#190 Henry Ford and Thomas Edison

What I learned from reading The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- Ford generally accepted the responsibilities of his celebrity-he'd worked diligently to cultivate it, realizing early on that his personal fame heightened demand for Model Ts. Ford's Model T changed everything. Thanks in great part to Ford's innovative assembly line, Model Ts were mass-produced on a previously unimaginable scale. In competitors factories, it took workers several hours to assemble an individual car. At the Ford plant, a completed Model T rolled off the line every two and a half minutes. Ford continued tinkering with the manufacturing process, aggressively seeking ways to cut production expenses and Model T prices even more. The best example fostered a popular joke that you could buy any color Model T that you liked, so long as the color was black. Few realized that Ford insisted the cars come in that color because black paint dried quickest, meaning Model Ts could be whipped through the assembly line and off to dealerships at an even faster pace, saving additional time and labor related dollars. The Model T alone would have established Henry Ford as a household name, but he'd further cemented his reputation as a friend of the working man with a stunning announcement. In an era when factory line workers were lucky to earn $2 a day for their labor and toiled through ten-hour shifts six days a week, Ford pledged to pay $5 a day, and to reduce workdays to eight hours. Everyone in America was talking about it. Over the years, as Ford founded and failed with two auto manufacturing companies before succeeding with his third, he endlessly reminisced about the meeting and Edison's words of encouragement: “Young man, that's the thing. You have it. Keep at it.”Ford was a cannier businessman than his hero, much wealthier. They found themselves in complete agreement about the evils of Wall Street and the crass men there who cared only for profit and not for the public. Both were poor boys who made good. Neither had a college degree, and both were disdainful of those who believed classroom education was superior to hands-on work experience and common sense. Like Edison, Ford didn't have many friends. Ford was a prickly man and also a complicated one, burning to make the world better for humanity as a whole while not enjoying personal contact with most individuals. Ford never doubted his own beliefs and decisions, forbidding disagreement from employees and ignoring any from outsiders. Ford's hobby was work. He devoted almost every waking minute to it. When he and the inventor quickly became the closest of friends, Ford felt energized again, thanks in great part to Edison's inspiration. For all of Ford's professional life he'd had to overcome skepticism from other successful men. He had always been the outsider, the one with the crazy ideas and clumsy social graces. Edison sympathized, because in his earliest years of prominence he was criticized for some of the same traits. The inventor not only accepted Ford for the rough-edged man that he was, he recognized in him the fine qualities that offset the carmaker's obvious flaws. Henry Ford was always a man of strong opinions, and one who absolutely trusted his own instincts. He especially disdained anyone identified as an expert: "If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means, I would endow the opposition with experts. No one ever considers himself an expert if he really knows his job."When prominent, better educated men and their hired experts insisted that the future of the automobile market was limited to manufacturing expensive cars for the wealthy, Ford believed that the real potential lay in sales of a modest but dependable vehicle to the growing American middle class; there would be less profit in individual transactions, but the sheer number of sales would yield greater cumulative returns. With the Model T, Ford was proved right, and he reveled in it. Their main goal was to have a good time. But few business magnates in America had a shrewder understanding of marketing than Edison, Ford, and Firestone. If rank-and-file consumers liked what they saw and read about, as they surely would, then sales of cars and light bulbs and phonographs and tires would directly benefit, too. Ford shocked America by resigning as company president. He was going to start an entirely new automobile manufacturing enterprise. Ford Motor Company stockholders assumed the threat was real, and within weeks agreed to sell Ford their shares at a whopping $12,500 a share. (James Couzens, who knew Ford best, held out and received $13,000 for each of his.) Though Ford had to borrow $60 million of the near $106 million total cost, he was still glad to do it. It had been an elaborate bluff, but he was now in complete control of Ford Motor Company. Ford received thousands of letters with the general message that if he were an anarchist, then America needed more of them. Ford was the son of a Michigan farmer, and like most rural Americans of the time his formal education was limited to a few years in local schools and teachers who themselves had often not graduated high school. Then he had to leave school to make a living. Like Ford, many of his countrymen read only with difficulty, if at all. Their understanding of American history was limited. They, too, might not remember the exact date of the American Revolution, but they knew that Henry Ford introduced the $5 workday and a car that ordinary people could afford. They identified with Ford so strongly that newspaper attacks on him were taken as insults directed at them. They were shocked to receive shipments of Model Ts that they hadn't ordered. The edict on these cars was the same-Ford Motor Company must be paid for them. Refusal would terminate the dealer-company relationship. If they refused to accept these additional Model Ts and were fired by Ford, they could be ruined. Or, as the parent company suggested, they could accept the cars, if necessary get loans from their own banks to pay Ford for them, and then aggressively keep trying to sell Model Ts and hang on until the national economic crisis was over. The dealers had little choice but to accept. That provided Ford with enough money to meet his immediate corporate debts-the dealers had to risk wrath from their banks instead. She never complained when Ford spent most of his off-the-job hours trying to build a combustion engine in their kitchen. Clara encouraged Ford to pursue his dream of creating "a car for the great multitudes," remaining supportive when his first two companies failed, encouraging him during the difficult first years of Ford Motor Company, his third. Ford fixated on even the smallest details. Patience was never Ford's strength. Ford had no interest in laurel-resting. Ford’s cars were built to last. Never flashy, in every way efficient, always dependable, much like the man whose company assembled them. And, just as Ford never saw any reason to change himself, he felt no pressure to change the Model T. Ford's stubbornness gave competitors the opening they needed. When Alfred Sloan took over General Motors in 1923, the new boss emphasized a marketing plan based on Americans wanting not just transportation, but selection. Enough people now owned cars so that ownership itself was no longer special. What was going to matter soon was driving a car that reflected the personality, the specialness, of the individual owner. As individuals, Edison, Ford, and Firestone created the means for the "great multitudes" to enjoy leisure entertainment far beyond what was previously imagined. As the Vagabonds, their summer car and camping trips exemplified what they had helped make possible: See what we're doing? You çan do it, too. By their example, the Vagabonds encouraged countless ordinary Americans to pursue their own dreams. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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• 0:00David Senra?

  Before Edison left, he had a suggestion. The best part of the California trip had been the drive from Los Angeles to San Diego, free from any demands but their own whims. While Edison didn't enjoy public appearances, he did savor time spent with friends away from the crushing daily concerns at work. Surely Ford and Firestone felt the same. Why not embark on future car trips, picking a general area and route, and then going along as they pleased? They could camp. Perhaps John Burroughs would come along and point out all sorts of interesting plant life and birds, as had been the plan in 1914 during the aborted visit to the Everglades. Henry Ford was immediately in favor.

• 0:44David Senra?

  And besides recreation, the trips would suit business purposes, too. The three men were pragmatic enough to realize that they couldn't go anywhere, particularly as a group, without attracting constant notice. Their California adventures had just proven that newspapers couldn't get enough of Edison's and Ford's adventures. Everywhere else in the country, reporters would vie for an opportunity to write about local visits, and thanks to the recent development of wire services, their stories would appear in newspapers all over the US. Edison and Ford and Firestone gave themselves a nickname. They would be the Vagabonds, annually joining much of the rest of America, exploring the country by car.

• 1:26David Senra?

  What better way for such rich, famous men to demonstrate their kinship with ordinary Americans? We are really just like you. Their main goal was to have a good time, but few business magnates in America had a shrewder understanding of marketing than Edison, Ford, and Firestone. If rank-and-file consumers liked what they saw and read about, as they surely would, then sales of cars, and light bulbs, and phonographs, and tires would directly benefit, too.

• 1:58David Senra?

  All right, so that excerpt is explaining the why behind the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Vagabonds, the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's 10-year road trip. And it was written by Jeff Guinn. And real quick, just before I jump back into the book, sometimes I have ideas about the podcast or new things I'm doing. And anytime that pops up, I'm just going to put them at the end of any particular episode. So at the end, at the very end of this podcast, there's just some new updates and ideas I have. So if you're interested, make sure you can listen to that at the very end. Let me go ahead and jump into the beginning of the book. Really, a way to think about, I would say, the author was just talking about how shrewd a marketer Ford, Edison, and Firestone were.

• 2:40David Senra?

  And I think Ford's probably the greatest of all marketers out of the three of them. And you can really think of Henry Ford as the original influencer. He would definitely do very well with social media. And so this is a little bit about that. It says Ford generally accepted the responsibilities of his celebrity. He worked diligently to cultivate it, realizing early on that his personal fame heightened demand for Model Ts. Most summers for a decade, Henry Ford set out on auto trips, visiting remote towns and small communities. And you can think of these trips, which is what the entire book is about, not only as vacation, they get to hang out with friends they don't get to normally see because everybody's

• 3:20David Senra?

  busy, but it is primarily, the reading of the book is, I think, the primary reason, more so than all that, was the fact that it gave them publicity for their respective businesses. But particularly with Henry Ford, it shows what you can do with my product. Hey, look, here's another reason you want to buy it, in addition to the free publicity. So it says, "On every trip, Ford was accompanied by friends, sometimes other business magnates or else government officials," including, I think, two presidents, if I'm not mistaken, or one president, and then they met another one. "High-ranking Ford staff members," and "High-ranking Ford staff members." "His road companions always included the tire tycoon Harvey Firestone and the much-beloved inventor Thomas Edison.

• 4:03David Senra?

  Edison was the only living American whose fame rivaled Ford's own."

• 4:09David Senra?

  So both Ford and Edison are obviously extremely famous and well-known independently. They get together, of course, the press and the general public, and we're curious of what they're going, what they're up to. And that's the, so this book is, it goes in sequential order from 1914 to 1924, when the trips end. Now, throughout the book, they talk about, obviously, the trips they're taking, but then the author has a bunch of digressions and these little stories that give us insights into the personality and business, like, what's going on in their businesses between Firestone, Ford, and Edison. And that's most of what I'm going to focus on today. It's most of what I personally found interesting. And this is about Henry Ford's one idea. And when I got to this section, it made me think of a quote, and I'm going to read it

• 4:52David Senra?

  to you, from this book I covered all the way back on Founders, number 118. It's written by Charles Sorensen, which is like, Henry Ford's, like, almost like right-hand man for 40 years. The name of the book is My 40 Years with Ford, and I'll get there in one second. And it's about this idea that I love. It's like, Henry Ford had basically one idea. And the reason I love that is because you only really need one idea in life to become wildly successful and build the life that you want. So it says, "Henry Ford introduced a car that transformed American consumerism and travel. Previously, automobiles were exclusively for the rich, costing thousands of dollars for purchase and considerably more for upkeep. But Ford's Model T changed everything. Thanks in great part to Ford's innovative assembly line, Model Ts were mass-produced

• 5:35David Senra?

  on a previously unimaginable scale. In competitors for factories, it took workers several hours to assemble an individual car. At the Ford plant, a completed Model T rolled out the line every two and a half minutes." And so that was Henry Ford's one idea. It took him, probably, what, two decades, close to two decades, from having the idea to actually figure out how to do the idea, and that's, hey, everybody else is building cars for rich people. I want to build a car so inexpensive that everybody can afford it. And so that leads me to the quote, and that paragraph just said, you know, thanks in part to Ford's innovative assembly line. So that's when I read that part, I was like, oh, that reminded me of what Charlie Sorensen said in 40 Years of Ford, and this is the quote.

• 6:20David Senra?

  Henry Ford had no ideas on mass production. He wanted to build a lot of autos, because that's the only way he could get to his one idea, right? He was determined, but like everyone else at the time, he didn't know how. In later years, he was glorified as the originator of the mass production idea. Far from it, and this is the most important line in this entire paragraph, he just grew into it like the rest of us. And I just love that idea that you have, okay, I have a goal, I have a dream, a product I want to build, I'm not sure yet. I know what I want to do, but I don't know how to do it. And so I know I'm going to have to experiment, I'm going to have to go through many trial and error, and usually a long period of time, but I'll eventually get there. And that is really the story of Henry Ford's one idea.

• 7:03David Senra?

  There's also something popped in my mind when they start, when this author starts comparing Ford's advantage, once he's up and running, to what his competitors, you know, you guys are taking hours to do one car, I can do one every two and a half minutes. It reminded me what Andrew Carnegie, that's a very old idea, and Andrew Carnegie, back in the 1800s, was obsessed with investing in new technology. If there was a new machine, a new process, that would help him produce steel more efficiently, he would always invest in that, and usually, the old timers in his business would criticize him for this. And so the way I would summarize Andrew Carnegie's idea, and how he applied this idea to his business, is that you invest in technology, the savings compound, and sometimes that

• 7:48David Senra?

  investment in technology is the difference between a profit and a loss. And so I think it was in his autobiography, he talks about, hey, if I didn't have these machines, if I didn't have the new process, some years, that was the efficiency I gained from investing in technology, sometimes was the year between me actually making a profit, where the people that were criticizing me, the people, usually older gentlemen, that were in the business before me, actually had a loss because they failed to invest in technology. And I think Carnegie had a very important realization there that you have to invest in technology because the savings, or said another way, the advantages compound. And the fact that Ford spent so much time figuring out how to make a car as cheap as possible and as fast as possible, and I'm going to go into detail that in a minute, gave him a massive advantage. You can't compete with somebody.

• 8:31David Senra?

  If it takes you five hours to make a car and he does in two and a half minutes, you're going to lose. Model Ts were also utilitarian. Fancy options that drove up the price were conspicuously absent. Ford passed on the savings to his customers. At the time of its introduction, the Model T sold for as little as half what other cars cost. From there, Ford continued tinkering with the manufacturing process, aggressively seeking ways to cut production expenses and Model T prices even more. I can't remember because I've done, what, like five, four books on Henry Ford? But in one of them, it said, it got to the point where he stopped advertising completely because the only advertising he would do was constantly lower the price of the Model T.

• 9:14David Senra?

  When he lowered the price of the Model T, that was newsworthy, and then he'd get a bunch of free advertising because newspapers and radio and everybody else in the country would pick up and let customers know, oh, my God, now that, you know, the Model T used to be $550. There's a picture of, let me find it, there's a picture in this book of a Model T ad, and it says $295. I thought, if I remember correctly, and I don't, I'm not entirely sure, but I think he got that price down to like $250, if I'm not mistaken. So let's go back to the way he thinks about this and his obsession with eliminating waste and aiming for simplicity. "Aiming for simplicity" is a direct quote of his from his autobiography. He talked about it over and over again.

• 9:55David Senra?

  So it says he would find ways to cut production expenses and Model T prices even more. Oh, here it is. "The best example fostered a popular joke that you could buy any Model T that you liked as long as the color was black. Few realized that Ford insisted the cars come in that color because black paint dried quickest, meaning Model Ts could be whipped through the assembly line and off to dealerships at an even faster pace, saving additional time and labor-related dollars." And then the savings not only compounded for Ford the company, but also for the customer. Model T savings for owners only commenced with the initial purchase. Since it was only 1,200 pounds, the Model T weighed half as much as their competitors,

• 10:35David Senra?

  and the cost of body repairs and replacement tires was accordingly less. When Ford introduced the Model T, this is bananas. When Ford introduced the Model T, Americans owned approximately 194,000 cars. Six years later, that number increased to 2 million. So that's 10x in six years. Ford controlled almost half the automobile market at that time. The Model T alone would have established Henry Ford as a household name, but he further cemented his reputation as a friend of the working man with a stunning announcement. In an era when factory line workers were lucky to earn $2 a day for their labor, and they had to work 10-hour shifts six days a week, Ford pledged to pay $5 a day and reduced workdays to eight hours. Everyone in America was talking about it.

• 11:19David Senra?

  And I think that's just another example of Ford being gifted at marketing, which is really surprising that he was so good at marketing when you realize he was very much a loner, very much a part of society, not in society, I guess is what I'm trying to say there, and a very strange person, which I'll get in, like, on an individual level, very, very bizarre person. As far as learning, if you want to learn how to build, I think, like, setting Henry Ford, at least this is my interpretation, reading a bunch of books on him, very gifted, very few people in history that you could study that could tell you more about building companies. He had a lot of good ideas, but also one of the strangest, just, I wouldn't want to be his friend, is what I'm telling you.

• 12:03David Senra?

  And I'll go into more detail on that. There's other examples in the book, too, where it's just like, he's just a bizarre person. Let me go into more of, like, the origination of Ford idolized Edison. They wanted to become best friends, even though Edison was a good deal older than him. And this is the origination of that. This, what I'm about to read to you, happened in 1896. And think about how crazy it is. The Model T comes 12 years later, so it's just a reminder not to quit. Over the years, as Ford founded and failed with two auto manufacturing companies before succeeding with his third, he endlessly reminisced about the meeting and Edison's words of encouragement.

• 12:40David Senra?

  He's working for Edison at the time. He's introduced Edison because somebody that knows Edison says, hey, this Ford guy has a way to make an internal combustion engine. Reminder that most cars at this time were either steam powered, which didn't work well at all, all are electric, which also didn't work well at all. And so Edison says, young man, that's the thing. You have it, keep at it. Ford's admiration for Edison blossomed into virtual worship as a result. Throughout his own, throughout his own business successes, as his hard work and belief in himself cultivated with the Model T, Ford warmed himself with memories of that encounter with his hero. And one thing that's also surprising when you analyze their careers is Ford was much, much wealthier. Ford was a cannier businessman than his hero and much wealthier.

• 13:24David Senra?

  Part of this is because Ford also didn't need to invent his market. He only needed to expand him, expand them. And I'll also say Ford stuck with what he was working on. The whole thing, and there's examples later in the book, where just Edison jumps around too much. So he had a very hard, he had a lot of great inventions, a lot of contributions to, to humanity in general, but he had a hard time capturing that value. More on their friendships and I guess why they, why they were able to be friends and what they had in common. Edison had few close friends. He always suspected that anyone seeking friendship had ulterior motives. But Ford was already far richer than Edison and almost as famous. There were other things in common. They found themselves in complete agreement about the evils of Wall Street and the crass men there who cared only for profit and not for the public.

• 14:09David Senra?

  Both were poor boys who had made good. Neither had a college degree and both were disdainful of those who believed classroom education was superior to hands-on work experience and common sense. Like Edison, Ford did not have many friends. Ford was a prickly man and also a complicated one. That's an understatement. Burning to make the world better for humanity as a whole, while not enjoying personal contact with most individuals. Edison being a notable exception to that. Ford said, I think Mr. Edison is the greatest man in the world. So the fourth member of the vagabonds is John Burroughs, the author and naturalist. And it was a little surprising that he could develop such a close relationship with Henry Ford,

• 14:54David Senra?

  given that he criticized cars, that he didn't want people polluting nature. So this is really how they were able to become friends. And then you also see the complicated nature of Ford. He did not believe in charity, but with his friends, he was unbelievably generous. So it says Ford never doubted his own-- and this is more about his personality, too. This is repeated over and over in every book that you'll read on Henry Ford. He never doubted his own beliefs and decisions. He forbid disagreement from employees and would ignore any outsiders. Ford's hobby was work. He devoted almost every waking minute to it. But Ford loved birds all of his life, and whenever possible, set aside time to observe them. So Burroughs is an expert on the study of birds and nature in general. Ford sent a message to America.

• 15:39David Senra?

  So he went to giving Burroughs a Model T. He did this on several occasions, and then would also publicize that. So it's another form of advertising, if you think about that. And so I would say with almost everything, he has ulterior motives. So it says Ford sent a message to America. Old-fashioned John Burroughs loved to ride in them. How much more might younger, more progressive individuals savor the kind of outdoor adventures made possible by car ownership? As for Burroughs, he learned years earlier, during his tramps with Teddy Roosevelt, that having a famous patron greatly expanded his audiences for books and public lectures. So he's doing the exact same thing with his relationship with Ford that Ford, Firestone,

• 16:19David Senra?

  and Edison are doing on this tenure of vagabonding, these auto trips throughout America. There was more. Burroughs confided to Ford that he feared losing his family farm, where he was raised. Relatives living there struggled to meet the hefty mortgage payments. Ford bought the property outright and deeded it to Burroughs. Ford's generosity towards his few close friends was boundless.

• 16:42David Senra?

  And it's really hard to understand the scope of Henry Ford's wealth. He owns 100, I think by the year 1919, if I'm not mistaken, he owns 100% of the Ford Motor Company. I think it would be valued at like $500 million in 1919 dollars. It's just outrageous. This is more about the benefit of being around great people, how they will inspire you. This reminds me, so Ford is able to do this in person. So very few people are going to be able to make relationships with somebody as influential as Thomas Edison. It reminded me of this podcast I saw a long time ago with Elon Musk, where he talked about, you know, he sought, he didn't have many mentors in life. This is when he was in his early

• 17:25David Senra?

  twenties. So he sought mentors in a historical context, and he did that by reading biographies. And so being around Thomas Edison greatly inspired Ford, just like reading about great people inspires me and you. So it says Ford twice came close to selling the business. This is the actual successful Ford Motor Company, the third one. It was as though Ford believed he achieved what he could. Edison, but Edison always sought the next great thing, and failures like mining innovation and concrete housing didn't deter him. He never lost belief in himself. When he and the inventor quickly became the closest of friends, Ford felt energized again, thanks in great part to Edison's inspiration. For all of Ford's professional life, he had to overcome skepticism from other successful men. He

• 18:09David Senra?

  had always been the outsider, the one with crazy ideas and clumsy social graces. Edison sympathized, because in the earliest years of prominence, he was criticized for some of the same traits. The inventor not only accepted Ford for the rough edges, rough-edged men that he was, he recognized in him the fine qualities that offset the carmaker's obvious flaws. Ford was aware that Edison was one of the very few people who genuinely liked him, and he was profoundly grateful for it.

• 18:39David Senra?

  So this is Henry Ford on experts and why he felt that way. And I'm going to bring this, there's so many examples in this book that I'm going to point out to you because I think it's really important. Like this fundamental belief in his own ability, never doubting himself, these are all very, very positive traits, especially when everybody else from the outside is telling you, no, you're wrong, you're wrong, internal combustion engine is not going to work, you can't, you have to build cars for rich people, all the stuff they told Henry Ford that wound up, he was right about and they were wrong. It just took a lot of time and determination for that to play out, to realize that he's right. The problem is, that trait never left him, even when the circumstances changed. So later on, when people, after, I think he sold like 15 million Model Ts, people are realizing, okay, now a lot more people have car ownership, now we want choices.

• 19:21David Senra?

  And this is, we covered this back, it was in the early 100s, somewhere in those episodes where I did, I think it was like a 10 or 12 part series on all these early automobile founders, the people that actually built the car industry in America. And so what we saw there was Alfred Sloan, Billy Durant, people like that, Walter Chrysler, they took advantage of the gap that Henry Ford left because he never, he just thought, okay, I'm going to make the Model T forever, I've already figured this out, I don't have to change. So again, it's just really hard, there's no, this is not black or white, it's just so hard to realize when self-belief is valuable, like relentless self-belief is valuable and when it's actually a liability. Henry Ford was always a man of strong opinions and one who absolutely trusted his own instincts.

• 20:04David Senra?

  He especially disdained anyone identified as an expert. Quote from him, "If I ever wanted to kill opposition by unfair means, I would endow the opposition with experts. No one ever considers himself an expert if he really knows his job." Now, he's probably right about that. He's essentially saying that there's always more to learn. "When prominent, better-educated men and their hired experts insisted that the future of the automobile market was limited to manufacturing expensive cars for the wealthy, Ford believed that the real potential lay in sales of a modest but dependable vehicle to the growing American middle class." So he was right about that at the beginning. "There would be less profit in individual transactions, but the sheer number of sales would yield greater cumulative returns." Ford was proved right and he reveled in it.

• 20:47David Senra?

  So he has this wild success, but then it went to his head, this is really the dangers of an unchecked ego, because then he thinks, okay, I did this myself, I'm the reason that the company's successful. And a lot of people make the argument that Ford would have never been successful without his, the person that was running the company with him, James Cousins, which I'll go into right here. But again, reminder, the dangers of an unchecked ego. Their relationship nearly approximated one of equals until the Model T established inarguable market dominance and then Ford began gradually to resent Cousins as only a glorified bookkeeper. The feeling was mutual. Cousins believed that Ford became so convinced of his own brilliance that he forgot others also made critical contributions to his company's success.

• 21:31David Senra?

  Ford felt encouraged to offer his opinion on all sorts of non-car related subjects and had no doubt about his sagacity regarding everything else. I'm going to define that term. I had to look it up myself. I've seen it before, couldn't remember what it meant, so in case this might be helpful to you. So that means the ability to make good judgments. So let's go over that. Ford felt encouraged to offer his opinions on all sorts of non-car related subjects, and this is the dumbest thing he ever did, and had no doubt about his ability to make good judgments regarding everything else. And so he starts publishing essentially like a newsletter about a lot of his antisemitism.

• 22:15David Senra?

  He railed on this global Jewish worldwide conspiracy that he was convinced of, started talking about politics and war and all other stuff. And so Cousins says, "What are you doing?" Cousins confronted him, insisting that the owner's personal politics had no place in an internal company publication. Ford disagreed. It was his company. Cousins quit the next day. He went on to a distinguished political career, first as mayor of Detroit and later as US Senator. But with Cousins gone, so was the only check on Ford's increasing proclivity to say exactly what he pleased and damn the consequences. And this is, he winds up, it's not, so he starts doing this with an internal company publication, right?

• 22:55David Senra?

  And then he starts, he buys his own newspaper and he spends, I think, he loses like $5 million over like eight years trying to make this company, this newspaper, successful. And it was just full of just bizarre, I mean, here's the problem when I say, like, let's study Henry Ford for his great ideas about building companies and nothing else. Because this guy winds up being one of the few people, one of the few Americans. He gets awarded, and this is not something you want, not an award or distinguishing you want. He's one of the few Americans that is awarded this made up award. I forgot what it's called, but it's a made up award by Adolf Hitler. And if I'm not mistaken, in Mein Kampf, Hitler talks about how great a man Ford was because they shared these same, like

• 23:38David Senra?

  this hatred for Jews and this convince, they were both convinced that Jewish control of banking and money supply was, they were essentially, there's a secret cabal of Jews running the world. And Henry Ford would print this in his newspaper. Examples in this book are just crazy. "This is why the demand for an inexpensive car would skyrocket if you could make one that's reliable and cheap," which is the wave that Henry Ford rode. "The average American rarely ventured more than 12 miles from home because that was the distance a horse and wagon could comfortably cover from there and back in a day." So in the year 1918, they decide, because they do different routes every year, they're

• 24:20David Senra?

  like, okay, we're going to go down to the South. We're going to try to publicize and get more interest and more people buying Ford cars in the South. Well, I'm going to read one section here. This blew my mind. "Resentment over the Civil War still lingered in both the North and South." So they're making the point that a lot of people would do, especially as the years progressed, people might drive from like New York, you could go to New York from San Francisco on like a very primitive highway, but very few people tend to go from like New York to Atlanta. And this is part of the reason why. "Resentment over the Civil War still lingered in both the North and the South." That conflict, this is, this blew my mind. "That conflict had concluded only 53 years earlier. Edison was

• 25:02David Senra?

  a teenager when the first shots were fired, and Ford was born a few weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg." So right now, in this 1918 trip, they're as close to the Civil War as we are to the year 1970.

• 25:18David Senra?

  So on these trips, a lot of times the cars would break down. That's why so, like, at the very beginning, when they start vagabonding, a lot less people do it. As the cars become more reliable, more people do it. And one thing to admire about Henry Ford is he would do a lot of the work himself. In one example, he gives, like, this poor farmer a Model T, says, "Hey, you can park the Model T in the barn." They try to put the Model T in the barn, doesn't fit, so Ford and another guy, they went and spending hours extending the entrance to the barn, doing all the work themselves. And so this is another example, they break down, and they bring it to a mechanic, they're somewhere out in the south, and the mechanics are like, "Oh, this is, you know, I can't fix this." And Henry, it's essentially, "Henry, I'll do it myself," Ford. "The mechanics in town pronounced the damage was unreparable.

• 26:03David Senra?

  A replacement fan would have to be sent for. Considerable delay was inevitable, certainly a day at least." Ford listened to the mechanics, then asked if he could borrow some of their tools. Using his own knife and their soldering iron, he poked holes in the broken bits of the fan, stitched them together with thin wire, then soldered the wires in place. The punctured point of the radiator was also soldered tight. The ignition was switched on, and the Packard ran perfectly. Ford's repair work took two hours. And so we see two things there. Ford, again, Henry, "I'll do it myself," Ford, but also, he just doesn't, he wants to figure, and that's a positive trait, he wants to figure things out for himself. Mechanic said it's impossible, gonna be at least a day. Ford's like, "Yeah, I think I can do it."

• 26:48David Senra?

  And he went and doing it. Let me, there's a little, let me give you a little summary of Harvey Firestone. I might read his autobiography, too, because he went to building a massively successful company, and this is like a brief overview of how that happened. By 1918, Harvey Firestone was a businessman of considerable national stature. He was very much self-made. Firestone left the family farm to work as a bookkeeper for a coal company. He was a salesman for questionable health-related aids, and finally, a dealer in horse-drawn carriages. In the mid 1890s, Firestone wrote in his memoir, "For the first time, it struck me that my future was right there on the wheels of my buggy." Using his meager savings as a startup money,

• 27:30David Senra?

  Firestone eventually established a company manufacturing rubber tires for automobiles. He realized that the solid rubber wheels utilized on early cars would not hold up sufficiently on the country's rough roads. And this is how you know there's an opportunity for a better product, right? Rich men bought the earliest American cars, and they universally hired an assistant, who not only served as a chauffeur, but provided the muscle necessary for frequent tire changing. And this is fascinating. Like, you know the product is so bad that you have to hire somebody to replace the tires over and over again. There's obvious room for improvement here. And that reminded me, Paul Graham has a series of essays on his website, paulgram.com, that are fantastic.

• 28:13David Senra?

  One of them is this essay called "Schlep Blindness." And when I got to this section of the book, it made me think of what I remembered from reading Paul Graham's essay on schlep blindness. I just want to pull out a couple quotes from that essay, if you don't mind. So let's define this. "There are great startup ideas lying around, unexploited, right under our noses," which is what Firestone discovered, right? But he discovered that, let's see, what is that, 130 years? Before Paul Graham's writing the same thing? "One reason we don't see them is a phenomenon I call schlep blindness. Schlep means a tedious, unpleasant task. The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps, our unpleasant tasks, is that much of it is unconscious." This is not the entire essay.

• 28:58David Senra?

  This is just a few paragraphs from it, obviously. "Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. You just assume that's the way things are." That's schlep blindness. I'm most likely destroying the pronunciation of that, by the way. But I want to bring this one, just one more paragraph here, because I think it applies to one of the most fascinating modern companies. And he says, "The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is Stripe." A rather Stripe's idea. For over a decade, every hacker who had ever had to process payments online knew how painful the experience was. Thousands of people must have known about this problem. It's just like thousands of people must have known about Harvey Firestone's problem, right? The problem that his product's gonna solve, rather.

• 29:43David Senra?

  Thousands of people must have known about this problem. And yet, when they started startups, they decided to build recipe sites or aggregators for local events. Why? Why work on problems few care about, care much about, and no one will pay for, when you could fix one of the most important components of the world's infrastructure? Which is what Stripe did, right? Because slept blindness prevented people from even considering the idea of fixing payments. That is exactly what is happening in the story of Firestone. People didn't even think, hey, instead of inventing a better tire, let me hire a guy that has to fix, that has to drive me around and for the inevitable tire failures, these, whether they're flat or they explode, he's gonna have the muscle to change the tire

• 30:28David Senra?

  for me. They just think this is another example of human nature not changing. Firestone envisioned better, longer-lasting tires. Due to extended trial and error, he developed a new tire that had better tread and better traction on roads of all kinds. Though Firestone now had a superior product, he lacked the means of making tires widely known to potential customers. He had no money for advertising and no distribution. Firestone, this is another thing. So the tires, Firestone tires would only fit Firestone rims. We were ready to go to market, but there was no market to go on. In 1905, Firestone had heard that Henry Ford planned to manufacture a fleet of 2,000 cars that would sell for an unheard-of $500 each. So that gave him an idea.

• 31:11David Senra?

  If I could induce Ford to put these cars with our rims, then we would have 2,000 customers who had to use our tires, to the exclusion of all others. Firestone met with Ford, who agreed to test his tires. Ford found them preferable both for their road performance and their price. Firestone offered them to Ford at $55 a set, compared to $70 charged by his competitors. Firestone borrowed frantically to finance production for the huge order. In 1908, when Ford began producing Model Ts by the tens, then hundreds of thousands, he remained loyal to the manufacturer, who had earlier sold him quality tires at a reasonable price. Firestone tires became one of the best-selling brands on the market, and Firestone's fortune was made.

• 31:54David Senra?

  And in addition to that, they also had a lot of, they showed a lot of the same business philosophy. They shared several business philosophies. They disdained planned obsolescence, believing customer loyalty was best retained by providing reasonably priced commodities that could be depended upon to last a long time. Ford and Firestone were mutually convinced that the most work-efficient employees were those who felt they had a true stake in the company's success, so they paid higher wages, as well as offering various forms of profit sharing. In particular, both believed that companies could be efficiently run by only one man, whose orders must be carried out by efficient subordinates. And now we reach an example of what I mentioned earlier, that Ford's great to listen to about company building,

• 32:36David Senra?

  but he was an absolute weirdo who wanted to control the behavior of all those around him. The carmaker had strong opinions about diet and nutrition, abhorring manufactured sweets in particular. Edison asked Harvey Firestone Jr. to fetch him a pop from the general store. Ford loathed sugary soft drinks, but couldn't bring himself to criticize his idol's indulgence on one. He still seethed, and he's mad about this for a few hours. And a few hours later, when Harvey Firestone Jr. purchased Burrows some caramels from another shop, which was Burrows' favorite kind of candy, Ford couldn't restrain himself. Harvey Firestone Jr. was poisoning John Burrows.

• 33:18David Senra?

  Ford stormed over, snatched the box of caramels out of the young man's hands, and flung it on the street. Okay, so there's another section I found interesting. This is how Ford came to own 100% of the Ford Motor Company. Ford was determined to be the sole controlling voice of Ford Motor Company. He owned 58.5% of the company. For many years, he resented the half dozen or so fellow stockholders, whose views sometimes conflicted with his own. He was definitely a dictator, right? Especially when two brothers, John and Horace Dodge, I've also done podcasts on them as well, it's in archive, I think. 115, so I don't remember the exact number, but they were wild people. They were really fun to actually read about. They're crazy.

• 34:01David Senra?

  And unfortunately, they went up dying in the flu epidemic. In 1919, maybe 1920, I forgot when it was, but they died relatively young, unfortunately. They were wild, though. They were probably destined to die young. When two brothers, John and Horace Dodge, successfully sued him for putting too large a share of profits into the company rather than paying appropriate dividends to shareholders. Ford shocked America by resigning as company president. He said he was going to start an entirely new automobile manufacturing enterprise. The Ford Motor Company stockholders assumed the threat was real and, within weeks, agreed to sell Ford their shares at a whopping $12,500 a share. James Cousins, who was his alter ego and the person that quit, knew Ford best, held

• 34:46David Senra?

  out and received $13,000 for each of his shares. Though Ford had to borrow $60 million of the near $106 million total cost, he was glad to do it. It had been an elaborate bluff, but he was now in complete control of the Ford Motor Company. So we see his faith, his unrelenting faith in himself, and that bluff worked out. This is an example where his delusional optimism didn't work out. This is when he starts his newspaper. Ford had his own newspaper, and he put the Dearborn Independent to work on his behalf. Ford and the editors he'd hired realized they must completely refurbish the Independent's editorial and art content if it was to attain the kind of circulation necessary to equal

• 35:27David Senra?

  and eventually surpass Ford. So it says Ford never aim low. This is what I mean about being delusional. So it's like, okay, we need a new editorial and new art content because our circulation is going to pass that of nationally influential papers like the New York Times. That obviously never happens. He winds up either closing or selling the paper. I want to say eight years later, and I know he lost at least $5 million on doing this. And this is the paper where he was publishing like these exposes on, you know, this Jewish global conspiracy. And just, he was obviously very anti-war and just, he's basically a newspaper that just espoused his personal opinions.

• 36:07David Senra?

  And the only way that circulation would grow is because he made dealerships, Ford dealerships, give subscriptions to everybody that bought a Model T. So I don't know if he forgot about that, but he, later on, he's like, "Oh, look, circulation's growing." And then I forgot what it was, it was like just a small percentage points of, let's say 5%, for example, of circulation growth was people that actually bought the paper on their own and wasn't just given a subscription with their purchase of a Model T. So, again, just, you can be good at one thing, and that's great, because you only have to be good at one thing. But some, you know, knowing, I guess, goes back to Buffett and Munger's idea, your circle of competence. If you don't know where that ends, it can be very dangerous.

• 36:52David Senra?

  Also in the book, he winds up fighting and suing, and this is where, you know, he winds up being correct, because he felt this, I think it was the Chicago Tribune libeled him, so he winds up fighting this case for many, many years. The judge, the jury winds up ruling in his favor, but didn't award him any damages. So, this is, let me just read my note to you. Sorry, I'm gonna read my note to you before I read this section. "So Ford testified and didn't know trivia, like the date of the American Revolution, or the definition of the word ballyhoo. Who cares? A business is just an idea that makes someone else's life better," that's Richard Branson's quote, "still the best description of why there's unlimited opportunity."

• 37:36David Senra?

  Because if you look at, hey, a business is just an idea that makes someone's life better, that means there's unlimited opportunity for us to pursue, right? "Ford served others," which is one thing I learned from, one of the most valuable things I learned from Henry Ford, is the fact that business is just service, you're just in service of others, and you should never lose focus of that. And then finally, you only have to be good at one thing. That is Paul Orfalla, which was the founder of Kinko's I covered a few weeks ago, maybe a month or two ago by now. And his realization that, hey, wait a minute, in school, they told me how to be good at everything, I have to be good at gym class, I have to know physics, I have to study economics, I have to be good at math, I have to study history and reading and writing. And he's like, but in life, you only have to be good at one thing. And he's like, I don't know how copy machines work, but I know I can sell what comes out of them.

• 38:21David Senra?

  And he built a fabulously successful life, just being good at that one thing. And then my own, this is, I'm taking credit for this idea, I undoubtedly learned it from somebody else. I hope this isn't somebody else's quote, but it might be. Never underestimate humans' ability to focus on the inconsequential. All right, so that's a long note, let me read the section. The case went to the jury, their verdict was announced in Ford's favor. The Tribune had libeled him. He wanted a million dollars damages, they gave him six cents. Both sides claimed vindication. It was the unanimous conclusion of most major publications on both coasts and in big cities throughout the US that Ford had been humiliated and might never recover in public opinion. That's not true. The New York Times compared Ford's witness stand quizzing to a history test in school,

• 39:06David Senra?

  and he did not receive a passing degree. But customers don't care if he knows, this is the point that I was trying to make. Customers don't care if he knows, if he doesn't know the date of the American Revolution or the definition of the word ballyhoo. He built a car that I can afford and that is reliable. That's all they're going to care about. They have, they have their own lives to worry about. The San Jose Mercury Herald predicted that the future mention of Ford will be, will be accompanied by laughter and ridicule. Ford received, now here's, so that's their response from the media, right? But here's what is the average person in America. Ford received thousands of letters with the general message that if he were an anarchist, that was part of what happened in the trial, then America needed more of them.

• 39:48David Senra?

  Ford was the son of a Michigan farmer, and like most Americans of the time, his formal education was limited to a few years in local schools and teachers who themselves had not graduated high school. Then he had to leave school to make a living. Like Ford, many of his countrymen read only with difficulty, if at all. Their understanding of American history was limited. They too might not remember the exact date of the American Revolution. And this is the most important part, but they knew Henry Ford introduced a $5 workday and a car that ordinary people could afford. They identified with Ford so strongly that newspapers' attacks on him were taken as an insult directed at them. And that whole section really is, to me, just a reminder.

• 40:30David Senra?

  I think that's one of the greatest ideas I've ever come across, or greatest realizations, greatest facts of life, whatever you want to call it. The fact that you just have to be good at one thing. If you were serving other humans and you're good at that one thing, it could be making a pizza, making a car, inventing a light bulb, making tires. It doesn't matter what it is. You can build a fantastically successful and independent life. That's super motivating for me. So this is the cost of losing focus. This is on Thomas Edison. I saw, I want to say this is a tweet, I looked for it, couldn't find it. But a long time ago, the way I remember it is somebody's mentor died and they were honoring their mentor that died and said, hey, the biggest advice this guy gave me was, you know, several decades older than me. And he said, like, rabbit eye kid, quit jumping. Focus.

• 41:15David Senra?

  Like, stop jumping from idea to idea and just focus. And it's great advice. And we see Thomas Edison didn't do that. I mean, you gotta, if that's what you want to do, you gotta do it and just deal with the fact that you're not going to be as successful as you could be if you just focus on one thing. But Edison's, to me, is just, what I learned from studying him is he's just jumped around too much. Time and again, he invented things with long-term market appeal only to lose interest or miscalculate what form of his inventions consumer wanted to buy. Examples were plentiful. Edison invented the phonograph and his company was first to bring it to stores. But for nearly a decade after that, he focused on other projects while competitors built and marketed their own phonographs. So that's just a way to replay recorded audio, mostly music.

• 41:58David Senra?

  He thought, if you read that book, The Wizard of Menlo Park, I think it was Founder's Number Three, something like that, it's one of the first books I did. It was really funny because he's like, I'm going to invent this and then what people are going to do is they're going to use it. You know, if like, people have wine cellars at their house? He thought they were gonna have a collection of audio sermons, like preachers. And they would just have like, a room in their house that had, you know, I don't know, like, you'd have 100 bottles of wine, you'd have 100 different sermons. He's way off by that, but it was a fundamentally important invention if he just stuck with it. It's like, it's like inventing the iPhone, like, "I'm gonna work on something else." Uh, their own photographs over time, depriving the originator of what it could have been an Edison-dominated business. Edison not only invented the incandescent bulb, he created the most efficient generated systems to light them.

• 42:43David Senra?

  Edison's company was poised to power every major, it's remarkable, this came from one person. Edison's company was poised to power every major city. And by 1919, almost half the households in America had electricity. But Edison didn't financially benefit. Years earlier, he sold his interests to competitors, and they eventually formed General Electric. So GE, rather than Edison, raked in the substantial profits. And this is another thing, Peter Thiel, in his book Zero to One, talks about, he's like, "It's not just enough to, to, to, to generate, or to produce value. You've gotta capture that, you gotta find a system to capture some of the value that you're giving to consumers." This is a great illustration that Edison failed to do that. He created an unbelievable amount of value for humanity.

• 43:25David Senra?

  He captured the tiniest, tiniest, I mean, he's not poor, we're not, we're not gonna, you know, we're not, we're not gonna feel sorry for the guy, but he could, he could've done a better job. They eventually formed General Electric, and GE, rather than Edison, raked in substantial profits. Edison's company filmed, so he invented, you could think of, almost like, the early movies, right? Edison Company Films were a huge hit during the early years of motion pictures. They were two-wheelers. The longest was 25 minutes. But moviegoers soon wanted longer films, and four-wheelers became the norm. Edison, though, liked two-wheelers better, and wouldn't produce anything longer. Ticket sales for his films declined, and by 1918, he sold off all his film interests. The same was substantially true for recorded music.

• 44:09David Senra?

  For years, Edison's recording dominated, but Americans began enjoying jazz and wanted those records. Edison hated jazz. He insisted at his company release only recordings of more traditional music. Like symphonies and operas that he personally preferred. Predictably, competitors' recordings soon outsold Edison's. And by 1929, Edison's companies no longer produced entertainment records. Edison's vagabond friends lamented his business judgment. Ford said Edison is easily the world's greatest scientist. I am not sure that he is also not the world's worst businessman. He knows nothing of business. Firestone agreed. Mr. Edison thinks almost wholly creatively and does not give the same thought to commerce that he gives to creation.

• 44:52David Senra?

  And the point that Ford and Firestone are making, the one Edison missed, is that you have to do both. You have to create something valuable and then capture that value. All right, so moving on. There's a lot of times when I'm reading this to try to put myself in the shoes of the people involved in the story. And something I talk to you about over and over again is the fact that you want to analyze things by like, what side of the transaction do I want to be on? And one of the main themes on the history of entrepreneurship is the importance of control, that if something is important to your business, you don't want to rely on the good graces of other humans, right? You want to control that decision. And so we're going to see what Henry Ford did to avoid borrowing money from banks during an economic downturn. And it clearly sees like, yes, some people can become wealthy, and they still do to

• 45:37David Senra?

  this day, owning car dealerships. But in this case, Henry Ford had all the power. And so it says Ford dealers had a strict financial arrangements with their parent company. When they ordered cars, they paid for them in advance rather than as they sold. The premise was that with their money at stake rather than the company's, they would work even harder to sell the cars. Okay, so they've got to pay for them in advance. You can't give me the money when you sell the car, right? Since the Model T was constantly in high demand, there was no hardship for the dealers. They considered themselves lucky to be affiliated with Ford. But the 1920 economic slump left Ford dealers anxious to move the cars they had on hand and reluctant to order more.

• 46:22David Senra?

  So they were shocked when they started to receive shipments of Model Ts that they hadn't ordered. The edict, which is coming from Henry Ford, on these cars were the same. Ford Motor Company must be paid for them. Refusal to do so would terminate the dealer-company relationships.

• 46:40David Senra?

  If they refused to accept these additional Model Ts, they were going to be fired by Ford, and they could be ruined. Or, as the parent company suggested, they could accept the cars and, if necessary, get loans from their banks to pay Ford for them. See what he did to... So he doesn't want to borrow. He's going to make you borrow. And then aggressively keep trying to sell Model Ts and hang on until the national economic crisis was over. The dealers had little choice but to accept. That provided Ford with enough money to meet his immediate corporate debts, and the dealers had to risk wrath from their banks instead. And then, as they go... So the book goes in chronological order. Every chapter is based on a year and about the trip they're taking, but also they have like these flashbacks.

• 47:23David Senra?

  And so this is a flashback about what was Henry Ford doing when he was in his twenties, which I always love studying. In August 1923, Henry and Clara Ford had been married for 35 years. When they met at a country dance in 1886, Ford was 23 and Clara was 20. He was farming, and he hated it. So they wound up getting married. The Fords moved to Detroit. Ford took an engineering job at Edison Illuminating Company. His wife never complained when Ford spent most of his off-the-job hours trying to build a combustible engine in their kitchen. It's remarkable.

• 48:04David Senra?

  She encouraged Ford to pursue his dream of creating a car for the great multitudes, remaining supportive when his first two companies failed, and encouraging him during the difficult first years of the Ford Motor Company, his third company. She forgave his obsession with work, accepted his constant certainty that whatever he thought had to be right... I came across this point. This surprised me. I don't know if I've ever... Maybe I read it before and I forgot. But... And then even overlooked his extended affair with an employee that resulted in a child out of wedlock. I don't remember him having a child out of wedlock. It's wild. And then, in return, Ford didn't listen to anyone. If Ford listened to anyone other than himself, it was his wife.

• 48:49David Senra?

  She convinces him later on not to run for president, which he wanted. I think he was gonna run like 1924, something like that. But that statement seems to be accurate, that he listened to very few people. But he did seek the counsel and listened to her influence. And a part of that is because he believed that she was actually one of the few people that actually held, wanted what was best for him. And just a bunch of one-sentence descriptions of more Henry Ford traits spread out through some pages, over a few pages. "Patience was never Ford's strength. Ford had no interest in laurel resting. Ford fixated on even the smallest details."

• 49:31David Senra?

  And then a sentence about the friendship between Ford and Edison. "A primary, if unspoken, rule in the close friendship with Ford was that neither him or Edison would burden the other with admissions of uncertainty or weakness." They were both extremely, extremely proud men. They're not going to admit to other people any kind of uncertainty, doubts, weaknesses, or anything like that. This is another reminder that products have the personality traits of their creators, of their founders. "The Model T was a car built to last. It was never flashy. In every way efficient, always dependable, much like the man whose company assembled them. And just as Ford never saw any reason to change himself, he felt no pressure to change

• 50:16David Senra?

  the Model T." So that's why we have this, what we talked about earlier, this self-belief that I'm right and you're wrong. At the beginning of his career served him really well. We start to see that falls apart. I did this three-part series, embedded in that other series from the early automobile pioneers. I did a three-part series on Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan. Billy Durant, one of the most important people. I would say him and Ford are the most important people. Maybe Henry Leyland too, because he was so influential and a generation older than these guys.

• 50:46David Senra?

  The most important people at the very beginning, this foundation of what becomes this gigantic industry, right? And so Billy Durant is, he was the founder of GM, the idea person, he had the vision, and then it took Alfred Sloan, the professional CEO, to come in and actually apply the vision. And that, in this book, it talks a little bit about that gap that I mentioned earlier that Ford left his competitors and that GM drove right through. Ford's stubbornness gave competitors the opening they needed. When Alfred Sloan took over General Motors in 1923, the new boss emphasized a marketing plan based on Americans wanting not just transportation but selection. And that's what Billy Durant knew that way before Sloan did. And that's why he was buying up, he wound up, you know, doing all these fantasy shenanigans

• 51:28David Senra?

  of buying up all these different car manufacturers that served different needs. It was a completely, almost, it was the opposite strategy that Ford pursued, right? Enough people now own cars so that ownership itself, oh wait, let me read that again. New boss emphasized a marketing plan based on Americans wanting not just transportation but selection. Enough people now own cars so that ownership itself was no longer special. What was going to matter soon was driving a car that reflected their personality, the specialness of the individual owner. And this applies to much more than just, like, a lot of people buy products because not solely for the benefit of the product, but what that product says about them to other people.

• 52:13David Senra?

  The Model T was no longer the near exclusive vehicle for auto campers. So auto camping is what vagabonding was. You get in the car, you get in your Model T, you pack it full of camping gear, you drive out, and then when you, when it gets dark, because you can't really drive at night at this time in, in history, you camp out in the wilderness, on farmland, whatever the case is, right? So that's what they started doing. What happened is as more people started owning cars and cars got better, They didn't want to camp anymore. They wanted to have, start, they wanted to have, sleep in an actual bed. So entrepreneurs start opening motels and restaurants and places to service all these Americans that are now hitting the road, which is what the vagabonds were trying to popularize, right?

• 52:57David Senra?

  And it wound up growing into something bigger than they ever anticipated. This contributed to a turn in the gradual demise of auto camps and the emergence of motels. After buying an attractive Chevy to drive in, few wanted to clutter their flashy image by cramming the car full of bulk and camping gear. They wanted to stay in places that included some kind of convenient parking and what the market demanded savvy entrepreneurs were pleased to make available. Henry Ford acknowledged none of this. And so the last trip was in 1924. This is also when Edison's getting older. He can't keep going on these trips anymore. Ford's business, he starts to lose market share. He eventually does. He creates a new Model A and then eventually adapts GM's strategy

• 53:41David Senra?

  that they pioneered and he'll start doing multiple models that change. He did not want to do that. And that's kind of the end of this complete dominance. Obviously Ford's around today, still really successful. But you know, when, in the Model Ts day, he dominated the entire industry. So that starts to slip. So this is the end of the vagabonds and I'll close here. The vagabond summer car trips ended for good on August 28th, 1924. At the time Ford and Firestone didn't realize it, but Edison probably did. A year later, Firestone called on Edison in New Jersey to tell the inventor that it was time to plan the vagabond's 1925 outing. The 78-year-old Edison responded that he didn't believe he could this year. The inventor cited mild stomach ailments and concerns about the sales, the sales end of his business.

• 54:26David Senra?

  And while there was still considerable interest in Ford and Edison as individuals, widespread public appeal of their summer trips with Firestone had run its course. A contributing factor to the end of the trips wasn't the vagabond's expectation of too much attention being paid to them, but too little attention. Which is why I mentioned earlier, I think there was ulterior motives, like it was a primary business trip, at least it appears to me. The Vagabonds are remembered to this day. Nearly 14 decades after Edison invented incandescent bulbs and the power grid systems to efficiently and economically light them, Thomas Edison remains one of the most iconic and beloved figures in American history. Henry Ford's legacy is more complicated, but the Model T still reigns as the most famous and most popular car in American automobile

• 55:09David Senra?

  history. As individuals, Edison, Ford, and Firestone created the means for the great multitudes to enjoy leisure entertainment far beyond what was previously imagined. As the Vagabonds, their summer car and camping trips exemplified what they had helped make possible. See what we're doing? You can do it too. By their example, the Vagabonds encouraged countless ordinary Americans to pursue their own dreams. And that is where I'll leave it. To get the full story, read the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 190 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.

• 55:57David Senra?

  Okay, so I just have two quick things I want to update you on. The first is that I'm now offering a lifetime plan. I started doing this just as an experiment for new subscribers, but I also don't think it's right when companies offer better deals to new customers than already existing ones. So you don't have to do anything. You can stay on the plan you're on if you prefer. But if you want to switch over and to a pay one time, have lifetime access plan, I will leave a link in the show notes and you can do that. Now, here's the problem. They're all separate systems, so this process is a little bit janky, but you'd sign up for the new lifetime plan, right? And then you'd have to cancel, login and cancel your other one. I don't have a way, unfortunately, to do it automatically, or else I would definitely do that for you. If you want to stay on whatever plan you're on now, you don't have to change

• 56:41David Senra?

  anything. So far, the response to the new lifetime plan has been so good that I think I might have stumbled on something here. I don't know if it's a sustainable, viable way to do, to make sure I can do founders for the rest of my life. I would very much like to get to 1,000 books, if not more, and that would take, obviously, a very long time. But I do get suspicious when everybody says that you can't do this, that you have to do subscription, or that you have to do ads, or you have to have recurring. I'm not sure about all that. And the people that say that could be right are they could just be repeating something they heard and didn't actually investigate for themselves. So I think the one way to figure this out is let me see if there's another alternative here. And I like the simplicity of, hey, pay one time, have access forever. Turns founders more into like a tool, into a reference. And that's really the way I think about it.

• 57:26David Senra?

  I told you before, I don't really think of this as a show at all. I think there's a lot of great ideas in these books. And just like when you buy a book, you can constantly reread it. Well, if you have a lifetime access to founders, you can re-listen to episodes as much as you want. But I do have a lot of uncertainty around this. I'm not sure if this is the right move. So I'll leave the link there. It's there if you want to do it. If not, don't worry about it. And then the second thing, and I'll obviously tell you if I discover something new, or if my thinking on this evolves, maybe this is the permanent default moving forward, I have no idea yet. But I am excited so far from the limited tests that I have done. And then the second thing is, just in terms of, I want to update you on show notes.

• 58:08David Senra?

  And that ties into this whole idea of using, thinking founders just like a reference, just like a book, or an audiobook, or anything else. Instead of just putting the show notes, like my highlights, or some of my highlights into like the actual show notes, so you can only read them on the podcast player, I'm actually just going to link to my personal website that has the show notes for whatever particular book. And most of that, what I mean by show notes is, most of it is just highlights from the book. And what I do is, I go back, I use this app called Readwise, which is fantastic. In fact, one of the founders is a misfit and listens to this podcast. But what it does is, it helps you remember the stuff that you read. And so whether you want to get the daily email, it sends you like 10 or 15

• 58:51David Senra?

  different highlights, or what I use it for is primarily a gigantic database that I can search and constantly remind myself of. You know, I have tens of thousands of highlights in there from hundreds of books. And so what I want to do is, if you, let's say you listen to a podcast episode that's really interesting, and you want to remind yourself of this, you can grab, it's just a webpage, you can grab it, the link that I leave in the show notes, and it'll have, maybe, you know, sometimes it's 10 highlights, sometimes it's 20, sometimes it's 60. And that way, you can read over them in the future and kind of remind yourself what are some of the key lessons that you learned from that book, or from that podcast. And then on that page, on every webpage, you'll see, if you want to get on my personal email list, I think what I'm going to do is just as I do new highlights for every new book,

• 59:36David Senra?

  I can just email those to you so you have them as well. And again, that's optional. So that's it. I just want to let you know there's a new lifetime plan if you want to take advantage of that. And then if you want to review a lot of the lessons that we're learning on the podcast, there's a new way to do that as well. Thank you very much for your support as always, and thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.