's founders with an S, foundersnotes.com, and you subscribe to this, when you invest in a subscription, you see exactly, you see a direct mirror. You see exactly what I see. This is something that I use every day. This is a product that I could not make the podcast without. It is literally embedded in my workflow. So if you had already had access to Founders Notes, you would've already seen the highlights for the, for The Wildcatters, the book that j- we just went over, because I'm updating it nearly every single day. And the reason I thought that there was a lot of, there was a couple things that people emailed me that really resonate from last week is, uh, one, it, uh, I talked about the fact that it's only for people that are running already successful companies, right? If you're not already running a successful company, though, the people running a successful company, uh, are going to get the most value out of Founders Notes because they already have a mechanism in which to turn that knowledge that's in the notebook into profit, right? And if you're not, listen to the podcast. I said, like, Founders Notes does not have a free trial because the podcast [chuckles] is the free trial. So if you're not already running a successful company, it doesn't make any sense for you to, to invest in a subscription. Just go and listen to the 337 episodes, whenever you want, as much as you want, and then use those ideas to build a successful company. Then, this is, this is in addition to. But for people that are already running a succ- a successful company, then it's a no-brainer. You can invest in a year's subscription, right? A- at, at the end of a year, first of all, there's already, you know, I don't know, something like 20,000 highlights, uh, in there. I think r- r- the team at Readwise just sent me my stats page. Um, I think they said there's 24,000 highlights Um, but I'd have to go back and double-check that. But anyways, my point being is like, the-- you s- if you would sign up today, in the next year, I'm gonna add another, you know, 50 something books and, you know, probably four or five thousand highlights. So the product literally gets better every day, and then you can decide at the end of the year, did you get value out of it or not? But I think, I think it's a no-brainer to, to try for at least a year. And the reason I say that, I heard from a lot of people that, that, uh, the Napoleon, uh, episode resonated with them, and they realized... It helped them realize the value of, you know, not just listening to the podcast, but really going deep on this and reading and read-rereading over and over again, because that's, that's Napoleon's own words. He said read over and over again. He didn't say read once, listen to one episode, and then keep it moving. No, he said read over and over again. The c- the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, uh, Frederick the Great, make them your models. This is the only way to become a great general and to master the secrets of the art of war. With your own genius enlightened by this study, I truly believe that if you subscribe to Founders Notes and you read it every day, keep it open in your browser. What I would do is pick a new book every morning, right? And just read the highlights. You have to see my notes too. Uh, search whatever comes to mind. Uh, use the highlights feed, which is... That is a really cool thing. If you can build the habit of just scrolling the highlights feed. Take ten... This is what you should do. Take ten minutes out of your social media scrolling, right? Just take ten minutes out of whatever, how much time you're using, and use that to read the highlights feed for ten minutes a day. There- it's impossible that you're not gonna get valuable information that makes your business better if you do that ten minutes a day for the year. It's just impossible. That... It's not even including the crazy thing that I've been testing, and I might just release it soon. I, uh, it's the f- essentially a Founders GPT that... I can't call it that. There's gotta be a different name. [chuckles] So I gotta figure out what I'm gonna call it. Well, it's like ChatGPT. Instead of being trained on the entire internet, it's trained on all my notes and highlights, and then now all my transcripts. Um, and it's just... It- if you've ever heard, you hear it on the podcast, but if you've ever heard me speak in, in person too, it's this thing where so- or being interviewed on a podcast. I don't know what that other person's gonna ask me, but everything that I hear is filtered through all the reading and research and the constant rereading my highlights. So like, "Oh, that reminds me of this, and that reminds me of that." You'll hear me do this over and over again. The Founders GPT version does that, and I'm like, it, it now is making connections that I didn't even think about. [chuckles] And I'm like, "Ooh, this is interesting." Now, here's the problem. Just like with any kind of these, like, new, you know, chat models, you know, 80% of it's amazing, and then some of it's like, that's not... You just made that up. [chuckles] So we gotta figure out what to do with that. But that's super exciting. So, uh, this idea where it's like Napoleon said multiple times in his maxims the importance of this. You know, he says it's, it's profitable s- to study the campaigns of the great masters. I don't know about you, if you're reading notes and highlights from biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, what is that? That is the s- you're studying the campaigns of the great masters. Napoleon's saying that's profitable to do so. Uh, he says that all great captains have been diligent students of history. You, you and I talk about this every week. That's one of the main reoccurring themes in this, this, in the history of entrepreneurship that comes up in these biographies over and over again. And then Napoleon says experience must be supplemented by study. No man's personal experience can be so inclusive as to warrant his disregarding the experience of others. Experience must be supplemented by study. During the day, you know, you're busy working on your company, you're building your empire. When you're not doing that, I think listening to founders, reading these biographies, investing in a subscription to Founders Notes, that's j- professional research. You are supplementing. You're, you're supplementing your own experience by study. So if you have not yet signed up for it, highly recommend you do. You go to foundersnotes.com. After you sign up, you'll receive an email. In that email, it goes into detail. That welcome email, make sure you, you read it. It goes into de- exact detail how I use this on a daily basis. And even this morning, I was going and rereading highlights, 'cause one of my favorite books that I've ever read was, uh, this... It's called Hard Drive. It's ex- it's, uh, episode 290. It's a, it's a biography on Bill Gates, but what I love about it is, like, it's the first, like, 35 years of his life, because it ends at the Microsoft IPO. And w- I was rereading the highlights 'cause he, young Bill Gates had... There was this line that says, like, this monomaniacal quality, and essentially what I'm just brainwashing myself to make sure that I don't lose my focus. And so I was reading, uh, through the highlights, and I was also thinking about this idea, uh, that I'm thinking about in my own business, the importance of, uh, like, uncapped, limitless opportunity and his decision to insist on a royalty agreement between him and IBM. So all these weird things that, you know, I, I maybe had forgotten or hadn't thought about in a while, I'm rereading. And then I get to this part, he was like, oh, he consumed biographies, uh, to understand how the great figures of history thought. And I'm like, oh, there it is again. Except he was doing that, you know, 30 years ago. No, probably longer than that. 40 years ago. But this idea, it's like, oh, this constant rereading and rereading and studying of the great people that came before us, and I, I really do, uh... 'Cause I can tell you with my whole heart, like, I made the product. I use the product every day. It's, it would be impossible for me to endorse [chuckles] uh, another product in the world to a greater degree other than, you know, listening to the podcast. So I, I truly believe it's valuable. If you wanna try it out for a year, go to founders, uh, foundersnotes.com. As always, thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Episode duration: 59:38