The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness by David Ogilvy

1. 0:00 – 1:46

   Divine Discontent and the Book's Purpose

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      This book is about philosophy. It's about ethos, beliefs, and all those things which gentlemen love to yap about. If it's any consolation though, this book is also about sex, as it's written primarily to address a rather awkward question. Can a $2 billion gorilla like Ogilvy ever be svelte, sultry, and sexy again? The Ogilvy agency of the 1950s and 1960s was far hotter than WK, CB, these are all these other competitors that they're listing at the time, and the rest of them combined. The question is, can we still be gorgeous now that we're several hundred pounds heavier? The answer to our dilemma can be summed up in two pithy words, divine discontent. Decades before advertising prophets were preaching good enough ain't good enough, Ogilvy was already practicing it. But what did David actually mean by divine discontent? Here's an interpretation. Don't bow your head. Don't know your place. Defy the gods. Don't sit back, don't give in, don't give up, don't win silver medals. Don't be so easily happy with yourself. Don't be spineless. Don't be gutless. Don't be toadies. Don't go gentle into that good night, and don't ever, ever allow a single scrap of rubbish out of this agency. This handbook will tell us how to make David's divine discontent a habit by the daily practice of the following creative habits. That was an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness. The subtitle is Being Very Good is No Good. You Have to Be Very, Very, Very, Very Good, and is written by the team at Ogilvy & Mather and David Ogilvy.

2. 1:46 – 4:03

   Why Senra Covers a Short Book: Danny Meyer's Rule

   1. DSDavid Senra1:46

      Before jumping back into the book, I'm gonna tell you how this unexpected episode came about. I've been spending the last, like, week and a half, uh, deep in study on one of my favorite filmmakers. I'm making an episode on him right now. Uh, it's Quentin Tarantino. I get to the end of the book on Tarantino. The epilogue of that book blew my mind. I'm sitting at my desk, I put the book down, and on my desk to the left of my computer monitor has been this book. I've read this book, The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness, and you can't even really call it a book. It's 65 pages. You can read it, I don't know, in an hour. And for some reason, I decided to pick it back up, and then I just, in one sitting, read through, uh, the book again. And even though I read it before, and I'm obsessed with David Ogilvy, I consider him one of my personal heroes, and I didn't even know who he was until I read Warren Buffett's shareholder letters, and he kept referring to Ogilvy as a genius. And so I was like, "All right, I gotta find out who this guy is." And so I bought every book that I could find on him, and then s- uh, somebody actually told me, they're like, "I'm sure you have every book, but are you gonna do an episode on The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness?" I was like, "What is that?" So months ago, I wind up buying this book. So anyways, long story short, uh, I had this idea in my mind, I was like, "Oh, I like this book, but, you know, I, I can't ever do an episode on it. You know, it's, it's too small." And for some reason, after I read it this time, I thought of an idea I learned a long time ago, and this is probably because a main story, uh, the next episode will be obviously on Quentin Tarantino. And what's remarkable about reading this book is, you know, there's all these ideas that Tarantino is finding in, like, the 1970s that he doesn't use until, like, the early 2000s. And I finish this book, and I think of this, this idea I learned about seven or, probably seven years ago, uh, when I read Danny Meyer. Danny Meyer's a famous New York restaurateur and the founder of Shake Shack. And in Danny's autobiography, he's constantly coming up with, like, new ideas that no other restaurants have used before. And he has this idea where he would prompt himself with five words, because people would say, "Oh, you can't do that. Like, no restaurant's done that before." And so he, he would say, "Whoever wrote the rule," and then he would just say, like, whoever wrote the rule, for example, that you can't make a high-quality hotdog cart, that it was actually the very first version of what would come into Shake Shack. Shake Shack is now, you know, a $4.5 billion company today, and started off as a hotdog cart in a park in New York City. And so I realized by refusing to even attempt to do a podcast on this book that I was making up just fake rules. Like, whoever wrote the rule that the book has to be, you know, 300 pages for me, or 100 pages, or whatever it is for me to do an episode on it. So I'm gonna jump into this book. It

3. 4:03 – 6:03

   Divine Discontent and the Eight Habits Overview

   1. DSDavid Senra4:03

      was written because, uh, it's trying to solve the problem. It's like, what do you do when, you know, the, the fou- it's not a founder-led company anymore, the founder's passed away, but we still wanna use his ideas to create, to craft the company culture, to make sure we're doing the best job possible, the, wh- a job that David Ogilvy would be, uh, proud of? And it starts with this idea. They kept re- referring to one of my favorite ideas that David Ogilvy had, and he has this idea of divine discontent. And you find this in a lot of top performers. And so he says, "We have a habit..." This is David Ogilvy speaking now. "We have a habit of divine discontent with our performance. It's an anecdote to smugness." So that idea is that you're always slightly discontent with the quality of your work, the quality of your company. You're always constantly trying to improve it. Steve Jobs... Uh, you'll see this appear over and over again, uh, in the people that you and I study. Steve Jobs has a great, uh, quote on this. Uh, I'm gonna paraphrase, but he says something like, you know, "What do you do when you do something wonderful? Like, y- you just wake up the next day and try to do something wonderful again." That is very similar to the idea that David is trying to teach us with divine discontent. And so they come up with eight habits of highly creative communities, and each short chapter is on one of these eight habits. And so before I jump into the first chapter, I just wanna give you the overview that they give us. To the ancient Greeks, a good habit was called a virtue, while a bad habit was known as a vice. Each of these eight habits has a corresponding evil twin. While we work at adopting the eight creative virtues, we have to work equally hard to replace the old patterns of self-defeating behaviors. Why? Because there's an old Latin proverb that tells us, "A nail is driven out by a nail. A habit is overcome by another habit." It is important to note that all these eight habits are required in all of our disciplines, and are by no means proprietary to just an advertising agency, meaning it's applicable to any business, any craft, any discipline. These eight habits belong to the whole church. And so- It gives you the virtues that they're trying to make sure that every single person up and down the organizational chart is using, and the vices that they want you to avoid, and how they r- uh, and how they relate to each other. So I'm gonna start with the vices, right? 'Cause that's

4. 6:03 – 9:34

   Habit One: Courage and Trust

   1. DSDavid Senra6:03

      a bad habit, a, a habit that you're gonna see reoccur more frequently than the good virtue that needs to replace it. So, companies operate out of fear. We do not wanna operate out of fear, we wanna operate with courage. Companies optimize for expedience. We wanna optimize for idealism. Companies stick to the status quo. We wanna be curious. Most companies are boring. We wanna be playful. Most companies have a tyranny of politeness, which means we just lie to each other. We wanna have a culture of candor. Most companies are run on cold arithmetic. We are going to optimize for our intuition. Most companies fall into bureaucracy. We want a culture of free spiritedness. Most people give in, and we will persist. So let's take these habits, these cornerstones of good company culture, in order. Habit number one is courage. Under each habit at the beginning, there's usually a short quote that illustrates the idea that they're going for. This sounds like Ogilvy, but it doesn't say it was Ogilvy. "There's no shortage of brains in the industry. It's the vertebrae column that tends to be missing." When I read that, it made me immediately think of something I read in Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One, episode 278, if you haven't gone back. I think this is the second or third time I did an episode on that book. Uh, Peter says, it's very similar to what, uh, what they're saying right here about courage. "Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius." And the one vice that usually crowds out courage is fear, so they start here. I've been obsessed with Dune, and I love how the main character in Dune, Paul, his mother's constantly r- repeating this, like, maxim or this affirmation to herself. She goes, "Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is a demon that devours the soul of a company. It diminishes the quality of our imagination, it dulls our appetite for adventure, and it sucks away our youth. Fear leads to self-doubt, which is the worst enemy of creativity." When I got to that line, thought of Arnold, a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. He said this when he was young, he said this when he was older. When you start doubting yourself, that is very dangerous. The team at Ogilvy says that fear is the enemy of creativity. If, if fear is our principal adversary, then courage is our chief ally. It is the first of the eight creative habits for a good reason. It is the habit that guarantees all the others. In the absence of courage, nothing worthwhile can be accomplished. That's because anything on the cutting edge needs to be constantly fought for and defended. Ideas are magical, but they're fragile seeds that require protecting. We clearly need a spine. And I love the use of the word we there, right? It's not we, me and you. It's we as a company. Our company needs a spine. Only with a spine will we stop double-guessing and express an opinion. Now, that's very fascinating because founders know that i- inherently, right? Again, the founder in this case has been dead, I think, 15 years by the time this book is written or something like that. So it says, you know, only with a spine will we stop double, double-guessing and expressing an opinion. That's not even-- I don't even think that needs to be said to a founder, because a founder's opinion is expressed in the product and company that they built. One of my favorite ways to express that idea, or the intent behind that idea, came from this random book, one of the, like, you know, 10 or 11 books or whatever it is, that I've read on Steve Jobs, and it says, "Apple is Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives." You saw Steve's opinion in the products in the company that he built. Only by standing up for what we believe in will we begin to build the most precious commodity in the world, trust. So trust with your customers, trust with the team, right? Then the virtuous cycle begins. Courage leads to trust, which leads to courage, which leads to trust, and upwards and onwards we go.

5. 9:34 – 11:35

   Trust in Practice: Buffett and Munger's First Meeting

   1. DSDavid Senra9:34

      That idea I didn't understand until, this is like recently. You're talking, like, maybe two months ago, how important it was. At least, I didn't understand it ex- explicitly how important trust was. And of course, as usual, Charlie Munger puts that idea into my mind better than almost anybody else, where he said that trust, I talked about this on the episode 329, which is the new version, the updated version, of Poor Charlie's Almanack. And he said, "Trust is one of the greatest economic forces on Earth." And it's the trust that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger established with each other very early on that provided the ground for which everything else that they did in the future was built upon. In fact, there's a great line about this. Uh, I'm gonna read from Poor Charlie's Almanack, and they talk about the very first time they ever met. And it says, uh, "During that dinner, Charlie and Warren realized they, they shared many ideas. It also became evident to the others at the table that this was gonna be a two-way conversation." [chuckles] There was, like, I think four or five other people, and they quickly wound up leaving, and Charlie and, uh, Warren talked all night. "As the evening progressed, the two young men," Warren was 29 years old at the time, and Charlie was 35, "became engrossed in a wide-ranging dialogue covering many aspects of business, finance, and history, where, where one was knowledgeable, the other was just as excited to learn. Warren was unenthusiastic about Charlie's continued practice of law." That's candor, right? We're gonna talk about candor. Think about it. You just met somebody who's like, "Yeah, uh, the job that you have sucks. You should do what I do." How many people would do that? He said that while law might be a good hobby for Charlie, it was far less promising business than what Warren was doing. Warren's logic helped Charlie to decide to quit law practice at the earliest point he could afford to do so. When Charlie returned to Los Angeles, the conversations continued over the telephone and lengthy letters, sometimes as long as nine pages. It was evident to both that they were meant to be in business together. There was no... This is the, the trust part, right? The, n- in the last paragraph I'm gonna read to you from this. "There was no formal partnership or contractual relationship. There was no formal partnership or contractual relationship. The bond was created by a handshake and backed by two Midwesterners who understood and respected the value of one's word." Again, trust is one of the greatest economic forces on Earth. Quote from Charlie Munger.

6. 11:35 – 15:09

   Habits Two and Three: Idealism and Curiosity

   1. DSDavid Senra11:35

      Habit number two, idealism. Love this, uh, quote under it: "We are the people that we've been waiting for. Helen Keller was asked by a journalist what she thought would be worse than being born blind. She replied, 'To have sight and no vision.' When our dreams are little, we become little people. Our aspiration becomes meeting the next quarter's target and not losing an account." Remember, the- I'm pretty sure this book, based on the way it was written, was written for internal use only. I think it's why it's so hard to find. I paid, like, 80 or $90, uh, for my copy, and when I looked at Amazon this morning, uh, there was only a handful, and I think they started at, like, $95 each. And they're worth every single penny. Go back to one of my favorite lines of Poor Charlie's Almanack that he said, "There's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book. Who cares if the book is $100? Take one idea that you use in your career and the, the return is a thousand times that." Uh, so it says, you know, "When our dreams are little, we become little people." What is a little, little dream? Uh, meeting next quarter's target and not losing an account. We're fe- in another word, we're, we're afraid. We're not on... We're playing defense. We need to be on offense. When we focus our life solely on making a buck, it shows a poverty of ambition. Here is David Ogilvy's take on the subject. One of the m- my favorite things that David Ogilvy said tells an entire story here in 10 words. "Raise your sights. Blaze new trails. Compete with the immortals. How great we become depends on the size of our dreams. Let's dream humongous dreams, put on our overalls, and go out there and build them. And remember, the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do." Nice little Steve Jobs reference that they added in there. Habit number three, curiosity. An endless trail of ideas floats in the ether. You will only see them if you're curious. What do most of us do in this dazzling Aladdin's cave? It's like, this is beautiful. What they're referencing there is, it really made me think of Dee Hock, the founder of, uh, Visa. He had this great line when he was a much older man. He said that, uh, life is a magnificent myr- mysterious odyssey to be experienced, right? So that's very, uh, it, to me, it, it relates to what the team at Ogilvy, uh, the team at Ogilvy is saying here. Like, what are... We're in this amazing, wonderful world, this dazzling Aladdin's cave, and what do most of us do? We close our eyes. He who, and this is what they're, they're gonna quote Einstein here. "He who no longer pauses to wonder and stand wrapped in awe is good as dead. His eyes are closed." So how do we fix this? For a start, we have to ask stupid questions like a six-year-old does. Once again, Einstein has something to say on this matter. "I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted," he said. "I am only very, very curious." I'm gonna pause there. One of my favorite episodes I've ever done is on a single episode written, or a single essay rather, written by Paul Graham. The essay's called, and the, the episode is called How to Do Great Work. It's episode 314. One of my favorite lines in one of my favorite essays, that is also in one of my favorite episodes, right, is this. "If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work, and the oracle had to reply with a single word, my bet would be on curiosity. When we've lost the capacity to see the world and everything in it as new, unreasonable, and something that should give rise to astonishment, we have become dim-sighted and stooped with age." Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's. I love, he's, he's got a gr- bunch of great quotes, which is hilarious. Uh, his... I read his autobiography twice. The last episode I did on it is 293 if you wanna check that out. But Ray Kroc summed it up nicely when he said, "When you're green, we grow. When we're ripe, we rot." That is from a man who found his life's work when he was in his 50s. Uh,

7. 15:09 – 17:00

   Habit Four: Playfulness

   1. DSDavid Senra15:09

      habit number four, playfulness. "We are all born children. The trick is to remain one." That is a quote from Picasso. David Ogilvy never entirely grew up. He would heckle in meetings, throw chocolate cakes at dinner parties, and roll down grassy slopes in Brook- Brooks Brothers suits. He told us to develop our eccentricities while we're young, so people would not think that we've gone crazy as we've gotten older. Like all creative people, David knew that necessity may be the mother of invention, but horseplay is most certainly the father. In the 1960s, the Los Angeles Times asked David how he felt about people going to work in jeans and tennis shoes when the norm of the day was suit and tie for men and dr- and a dress or a suit for the ladies. This is what David told the paper. "I don't care if people come to work in their pajamas as long as they get the work out." The day after the article appeared, an entire department inside of Ogilvy & Mather showed up in pajamas. The office rocked with laughter. David said, "Make it fun to work at your company. Kill grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance and get rid of sad dogs who spread gloom. When people aren't having any fun, they don't produce good work." The idea behind what David Ogilvy is telling us there reminded me of an answer Kobe Bryant gave one time in an interview, and he was asked, like, "What is the quality, what is the one quality that all the great ones have regardless of discipline?" And he says, "Without hesitation," Kobe said, "It's love. It's not rocket science to me, man. The quality that we all share is that we love what we do. We absolutely love it, and it's a pure love. It's not the fame, it's not the money, it's not even the championships. It's loving what we do, and we do it all the time. We study all the time, and as a result, the championships come."

8. 17:00 – 18:33

   Habit Five: Candor and the Tyranny of Politeness

   1. DSDavid Senra17:00

      Habit number five, candor. Only dead fish go with the flow. That's another great line. Our job requires us to be brutally honest and totally dedicated to the truth. The tendency to be nice and avoid telling the truth is so omnipresent in human beings that it can properly be considered a characteristic of human nature. David warned us about the tyranny of politeness. Again, this is why I'm obsessed with David, and this is why, one of the reasons I'm obsessed with him, and I think it's why Buffett called him a, a, a genius. It's the way he's a un- like, he's the best writer I've ever read for the podcast by far, and he has this way to brand ideas so not only they get immediately into your mind, but y- they, they stick in there. You will remember them. And he talks about this idea, the tyranny of politeness. That is a great phrase. David warned us about the tyranny of politeness and how we can t- be too agreeable for our own good. If we avoid candor, we destroy trust. We only get a spark when the stone and the flint are moving in opposite directions. And so I was thinking about this, it's like we only get a spark and the stone... We only get a spark when the stone and flint are moving in opposite directions, and I, like, oh, we're talking about conflict, inner conflict there. And the quote that came to my mind from there came all the way back from episode 180. This is from Jeff Bezos. I love it. This is what Jeff said Uh, if I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time. It always yields a better result. I will take conflict all, every time. It always yields a better result. If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time. That is advice from Mr. Bezos to you and I.

9. 18:33 – 20:45

   Habit Six: Intuition and Managing Creative Misfits

   1. DSDavid Senra18:33

      Habit number six, intuition. This is one of my favorite parts. Dreams, premonitions, gut feelings are all attempts by our unconscious to guide us. We are wiser than we think, and intuition is the art of listening to the guru within us. All of our finest thoughts and best ideas are not the work of the logical mind, but gifts from the unconscious, right? In a world dominated by quarterly reports and numbers, it's logic that gets all the airtime. But we are in the business of creativity and discovery. Again, talking about intuition, the power of intuition. Steve Jobs talked about this. "Intuition is a very pow- very powerful thing," he said. "More powerful than intellect, in my opinion. Intuition has had a big impact on my work." That is the end of Steve Jobs' quote on intuition. Now we're gonna pick up what David Ogilvy had to say about the importance of using intuition in managing your company and the talent within it. David said, "Managing isn't all beer and Skittles. I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principal responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work. To be successful, you must, out of necessity, accumulate a group of creative people. This probably means a fairly high percentage of high-strung, brilliant, eccentric nonconformists." Some of these agencies that he's competing with when he wrote this, so say 1950s, 1960s, right? Now he's a founder-led agency. He is wiping the floor with a w- with a lot of these old agencies. He's taking business from them. They're creating great work. Why? Because some of these mammoth agencies are now being managed by second-generation caretakers who have floated to the top of their organizations because they were smooth contact men. These kind of caretakers cannot create potent campaigns. Our business needs massive transfusions of talent, and talent is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels. Talent, uh, again, that description, more li- and much more likely, he's, he's not saying this, but it's, uh, a thing implied here. Uh, much more, much more likely to be hired by a founder-led company, right? Big companies are not hiring nonconformist [chuckles] dissenters and rebels. And then the team at Ogilvy summarizes this chapter, which is great. It's the cracked ones. [laughs] It is the cracked ones, in other words, that let light into the world.

10. 20:45 – 22:45

    Habit Seven: Free-Spiritedness and Atmosphere

    1. DSDavid Senra20:45

       Habit number seven, free-spiritedness. Rule number one, there are no rules. Rule number two, never forget rule number one. The business of producing ideas is both tedious and terrifying. Most companies fail to grasp the fragility of the idea generation process. The notion that bureaucratic sausage factories, which they're talking about, right, right? Ogilvy was talking about that's the... He, if you really think about what just happened, right, from, from habit to habit right now, he was essentially saying, "Hey, we're competing against these second-generation caretakers. A second-generation caretaker is gonna turn into this bureaucratic sausage factory." Now, think about this. They're writing this where they're writing this entire book as a way to try to remind everybody in their organization, in the company, to avoid coming into that. We no longer have the founder. The founder is no longer with us. He's passed on. But ideas are immortal, and we can still use them. We gotta figure out systems so we don't turn into what we just competed with and overcame. The notion that bureaucratic sausage factories pumping out fodder for meetings will solve problems is ludicrous. Bureaucracy has no place in an ideas company. They just told you. Maintain free-spiritedness, and rule number one is there are no rules, and rule number two is for- never forget rule number one. Step inside a free-spirited, idea-centric company, and you'll notice that the air itself is different. So again, we call that great company culture. That's not the word that David Ogilvy's gonna use. He's gonna come up with his own term. Step inside a free-spirited, idea-centric company, and you'll notice that the air itself is different. David called this atmosphere. An atmosphere is permission to practice magic. David made the management of these intangibles the principal responsibility of the top man, of himself, right? Inside a company with atmosphere, the people are not servants to the system. They are alchemists. Let's define alchemists. That is a person who transforms or creates something through a seemingly magical process. What else is left to do but trust the people we work with and set them free?

11. 22:45 – 26:08

    Habit Eight: Persistence

    1. DSDavid Senra22:45

       That brings us to habit number eight, persistence. This is how a problem solver goes to work. Dead ends, cabin fevers, blind spots, zigzags, U-turns, roundabouts, and loop-de-loops are all part of the creative process. You see, those who live by their wits go to work on roller coasters. That is excellent. You see, those who live by their wits go to work on roller coasters. The ride is exhilarating, but one has to have a stomach of titanium. For starters, you're never 100% certain you'll ever get there, and if you even get to your destination, you sometimes wonder why you've ever bothered. Other times, the scenery pleasantly surprises you. Self-doubt comes with the territory, and ignorance, believe it or not, is an asset. Experience and knowledge make us sensible, predictable, and dull. But if you don't know that you don't know, you're ideally poised for a leap across a chasm. So again, there's a million entrepreneurs that'll tell you, "Hey, if I knew how hard it was gonna be," like they get to the other side of success, right? Build a successful company. [chuckles] Like, "If I knew how hard it was gonna be, there's no way in hell I would have tried." So that's my interpretation of what they're saying here, that, that that ignorance can be an asset. Because if you knew how difficult it was going into it, there's no way that you would actually have done it. You open your eyes wide, and you shut them again to see. Ooh, that's a, a fabulous idea. You do not assume. You look, and you look, and you look, and you look, and you look, and you look. They're writing this. I'm not, I'm not stuck on, you know [chuckles] I'm not, I'm not having an aneurysm here. You look, you look, you look, you look, and you look. You look at the clouds. You look in the closet. You look at the ceiling. You look in libraries. You look in magazines. You look at old advertising magazines. You look at the Bible. You look in cinemas. You look in art galleries. You look at people. You look at the edge of your desk. You look in the mirror. You look at your dreams, you look for patterns, you look for the tiniest similarities, you look for microscopic differences, you look under every stone, you look to heaven. You look for bloody anything. After all, discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought. You're not proud. You beg, you borrow, you steal, you build on other people's ideas. Someone was once asked, "Where do you get your ideas?" He replied, "I don't, they get me." And you never give in. Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. God is with those who persevere. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Before them, obstacles vanish into thin air, and mountains crumble into atoms. Dogged determination is often the only trait that separates a moderately creative person from a highly creative one. That's because great work is never done by temperamental geniuses, but by obstinate donkey men. Now, that is a chapter on persistence. I love that line, "Dogged determination is often the only trait that separates a moderately creative person from a highly creative one." Again, my-- still my number one all-time recommendation, has not changed after 343 of these, these books, biographies, autobiographies. If you could only read one of them, and shame on you if you only read one of them, but if you could only read one of them, my number one recommendation would still be James Dyson's autobiography, Against the Odds. He's written two autobiographies. The fir- they're both great. The first one is my top recommendation. It's episode 25, episode 200, episode 300. It'll be episode 400. It'll be episode 500. Every hundred episodes, I'm gonna re-read that book again and again and make new episodes on it. It's so important. And one of my favorite lines in that, he says, "There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence, and in the end, you make it look like a quantum leap."

12. 26:08 – 31:59

    Conclusion: We Are What We Repeatedly Do

    1. DSDavid Senra26:08

       This is the conclusion for this little handbook. So you see, the eight habits are really David Ogilvy's big ideal broken into practical bite-sized pieces. They are predicated on the principle that it's impossible to improve our reputation before we improve ourselves, and meaningless to put our personality ahead of our character. We are what we repeatedly do. We are what we repeatedly do is an Aristotle quote. The reason I know that is because Steve Jobs, right before he died, he said his favorite quote of all time was that quote by Aristotle, where he says, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." So we are what we repeatedly do. Our character is a composite of our habits. They constantly, daily express who we really are. Only if we are eternally unhappy with compromise, only if we leave no room for excuses, only when we show appropriate disdain for expedience and absolute respect for the work, only when all of us resolve to relentlessly practice these eight habits on every job and every project will we begin to prove that we are not Goliath, but a company of Davids. Never the end. And that is the end of this excellent little book. For the full story, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend buying a copy. I'd buy it, keep it close, keep it on your desk, keep it on your nightstand, read, re-read, constantly refer to it. And it'd probably be a good idea as you're building your own company culture to write a little book like this for everybody inside your company as well. So if you wanna buy the book and support the podcast at the same time, I will leave a link down below. The link is available in the show notes on your podcast player and at founderspodcast.com. That is 343 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon. Real quick before you go, if you have access to Founder's Notes already, you now have a new feature waiting for you. It is my favorite feature by far. It is out of private beta and now in public beta, so every single person that has access to Founder's Notes already has access to what I am calling Sage. I went through a bunch of different names, but someone who's actually in the private beta gave me the name. Uh, he thought it w- it was a better description of what I actually am building, uh, because he says Sage has two main definitions. The noun is a profoundly wise person. This refers to someone with a deep understanding of life, accumulated knowledge, and sound judgment. They are often looked to for guidance and advice. And then the adjective is a wi- is somebody that's wise, discerning, or prudent. This describes someone who shows good judgment and makes well-considered decisions. Another person said I should call it Charlie after Charlie Munger, which is hilarious because that is exactly who I think of when I hear the word sage. In fact, when you, when you log in, you'll see that Charlie is the icon for the Sage feature. And as you might already know, I was able to have dinner with Charlie Munger, and for three hours, I could ask him any question that I could imagine, and he answered using his 99 years of life and business experience. And a lot of his answers were based on the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of biographies of great people that he read. And Sage is like that. It automatically searches all of my highlights for every book that I've read for the podcast. It searches every note that I've made on any book that I've read for the podcast, and it searches every single transcript for all the episodes, which means that Sage searches every word that I've ever uttered on the podcast to answer your question. So to review this really quickly, if you sign up for Founder's Notes, which is the best way to support the podcast, you get access to all my notes and highlights for every book, all the transcripts for every episode. You can search all notes, highlights, and transcript by keyword. That gives you the ability to see how all of history's greatest entrepreneurs thought about s- the same topic, like hiring, patience, obsession, monopoly, moat, incentives, frugality. Those are just some recent examples that I've searched for myself. But you can also read all my notes and highlights by book if you choose so. You can also read all my notes and highlights on the highlight feed. Don't worry about remembering all this. You'll get a welcome email after you sign up with all the ways that you can use Founder's Notes. But the highlight feed is like a smart Twitter feed. So instead of the random ramblings of these crazy people online, this feed is actually a constant stream of ideas and thoughts from history's greatest founders, and it's presented to you in a random order. I use this feature to remind myself of the, and review, like, the past lessons that you and I have talked about on the podcast, but also to prompt new thoughts. It's like history's greatest founders talking directly to you every single day. I've talked to multiple people that have replaced, like, reading the news in the morning. Instead, they're just reading the highlights feed, and they like it a lot better. And now, in addition to all that, you can have Sage read all the notes and highlights and transcripts for you and give you ideas that you can use in your work based on everything that I've ever covered on the podcast. I will leave a list of some suggested questions that I and other people that have been in the private data have been using, or private beta rather, have been using, and ones that produced excellent results. Over time, I'm gonna collect the best prompts and questions, so there'll be a section where you don't even have to type in your own question. You can just review what other people are asking, which I have found very helpful 'cause people have been emailing them to me. And then the main point that I'm trying to get across to you is what I'm trying to build here is, like, the North Star is over time, I want Founder's Notes to be this ever-increasing, giant, valuable curriculum and tool that you can use your entire career with the goal of condensing and clarifying the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. You can't use the ideas that you learn on the podcast if you don't remember them, and I think Founder's Notes help you, helps you remember them. So you can subscribe on an annual basis if you choose, or you can do a one-time option, which means you get every note, highlight, transcript I have ever done and every note, highlight, and transcript I will ever do, plus any new feature that I add. As I add more notes, highlights, features, the price will go up, so make sure you sign up now. And you can do that by going to foundersnotes.com. That is founders with an S, just like the podcast. So it's foundersnotes.com. Foundersnotes.com. Thank you very much for your support. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Episode duration: 32:00