15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders - David Senra

1. 0:00 – 13:02

   Persevering Through Pain

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Did you hear me say, when I was asked, "Who is the podcaster's podcaster?" The underground one that all of us listen to? It was you.

   2. DSDavid Senra0:09

      Yes. I almost clipped it and then posted it. I appreciate it. I watch all your Q&As. I love them.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:13

      Thank you. Yeah, dude, I, uh-

   4. DSDavid Senra0:14

      I would love a weekly Q&A from you. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson0:17

      (laughs) Oh, God. I, I don't know if the internet's ready for that. There'll be a new one coming up soon. Anyway, today, I want to go through a bunch of lessons. You spend your entire time studying history's greatest founders, greatest leaders, thinkers, and I wanted to go through some broad buckets of lessons that you've taken away from them. Uh, so we're gonna do 15 today.

   6. DSDavid Senra0:36

      Okay.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:36

      First one, "Excellence is the capacity to take pain. Persevering through pain is mandatory." Why?

   8. DSDavid Senra0:44

      That is probably my all-time favorite maxim from studying all of these history's greatest entrepreneurs. It actually comes from the founder of Four Seasons, this guy named Izzy Sharp. And he... Sometimes, like, you're reading a book or you're listening to a podcast, or sometimes it is even, like, a, a music lyric that it just, the one sentence can stay in your brain forever. I haven't read that book in probably five years. And he's describing how difficult it was. Like, he had no experience in the hotel industry when he founds Four Seasons, and yet his goal was like, "I'm gonna make a collection of the greatest hotels in the world." And he didn't... Kinda disregarded the fact that, "I've never made a hotel before. I don't have any money. I don't have resources. I don't have contacts." So the whole book, the audio- autobiography, which I think he wrote when he was close to 80 years old, is now him recounting this for the, for the reader. And there's just so many times where he's just like, he hit a, uh, like there's a problem he can't figure out how to solve, uh, you know, problems with partners, with contractors, with financing, uh, all kinds of like, you know, basically unresolved issues. And he's laying up late at night, and there's interviews with his wife, which is fantastic 'cause they were married through this haultang- uh, this whole time. They're still married to this day. And she recounts where, like, she would wake up at like 2:00 in the morning, and he's just sitting there right, wide awake, hands behind his head, looking up at the, at the ceiling, just like can't sleep, depressed, agonizing over this r- like, this relentless pursuit of a goal.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:07

      Mm-hmm.

   10. DSDavid Senra2:07

       And so he's the one that said that, that coined the term, you know, "Excellence is the capacity to take pain." I was like, that, and I think by that point I had read like 180 biographies and autobiographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, was like, "That's exactly what I see in every single book." Um, there's never a book, there's not a, a... No, no life story or no book starts with, "Hey, uh, this guy had an idea. Uh, he did the idea. Everything went well."

   11. CWChris Williamson2:28

       (laughs)

   12. DSDavid Senra2:28

       "End of story." It is all like, "Hey, I have this idea. I wanna do something," and there's just one problem, one obstacle, one... And it's, and it's, one, uh, like, well, essentially, uh, emotional and mental and, in some cases, physical pain to, like, persevere and push through to, 'til they can get to the other side and actually achieve what they're trying to achieve.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:47

       Why, why is that the ca- Is it just that achieving anything that is excellent requires you to negotiate with a world that's gonna push up against you, and that means that you're going to end up feeling discomfort? Therefore, the capacity to deal with pain is important?

   14. DSDavid Senra3:01

       Yeah. There- there's no such thing as like a- an important goal or an audacious goal that comes easily. I think, um, Jeff Bezos has his own way of saying this, and, um, there's this great book called, uh, Invent and Wander, and it's the collected writings of Jeff Bezos. So they take his shareholder letters and they take transcripts of his speeches, and you really get to understand how he was thinking as he was building Amazon and all the stuff that he's learned. And his whole thing was, you know, "I have unrelenting, uncompromising, uh, standards for excellence in the talent of the people around me. And if you're coming to work at Amazon, like you, I'm not gonna bend. You are going to raise to, to my expectations, my standards. It is not easy to work here. I'm gonna tell you that up front, because we're trying to do something that we can tell our grandkids about, that we can be proud to say-"

   15. CWChris Williamson3:42

       Mm-hmm.

   16. DSDavid Senra3:42

       "...'This is what Granddad did. This is how I spent my life.'" And he says, he's like, "Things s- uh, things that you can tell your grandkids about are not meant to be easy."

   17. CWChris Williamson3:50

       Mm. There's a, a quote from Tim Cook at Apple where he says, um, "People say if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I found that to be a total crock of shit."

   18. DSDavid Senra4:00

       (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson4:01

       Uh, w- "At Apple, you will work harder than you ever have before, but the tools will feel light in your hands."

   20. DSDavid Senra4:08

       I- I'm surprised Tim said that, because if you go back and... S- Steve Jobs is like obviously what... I consider him probably the greatest entrepreneur of all time, just for the- his- his- he's got a very unique story. Like there's onl- there's really no other founder that, if you think about like the story of Steve Jobs, he founded Apple twice, and the second time he was alone. Um, and then he winds up coming back, you know, after 12 to 13 years in, in the wilderness, and he comes back and then goes on the greatest run that we've ever seen. Created, creates, you know, the most successful consumer, uh, product of all time. Gets... sets the foundation for the multi-trillion dollar market cap that Apple has today. And Steve's take on this was, "The reason that you have to love what you do is because it's so hard and so painful that if you don't, you'll quit."

   21. CWChris Williamson4:48

       Mm-hmm.

   22. DSDavid Senra4:48

       And it's sane. And he goes, "Why do people quit?" Because it's sane. It is, that's the sane thing to do. It's the misfits, the rebels, you know, uh, the, the people that actually are obsessed with what they're doing that are able to persevere. He also has this other quote that he feels what separates the success, half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is just pure perseverance.

   23. CWChris Williamson5:08

       Mm-hmm.

   24. DSDavid Senra5:08

       In other... All these, all these ideas are all related, like excellence is the pr- capacity to take pain. You should love what you do because if you love what you do, you'll keep doing it through the pain.

   25. CWChris Williamson5:17

       Mm-hmm. Did you ever hear me, uh, tell Rogan about the Region Beta Paradox?

   26. DSDavid Senra5:21

       Oh.

   27. CWChris Williamson5:21

       That thing? So it's just, uh, an idea about where you get stuck in, comfortably numb in the middle. Things aren't too bad, they're not that good, but because they're not that bad, you don't have the motivation to go make them better. It's like a well, well-known psychological, uh, state. And I, I came up with a colliery of, colliery of it, which is the reverse Region Beta Paradox, being in an aggressively terrible working cadence or environment, but having such a tolerance for discomfort that you can endure it for a lifetime. Lower resilience, less stubborn people would snap and have to find a way to change, but not you. You're the David Goggins of working hard. Who's going to tr- carry the workload? You are, forever.

   28. DSDavid Senra5:58

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson5:58

       And, uh, that, that thing is, um, it's a blessing and a curse because it allows people to maybe continue moving when they actually should...... pivot to something else.

   30. DSDavid Senra6:08

       Yeah.
2. 13:02 – 29:00

   Problems Are Opportunities

   1. CWChris Williamson13:02

      "Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. Business is problems. The best companies are just effective problem-solving machines."

   2. DSDavid Senra13:10

      That line. So the closest, uh, now I- I, uh, the closest, like, historical equivalent to Elon, and, uh, this is, like, still a bit of a stretch, so you have to bear with me, there's a guy named Henry Kaiser, okay? Henry Kaiser founded, like, over 100 different companies. Uh, he built the Hoover Dam. In his day, around World War II, he was a- almost as famous in his day as Elon was today. I think now Elon's, like, on a different level. Um, you know, multiple billion-dollar companies. He built, uh, ships, and he just, like, uh, helped, uh, the allies win, uh, World War II. But that's his line, where he was just, like Elon, just default optimistic. Like, every day, like, "I'm gonna ... I know I wake up every day, there's gonna be problems. That's fine. That's what I want, because problems," he, that's his line, "Problems are just opportunities in work clothes." So when his, like, employees would- would, you know, bitch and complain about, "Oh my God, this- this thing failed," or, "This order fell through," or, "We can't find a guy for this," he's like, "Good. Problems are just opportunities in work clothes." So you, the default state, I think, for humans is, like, to complain, "Oh, woe is me. Here's another problem." Entrepreneurs, what they realize is, like, oh, the problem are actually ... if I can solve that problem, any problem you solve for a person could be a business.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:13

      Mm-hmm.

   4. DSDavid Senra14:13

      And so, um, the- that, that second line where it says, like, you know, "Business is problems," that's something that's repeated over and over again. But then when you, when you think about it, that second line is something I came up with, where it's just like, oh, well, if business is problems, that means the most successful companies are just effective problem-solving machines, because they're con- the- the perpetuation of their existence is the fact that they're, you know, that they're solving problems for other people, and they're doing so effectively.

   5. CWChris Williamson14:36

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DSDavid Senra14:36

      And so if you want to build wealth and you want to be a successful company, it's like, find a problem, and then solve it better than anybody else.

   7. CWChris Williamson14:44

      It's the reason that people at the top get paid more, because they have more levels of input coming in. Anybody that's in the suite, the C-suite, that's good in the C-suite, uh, is basically just a very complex, high-level problem-solving algorithm.

   8. DSDavid Senra15:00

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:01

      But they can just ... The number of inputs that they're able to see and the r- the way that they can triage top-down and prioritize what the most and wait, their waiting is appropriate-

   10. DSDavid Senra15:11

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:11

       ... because of experience, uh, and maybe taste or talent or whatever, insight. Um, but yeah, I- I think you're right. I think that the best companies-

   12. DSDavid Senra15:20

       I-

   13. CWChris Williamson15:20

       ... just solve problems.

   14. DSDavid Senra15:21

       I- I was thinking about this yesterday, because, um, you know, (sighs) we talked, we- we, you know, we talk all the time, and one thing that you notice is, like, I'm kind of, like, oblivious to what's going on online. Like, I'm just reading books and ... yes.

   15. CWChris Williamson15:32

       Enviously, yeah.

   16. DSDavid Senra15:34

       And, you know, talking to podcasters and entrepreneurs. It's like, oh, that's what my entire life, outside of spending time with my family. And I was struck and, like, kind of shocked, because I saw a headline where, uh, there was a bunch of protesters that set up a guillotine outside of Jeff Bezos' Washington, DC house. This was, like, a year or two ago or something like that. An- an actual guillotine. And, you know, like, kill the rich or eat the rich. And I looked at that, and I was dumbfounded, because I'm like, Jeff Bezos made a magic button that I could press and any, I pre- if I want something to appear in my house in a day or two, I just press the button, and Jeff hides all that operational complexity.

   17. CWChris Williamson16:10

       Mm-hmm.

   18. DSDavid Senra16:10

       Right? Like, do you understand how difficult that was to do? And this, you know, talentless hack shows up at his house with a guillotine, like, "Give me your money." Like, what did you do? Like, did you make a magic button? Jeff deserves that money. And that doesn't even talk about all the other businesses. The fact that he owns one of the largest cloud computing business, the fact that h- y- the hardware businesses he has, the invention of the Kindle, uh, his advertising business. They probably have more multi- 10, 10 billion-plus businesses in th- you know, uncorrelated 10 billion-plus businesses in- inside of Amazon than any other business on the planet. Like, you think you could have done that? Like, that's insane. He deserves that money.

   19. CWChris Williamson16:42

       Mm-hmm.

   20. DSDavid Senra16:43

       And then the other thing I was thinking about too, uh, in response to this, 'cause I've done probably, like, I don't know, like, eight podcasts on Jeff. I- I think he's incredible. Um, and so I read everything about him. And I'm like, this is kind of hypocritical. Like, you're protesting now because, you know, he's got a m- a trillion or $2 trillion market cap, right? But there was no protest in front of his house in the, after the dot-com bust when the stock goes from $180 to six. You could have bought a share of Amazon stock at that price, at that time, for $5.96. You weren't out in front of his house then. You weren't ... And when he had a mass exodi- exodus of employees, you weren't saying anything about that.

   21. CWChris Williamson17:15

       Mm-hmm.

   22. DSDavid Senra17:15

       You waited till ... It's not ... There- there's a line that, um, that, again, we talk about the fact that it's just a single line. Like, I read all the time, you know, you're not gonna read everything, you're not gonna remember everything in an entire book.

   23. CWChris Williamson17:25

       Mm-hmm.

   24. DSDavid Senra17:25

       Maybe 500 of each book. I'll remember a story-

   25. CWChris Williamson17:27

       Mm-hmm.

   26. DSDavid Senra17:27

       ... a line.

   27. CWChris Williamson17:28

       Mm-hmm.

   28. DSDavid Senra17:28

       Right? And there's a line that I heard Charlie Munger say one time, which he was actually quoting Warren Buffett, and he says, "It's not that gree- it's not ... Greed doesn't run the world. Envy. Envy runs the world." And he's-

   29. CWChris Williamson17:39

       Remember that line?

   30. DSDavid Senra17:39

       Yeah. His whole point is, like, cure yourself of envy. I was like, dude, you're not outside of Jeff Bezos' house because you're trying to fix the broken word, world. You're envious.
3. 29:00 – 33:51

   The Greatest Entrepreneurs Learn From History

   1. DSDavid Senra29:00

   2. CWChris Williamson29:00

      Uh, number three. There's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book. History's greatest entrepreneurs all learned from history's greatest entrepreneurs.

   3. DSDavid Senra29:09

      So, that is a, uh, direct quote from Poor Charlie's Almanack, and it is literally true. Um, in that case, uh, there's, there's this guy named Henry Singleton that I didn't know... I guess I should back up and talk about s- part of my process, which I think is, is helpful outside of just making a podcast. I really believe, like, anybody you admire, whatever field, it could be a director, it could be an entrepreneur, it could be an athlete, read, find a book about them and read about their life. Like, I am an evangelist for reading biographies. I think it's the, one of the highest value activities that you could have. Outside spending time with your health, with your friends and family, I really think people should make it a habit. And so what I, what I do is, like, h- Ch- I was, I be- I think Charlie Munger is the wisest person I've ever come across. Uh, he's just, like, a hero of mine. I got a chance to meet him. I got to go to his house. It was incredible. But what I'll do is, like, I'll read every single book I can find about somebody I, um, admire, and then I usually find other books about them by going through the bibliography. And, like, books are made out of books. So, you, you'll, anybody usually has one by the-

   4. CWChris Williamson30:05

      Infinite regress of people referring other people.

   5. DSDavid Senra30:07

      Yes. And then not only... So, that's not only how you find books to... Y- uh, like hard-to-find books or books that other people are r- reading. But inevitably, in that book, they all studied... History's greatest entrepreneurs all studied history's greatest entrepreneurs, so they will talk about the people that influenced them. And so I'm doing this, going through the same process I just described to you for Munger and Buffett, and they keep bringing up this guy named Henry Singleton. I was like, "Who the hell is Henry Singleton? I've never heard of Henry Singleton." And they say wild stuff, like, "Henry Singleton's the smart..." Charlie Munger says, "Henry Singleton is the single smartest person I've ever met," that Singleton is smarter than Buffett. Uh...Buffett says that it's a crime that business schools don't study him, that if you took the- the- the- the top 100 business school students and compared their record for Singleton, he'd blow them out of the water. I'm like, "I have to read about this guy." So then you start, um... There's this book called The Outsiders, and I pick it up, I start reading about it, and I'm like, "Oh, my God. The ideas that I thought were Buffett and Munger's were Singleton." They just applied it to building Berkshire. And then you go and start then... What I do, I go and read everything about Singleton. And then Singleton says, "Hey, uh, there's this book that changed the trajectory of..." He built this conglomerate called Teledyne. And he goes, "There's a book that changed the trajectory of Teledyne." I was reading Alfred Sloan, the- the CEO of GM's book, and he says, if, as you're building a business, you need access to a financial institution. So I went out and bought either a bank or an insurance company," I forgot which one he did. He's like, "And that solved..." Like, that- that made- that helped Teledyne not only to use the money to invest and keep buying more companies to increase as conglomerate, but literally made billions of dollars from an idea that was in a $30 history book. And you see this over and over again. And that's another thing, where it's... when I say, like, all of history's greatest entrepreneurs study all of hi- uh, study history's greatest entrepreneurs, th- that's really important. You're not... What they're doing is, they're not trying to copy the what, they're trying to copy the how. They're not trying to build another Teledyne, they're building their version of their buil- business, what they were interested in. And, um, the greatest example of this is you go back, and all the great entrepreneurs can- can place their work in historical context. So when Steve Jobs is developing the Macintosh, he goes and studies what did Alexander Graham Bell, how did he market the telephone? Because I feel I just made the telephone of my generation.

   6. CWChris Williamson32:19

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DSDavid Senra32:19

      And so they're like, oh, there's ideas around marketing this other invention 100 years before. I'm... My invention that still work to this day. And so that's what I mean. It's like, oh, these ideas, there's 30... there's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book.

   8. CWChris Williamson32:31

      What about that line between SpaceX and NASA?

   9. DSDavid Senra32:35

      Oh, so this is nuts. So this is, this was in that book Liftoff, which is really... Again, I highly recommend that book, 'cause you can, again, read it in a weekend. Some of these books... You know, I don't read... People are like, "Oh, you must read fast." No, I read pretty damn slow, because I'm taking notes, I'm, like, doing arts and crafts over here.

   10. CWChris Williamson32:48

       (laughs)

   11. DSDavid Senra32:51

       I got... (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson32:51

       (laughs)

   13. DSDavid Senra32:52

       I got scissors, a ruler, a pen. I got Post-it Notes. Like, it takes a long time, but you can read that book in a weekend. Um, and what they realize is like, hey, uh, NASA has... because it's a, uh, government-run agency, they documented all of their experiments, all of their, all of their- their- their hypothesis, all their... uh, everything in papers. And they're read-... You could just download them and read them. Nobody read them, so they wind up cr-... They s-... I think they said they, like, cribbed NASA's notes, and they got a couple billion dollars of value, uh, from, like... f- for ideas in the early days of SpaceX. And then you could also do that, um... There's another line in the book that Elon, um, talks about, where this reporter goes. He's flying on Elon's, Elon's jet after a f- a failed, uh... I think it's, like, the second failed rocket. And Elon's brother's on the jet, and he's, like, watching TV or playing video games, and Elon's in the corner reading biographies of all the rocket engineers. Because, again, he's like, "I wanna d-... I wanna know what they know so I can, one, take ide- the good ideas and avoid the bad ones." And so this just happens over and over and over again.

4. 33:51 – 48:10

   The Value of Trusted Networks

   1. DSDavid Senra33:51

   2. CWChris Williamson33:51

      Relationships run the world. Trusted personal networks may be the most valuable asset in the world.

   3. DSDavid Senra33:57

      Okay, so this- this- this might be the most important idea that I've actually internalized and seen play out in the last, like, year of my life. Um, I'm gonna go to... There's... I had the ability to- to meet Charlie Munger, I just met, and... or went to his house, had dinner with him. Uh, the night started out in his library, which was really cool for me, because, you know, I- I love reading. And I got to see... um, I got to see not only, like, what was in his library, but I also got to see, like... I could read, uh, biographies the rest of my life, and, like, I'll never have what he has. Um, and what I mean by that is... He's sitting in front of his bookshelf, right? And I get there. And first of all, he's like my hero, when I mean that. So it... I... First of all, I'm sitting there, and, you know, the... I'm there with two other of my entrepreneur friends, and you just start having conversation. They had met him before. And I'm in shock. I'm just staring at him, 'cause I'm like, "That- that's Charlie Munger."

   4. CWChris Williamson34:55

      Mm-hmm.

   5. DSDavid Senra34:55

      Like, I watch all the AGM videos. Like, that's... I still watch his speeches. Like, that's him, he's just sitting there. And you know he's looking at you because he- his eyes were really degenerated, so, like, he has like the bifocals. But it's not just like he looks at you like this. He- he'll look, and then he'll go like this, 'cause he's gotta look through the bottom.

   6. CWChris Williamson35:10

      Yeah.

   7. DSDavid Senra35:10

      And he's making eye contact with me, and I'm looking. And for 10 minutes, we're just, like, frozen. And then my friend Andrew is like, "Hey," like, "get in here." Started asking him-

   8. CWChris Williamson35:16

      (laughs) Yeah.

   9. DSDavid Senra35:18

      ... "You're gonna waste this."

   10. CWChris Williamson35:19

       Yeah.

   11. DSDavid Senra35:19

       And so what I do, I was like, "I don't know what to say." Like, I had all these notes. I had made all these things on my Apple Notes on my phone. Never looked at my phone i- once in three hours. And so immediately, I just started looking at his shelf behind him, and I started noticing all the books, 'cause again, I find people I admire, and then if they say, "Hey, I like this book," I go and read it. So I start asking him questions about all these books. And what I mean, that I'll never have what he has. I have to, like, reread stuff. I have to, like, study. I have to, like, practice. Immediately, you ask him about a book he hasn't read in 25 years, he could tell you what the- what the company does, what their revenue was, what... who sold... who- w- whose partners, who sold it. Like, he was a- a legit genius. Like, absolutely. I don't have... Whatever brain he has... And anybody at 99 is gonna have some level of cognitive decline, right? You have to... Some levels-

   12. CWChris Williamson36:01

       Ima- imagine him at 35.

   13. DSDavid Senra36:02

       He would destroy me. He would just like... A- a- and 55, any of that-

   14. CWChris Williamson36:05

       Yeah.

   15. DSDavid Senra36:05

       ... he would destroy me. So, relationships run the world is one of the lessons that he taught us. 'Cause you know, he- he knew he was not gonna live to... He knew he didn't have, uh, that much longer, and so he prioritized meeting with other young, ambitious, like, entrepreneurial kind of people. And his whole thing was, um... We t- we talked a lot about Ben Franklin because he's got a- a bust. He- he, uh... Like, he commissions busts of people he admires, so he has Lee Kuan Yew and Ben Franklin. And he's got every biography I've ever seen of Ben Franklin. And his whole thing, he's like, "One of the things I learned from Ben Franklin is that no matter your age, go out and seek talented people. If they're a peer group, that's fine, but if they're younger... And build a relationship with them." He talked about how Ben Franklin did that with, uh, young George Washington. Ben Franklin's, like, 48 years old when he...... cold DMs (laughs) about the day-

   16. CWChris Williamson36:48

       Slides in.

   17. DSDavid Senra36:48

       ... George, George Washington, who's 21, right? And they build a relationship, and they have a relationship with their, their, uh, their whole life. But- and then he was describing that. I was like, "That sounds like what you did." He's like, "That's exactly what I did." He's like, "I met Buffett. I was 35, Buffett was 28. And we built a seamless web of deserved trust." He goes, "Everybody knows about us, but there was all these other guys around us that were similar age and similar interests-"

   18. CWChris Williamson37:11

       Mm.

   19. DSDavid Senra37:11

       "... and we just did deals, uh, forever." And most of them had passed on, you know, by the, by the time I got to meet, uh, by the, by, I got to meet Munger. But relationships run the world, what you realize is, um, every, like, we think of, like, an organization. Like, let's say we need, uh, there's something, there's, there's certain, uh, organizations that are important in podcasting. Spotify being the most important one. So we think of Spotify as an organization. But is it an organization? Well, inside an organization is per- there's people, and there's people that me and you have relationship with, like Daniel Ek or people on the board or the head of podcasting. So if you need something done, right, because of the rel- personal relationship they have with you-

   20. CWChris Williamson37:47

       Mm.

   21. DSDavid Senra37:48

       ... it's a call. It's relationships run the world. And so there's another guy that I got to meet, was one of my heroes. This guy named Sam Zell. He also, uh, he was 81 years old when I met him. He, he passed away, unfortunately, about six months after I got to have lunch with him. And in his autobiography, he mentions, uh... Sam Zell's a legend. You know, one of the best en- entrepreneurs, investors. He sold, uh, his, uh, the largest real estate company, uh, in history, it was for, like, 38 billion dollars. Like, the guy just could, he fell ass-backwards into deals and deals and money. He was just phenomenal. But I got to have a, a two-hour lunch with him, and he's sitting, you know, closer than you are to me.

   22. CWChris Williamson38:20

       Mm.

   23. DSDavid Senra38:20

       I could ask him whatever I wanted. So I brought up the fact that, um, that I read... He knew I read his autobiography 'cause the way I met him is he got into podcasts, and he heard the podcast I did on his autobiography.

   24. CWChris Williamson38:31

       Mm-hmm.

   25. DSDavid Senra38:32

       And he starts listening to a bunch, and he goes, "Hey, can I meet this guy?" And so I get a message like, "Sam Zell wants to meet you." I thought it was, like, fake. I was like, yeah, he just doesn't want to meet... This is ridiculous. So I go, "Sam, um, I bought the book that you talked about that changed..." Go back to There's Ideas Worth 30... I forgot about this. There's Ideas Worth Billions and a $30 Horseshoe Book. When Sam, Sam Zell was making millions of dollars a year when he was in law school. He was an entrepreneur for 61 years and one of the best to ever do it. And he picked up a book that changed his life when he was in law school. It's this, the autobiography is a guy named William Zeckendorf. William Zeckendorf is one of the greatest real estate developers to ever live. In that book, he has this idea he calls the Hawaiian Technique, right? And it works in real estate and what, uh, and it worked in real estate, um, when Sam Zell used it, but he al- uh, Sam Zell also realized it works in business, buying private businesses, where he says, like, there's components of a building that, you know, the, the land underneath, you can piece it apart. Like, the land, uh, is valuable, is high h- will be highly, highly valuable to a certain party. You can sell it to the highest bidder there. And then maybe the leases, that somebody else prioritizes that. So s- so break up the, the components of the business and sell it to the highest bidder. And the sum of the parts, like, that'll make, that's how you make more money, right? And s- so Sam used that idea, made billions of dollars. He also used it in private business. But I tell Sam, I go, "Sam, I bought Zeckendorf's book." He's like, "Did you read it?" And I go, "Not yet." And Sam had this, he was famous for this gravelly voice. He goes, "Read it." I was like, "Okay." Sam Zell tells me to read the book, I immediately read the book. In that book is where it crystallized for me that relationships run the world. Zeckendorf, you know, very wealthy, winds up losing all his money. But at the time, very wealthy. And didn't, wasn't born wealthy. So, like, very similar to me and you, or with- with our background, right? We don't understand any of this stuff. So what he realizes as he climbs through society and he's in New York and he gets more successful and he meets more people and he gets richer, what he goes, "Hey, uh, you're a normal dude, you know, how we grew up. Uh, you're at the base of the mountain. You can s- you might be able to see that peak, right? But what you don't see, because you're not climbing the mountain, is when you get to the other, wh- as you get closer to the peak, other peaks starting to appear. And then..." So these are all very influential, rich, very powerful people. And then what you realize is all these mountain peaks are actually connected by little pathway- pathways. And you don't have access to those pathways unless you've climbed the mountain. And he goes, "And then if I need something-"

   26. CWChris Williamson40:47

       Mm-hmm.

   27. DSDavid Senra40:47

       "... from a Howard Hughes or a Jay Pritzker family," which is, you know, multibillion dollar Chicago family, or you know, the, the mayor of New York City 'cause I'm a developer, well, guess what? I'm on a peak too. There's a path right here. Relationships run the world. And so the advice that they both gave me is, like, you need to develop seamless webs that deserve trust. Go ahead.

   28. CWChris Williamson41:06

       Just that there's an additional element in there which suggests you need to also be able to display value in some way. You need to be able to have... Yes, you can build a relationship with somebody, but the analogy of the peak suggests to me that you stand alone atop a mountain of your own.

   29. DSDavid Senra41:22

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson41:23

       You have done a thing which enables you, it unlocks that.
5. 48:10 – 57:40

   Should You Push Your Kids to Success?

   1. CWChris Williamson48:10

      You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. A desire to not end up like your father is a powerful source of extreme drive.

   2. DSDavid Senra48:20

      So again, this, that line comes from a Francis Ford Coppola biography. So the way I would say this is, like, I think... I have a very broad definition of entrepreneur, right? An entrepreneur is, like, somebody who has ideas and does them. And so I think filmmakers are entrepreneurs, I think certain athletes are entrepreneurs, I think podcasters are entrepreneurs. It's not like... It's literally somebody... You don't have a job. You have an idea, you have something you want to happen in the world, and, and you're, you build a company around it to, to be able to accomplish that. And-... that, I think it's, like, I know if I'm correct, it's like, I was, like, 242, 243 books in, and I'm going through and reading all these biographies of filmmakers, 'cause I feel like making, like, creating, uh... I think directors and entrepreneurs, like, there's just a lot of, uh, they have a lot of similarities. And that line, like, you can always understand, uh, the- the father by the story... The- the son by the story of the father, the father, the story of the father is better than the son, was literally in that book. Nnd it's because Francis Ford Coppola, right, is talking about the relationship that he had with his dad. And as somebody... I have two kids, and, you know, I have a- a daughter and a son. And I could never imagine talking to my son the way that Francis Ford Coppola's dad did. Francis Ford Coppola's dad was a musician, but he was a failed musician. And what's gonna happen if, like, you have something you wanna do in your life, and decade after decade, you're saying, "I'm a talented musician," and the world's saying, "No, you're not. (laughs) We're not interested in what you're offering, sir." You become a... Most people, you know, the we- I would consider the weaker people become bitter, right?

   3. CWChris Williamson49:50

      Mm-hmm.

   4. DSDavid Senra49:50

      And so it's not them. "I'm not the problem, it's the world that's the problem." No, it's always you. You have to have extreme ownership, you know? And so, he would say stuff to his son, like, Francis, when they were growing up and obviously not a lot of money, uh, "There- there can only be one genius in the family, and that's me. So it can't be you." And, like, he would try to, like, basically, you know, pull his son down. I want my son to, like... I would ne- Like, I want him to do whatever he wants with his life.

   5. CWChris Williamson50:12

      Eclipse all of-

   6. DSDavid Senra50:13

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson50:13

      ... your accomplishments.

   8. DSDavid Senra50:14

      What... Yeah, I- I think entre- some entrepreneurs, some driven people make the mistake of, like, "Oh, you're driven, and so I'm gonna make my kids driven." And I think you alienate them. I- Sam Walton said this the best, because if you think about how crazy Sam Walton is, like-

   9. CWChris Williamson50:25

      Mm-hmm.

   10. DSDavid Senra50:26

       ... if he didn't disperse his, um, fortune through his kids, and he did this way before the- the actual assets appreciated, you know, he created one of the world's largest fortunes. The family net worth today is, like, $220 billion. And he's saying... He's dying of cancer when he's writing his autobiography, and he says something like, "Well, I'm a fa-" In the biggest understatement of the century, he's like, "I'm a fairly overactive fellow, and I don't ex-" (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson50:48

       (laughs)

   12. DSDavid Senra50:49

       And he goes, "I don't expect my kids to be like me, so I don't push them that hard." Yes, exactly.

   13. CWChris Williamson50:53

       But think about it that way, like, it is an odd thing for you to be an outlier, for you to know that you're an outlier, for you to kind of want to bestow the benefits of outlierness on your kids. But if you're that much of an outlier, hopefully some smarts have come along with you. And if you're that smart, you'll know what regression to the mean is. And if you are way out on the tail-

   14. DSDavid Senra51:12

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson51:12

       ... of this thing, where do you think your kids are going to be? They're gonna move back toward the center. That's how it works.

   16. DSDavid Senra51:20

       Yeah, yes. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson51:21

       Right?

   18. DSDavid Senra51:22

       Yeah. I- I would ne- Like, I just want my kids to do whatever they want. Like, m- my daughter wants to... She's, sometimes she's like, "Oh, I wanna," you know, "I wanna sing, I wanna dance," whatever. I don't care what you do. You don't have to make any money. I'll- I'll take care of that. Like, don't worry about that. I want my son to just be happy. Yeah, I want them to have good habits. Like, I wouldn't ever, like, you're not gonna do drugs, you're not gonna be a loser, you know, but you don't have to, like, shoot for outside success. That's ridiculous.

   19. CWChris Williamson51:42

       Mm-hmm.

   20. DSDavid Senra51:43

       Um, and so, like, just bringing your son down. I, so I get into-

   21. CWChris Williamson51:46

       Just to inter- I need to interject.

   22. DSDavid Senra51:47

       No, go ahead.

   23. CWChris Williamson51:48

       Um, isn't it interesting, though, that the thing that gives you such a sense of contentment and meaning in the world is your pursuit of something difficult, is this insatiable, unstoppable drive to go and do this thing, and what you're trying to bestow on your kids is equanimity and peace and enoughness? Uh, if I went to you and said, "I can... I'm- I'm a super intelligent AI, and I can go in, and I can change your source code, and I can get rid of your need to do the drive. You can be as happy in a hammock as you are in a podcast studio, as you are reading a biography," I don't think that you would take that deal.

   24. DSDavid Senra52:31

       No.

   25. CWChris Williamson52:33

       So, even though my first proposal was, you know, "Don't try and expect your kids to be as much of an outlier as you are. Tails go back to the middle, they don't go further out to the tails." But on the flip side of that too, what if your kids are made of the same stuff as you, and throwing some fuel onto that furnace would be maybe the best blessing, because, "Wow, I'm made of the same stuff that Dad is, and Dad gets me, and Dad taught me how to handle and- and, uh, control this huge stallion that I've got, that I'm trying to..." You know what I mean? That we've got this sort of really interesting-

   26. DSDavid Senra53:09

       It- it-

   27. CWChris Williamson53:10

       Easy for a fucking-

   28. DSDavid Senra53:10

       If- if-

   29. CWChris Williamson53:10

       ... non-father to say here. (laughs)

   30. DSDavid Senra53:12

       No, no, no, no. No, no. I- it's a really important, like... I think this may be the impo- most important maxim. I- I say it so much, like, people... So I- I- I surveyed my audience the other day, 'cause I've been trying to break down all the lessons, 'cause, like, I think repetition is persuasive.
6. 57:40 – 1:11:59

   What Really Drives High Performers?

   1. CWChris Williamson57:41

      I wonder... You know, I've spoken to 850 people, whatever, on the show. Maybe it would double as like 750, something like that. And, uh, I would say that on average high performers are driven, 90% of them, 95% of them are driven by a sense of insufficiency, not a pu- perfectly balanced desire to enact their logos forward and be the best version of them that they can be simply for the flourishing that comes along with it. Most people don't have that.

   2. DSDavid Senra58:08

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson58:08

      Most people are trying to fill a void, they're looking for validation, they want the world to see them as useful because they've never felt like they were loved, they want someone to tell them like they're enough, so they're gonna make themselves so much more than enough that they have- they have this undeniable stack of mountain of evidence that they were the thing, not the thing that they feared that they were. And, um, I just get the sense that it is a balance between happiness and success, but given that most people try to become happy by being successful, unhappy people try to use success to achieve happiness.

   4. DSDavid Senra58:45

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson58:46

      If you can just shortcut it and go straight to happiness-

   6. DSDavid Senra58:48

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson58:48

      ... which it sounds like you're trying to teach your kids to do, and much of this is genetic in any case, it's like, "Hey, here's a roll of the dice. There's 50% of your psychological disposition." Like, good luck.

   8. DSDavid Senra58:57

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson58:57

      I hope you're ready (laughs) . Um, but yeah, if you can do what you can from a rearing perspective, you're safe, you're validated, I love you if you win and I love you if you lose, as long as you try, here's some principles that you should do that are scalable, da-da-blah blah blah. Like I- I think the success thing, especially, especially the people that listen to this podcast, the people that listen to yours, are the kinds of people that have buried themselves being that breakwater, being that circuit breaker of intergenerational trauma of one kind or another. And, uh, if that's you, if that- if you've prostrated yourself on the like domino lineage of your ancestors and you've just like, no, you've Samsoned this entire thing together.

   10. DSDavid Senra59:44

       (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson59:45

       You're holding these- he's holding these pillars up. That's you and your, you know, intergenerational problems. Uh, if you've done that, first off, bravo. Secondly, you have got the skills, you have got the gifts, you have got the insights, you have got the lessons, you have probably got the resources that your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents couldn't have even imagined existed, not only because we're in a world that offers you that opportunity and education and so on and so forth, but because you were the outlier, and that's why you listen to shows like yours and shows like this, because you are an outlier among outliers.

   12. DSDavid Senra1:00:21

       Yes.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:00:21

       Right? You can't overestimate how normal the normies are. Go out in the street, like they... I- I- I served normal people at my nightlife business, and they're fucking fantastic. They're not riven with this sense that you have that for the most part is probably pathological-

   14. DSDavid Senra1:00:38

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson1:00:38

       ... and you would be significantly better off if you didn't have. But what does it allow you to do? It allows you to push yourself into places that other people won't go. So can you take on that pain? Can you take on, like we said in the very beginning, can you take on that burden, shoulder that burden?... pass on what's good, try to hold onto the stuff that you wish didn't go, and then use the fruits of that labor, the lessons, the resources, the insights, give that and be like, "I have... It was me that did the thing. I accumulated the stuff, I passed it onto my kids, and they got most of the benefits structurally of what I did, with as few of the pathologies emotionally of what caused that to happen."

   16. DSDavid Senra1:01:24

       Yeah. I think that would be a definition of success. The definition of my success is that, like, my kids grow up happy. Like, that's... I'm, like... G- there, there is something... I, I think where you said, like, when you... I, I think you correctly identified, like, this, this source of this internal drive, and one thing that I think would surprise most people is... There's one... I think people would be surprised that a, a large source, and I think we'll go back to Francis Ford Coppola 'cause this certainly was the case for him, is like, revenge. And it's revenge for being born in an environment like that, with a father like his.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:02:06

       Yeah.

   18. DSDavid Senra1:02:07

       And so you... And how does it manifest? It-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:02:08

       Oh, revenge is so interesting.

   20. DSDavid Senra1:02:10

       It manifests, right, where his dad's like, "Oh, no, no, I'm the genius of the family. You're, you can't be..." His fierce work ethic. So w- it's obvious in the very beginning of... Francis Ford Coppola's trying to break into movies and he's one of the first... And at the ti- at the time in Hollywood there was no such thing as young directors. He's the one that broke down the door for, like, a young Steven Spielberg, a George Lucas, and all these other people, right? The idea you could have a 28-year-old fil- feature film director was unheard of back then. And so he meets a young George Lucas, he meets a Steven Spielberg, "Hey, if that guy did it, I can do it." But you, you see the 10 years of work that he put, put in before that in the book, when he's literally... He starts out as an editor, and he's literally editing 24 hours. He falls asleep. He doesn't get up from his desk. He just, "Ti- time to go... Oh, I'm editing? Time to go to sleep. I'm gonna just put my head down." He has this fierce work ethic.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:02:57

       Mm-hmm.

   22. DSDavid Senra1:02:57

       And then the revenge is, "Dad. I'm doing this, uh, movie. It's probably gonna be a success because it's the sequel to Godfather."

   23. CWChris Williamson1:03:05

       (laughs)

   24. DSDavid Senra1:03:05

       Right? He goes on... He has one of the greatest, um, directing runs ever. In one decade he does Godfather I, Godfather II, and Apocalypse Now. Like, maybe you've never seen another 10-year run like that ever, especially at such a young age. And he's like, "Dad, I'm gonna let you do the score for The Godfather II." And then his dad wins an Oscar for... The only achievement he ever does for, in music, came because his son hired him.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:03:32

       Wow.

   26. DSDavid Senra1:03:32

       Revenge. And so this idea, you, you just nailed it. I think it's 90, 95, 90 to 95% of sons d- usually trying to say, "I- I don't wanna be like my dad."

   27. CWChris Williamson1:03:44

       Yeah.

   28. DSDavid Senra1:03:44

       "I'm gonna succeed where he failed." And then there's maybe a 5 to 10% where it's like, "My dad has been my hero, I wanna be more like him and I'm gonna try to, like..."

   29. CWChris Williamson1:03:51

       I wonder whether this could totally just be availability bias because of the people that I look up to, uh, and that I surround myself with. But I get... I, I'm really hopeful for the next generation, that maybe they have more of those. Maybe that 90 to 95 actually gets closer to, sort of, you know, 70 or 80, because the proliferation of people trying to make themselves better. Like, if Founders is church for entrepreneurs, then Modern Wisdom is church for people who want to make their lives better. Like, I'm curious. I, I have the sense that I'm built for more, and I'm interested in finding out if that's true.

   30. DSDavid Senra1:04:32

       Yes.

Episode duration: 2:19:52