Lessons from Napoleon, Steve Jobs, Joan of Arc & Other Leaders | Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson is the host of “How To Take Over The World,” which is one of my favorite podcasts. How To Take Over The World examines history’s greatest leaders and conquerors, and has benefited millions of people. In this episode, we talk about the common traits among the individuals he has studied such as Napoleon, Leonardo da Vinci, Joan of Arc, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and more. We also discuss the fact that Ben is battling advanced cancer. He’s a good guy, a close friend, and one of my favorite podcasters. He has four young children. Please watch this episode and see if you can help with medicine, introductions, or donations. GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-ben-fight-cancer-support-his-treatment Ben's email: [email protected] (00:00:00) What Ben has learned from making How to Take Over the World and studying history’s greatest leaders. (00:55:51) Living like you're dying. Ben on facing cancer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Senra?

  Ben Wilson has stage four cancer and four small kids. I wanted to have him on the podcast to talk about his work on the How to Take Over the World podcast, which is, in my opinion, one of the best podcasts ever created, and to talk about what it's like dealing with terminal cancer at such a young age. I also want to ask you for help in any way that you can. Ben is a good man, and he's been dealt a bad hand. Please watch this podcast and see if you can help with medicine, introductions, or donations. It doesn't matter if you have $5 to spare or $5,000. Any little bit can help Ben's family through this devastating time. He's a good guy and a close friend. Please help in any way that you can.

• 0:39David Senra?

  All right, talk to me about zeal.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Zeal is a word that we all use, right? So nowadays zeal means that you are-

• 0:45David Senra?

  First of all, we all use? No. I don't think it's in everybody's everyday vocabulary.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Well, it means you get excited about something, right? You're zealous for something. But it had a very specific definition to the ancient Greeks. So Aristotle defined zeal as a type of pain. It is felt by someone when they see another who is like them in nature, who has accomplished good or admirable things that the other person is capable of but has not yet achieved. You can see it in a lot of famous historical people. So one of my favorite stories of zeal is Thomas Edison. He's 21 years old. He's a telegraph operator, young, smart guy. Those are kind of like the programmers, tech, you know, guys of their age. And he's reading this biography of Michael Faraday, who was an inventor from the generation before.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  And he's reading the biography of Faraday. His roommate goes to bed. His roommate wakes up in the morning, and Edison is just finishing the biography. He stayed up all night reading this biography of Michael Faraday. Slams shut the biography, throws it on the table, and says, "Faraday accomplished so much. I am already 21 years old. I might live to be 50. Can I accomplish as much as he did? I am going to hustle." That's what he says. "I'm going to hustle." I love that line. And so he really felt this pain, because he recognized someone who was like him, Faraday, who had accomplished so much more than he had. And so he wanted to compete with him across the generations.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  And you see that same story play out with Julius Caesar, looking at Alexander the Great. You see it with Rockefeller and kind of the generation that came before. Amos Lawrence is the first person that he really aspires to be like. And so it's this very unique source of inspiration, zeal, of seeing someone who came before you and wanting to compete with them because they accomplished so much, but is very common among the great achievers across all domains.

• 2:43David Senra?

  Yeah, I love the fact that anytime you read biographies of Edison, he's obsessed with the word hustle. When he invented the phonograph, he was talking to some guy, and the guy's like, "Hey, if you could hear any historical figure's voice, you know, that's long since dead, who would you choose?" And the guy asked him the question, and he's like, "Well, I would choose Jesus." And Edison's like, "I would choose Napoleon." And he's like, "Why Napoleon?" He goes, "I like the hustler."

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I like a hustler, yeah.

• 3:06David Senra?

  Yeah. So what are some other examples of zeal? Like, how do you think about it, like, the work that you do personally? Because you're studying people with zeal. I guess we should back up and give some people some context. I've been telling people for years that I think you're one of the best podcasters in the world. How to Take Over the World is another solo history podcast. I think there's a lot of overlap between the work that you did with How to Take Over the World and the work that I did with Founders. And so we wind up, you know, studying a lot of the same people, reading a lot of the same books. We've been texting back and forth for years about book recommendations. But like, I understand the presence of zeal in these historical figures. I see it just like you do when I read these books. But like, how do you think about your own life, then?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Well, two things. I mean, I think I've made it sort of my life mission to help people with that, right? Because you need to find people who are like you in character in order to have that sort of connection. So for example, if I read about Leonardo da Vinci, amazing story, I love it, I can learn a lot, but fundamentally, I don't feel that sense of zeal, because his brain is so different from mine. It's like studying an alien. I could just never do what he did. And so by presenting all these different stories to people that I do in How to Take Over the World, I'm hoping that, you know, you can listen to those, and some of those people, you think, "Okay, cool, interesting, but not really for me." But you find one of those stories that just resonates deep in your heart and soul and

• 4:29Speaker 01

  gives you that moment of, no, that person is like me. I could accomplish what they did, but I haven't yet. And it gives you that pain and that sort of motivation to start on that journey. That's how I think about that process.

• 4:40David Senra?

  So wait, if you don't identify with da Vinci, who do you identify with?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  So someone like Walt Disney, for example. I read that story, and I think, "Ooh, I could accomplish something like that." Like, that's someone who is, maybe not exactly. He's obviously an enormously talented person. But that's someone who I feel like their personality is more similar to mine. And so it does give me a little bit more of that feeling.

• 5:01David Senra?

  Tell me more about how you did similarities and personalities between you and Walt.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Walt was a very creative person, of course. This is the first thing that anyone knows about Walt Disney. But this is someone who created empires of the mind, who was a creative leader who got people to buy into a certain aesthetic vision. And I think on some level, I have that ability to do that. One of the most famous things about my podcast is the intro music that people know. They get very excited about it. And I was able to do that myself, just messing around in GarageBand.

• 5:34David Senra?

  I'm very anti-podcast intro.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  I know you are.

• 5:38David Senra?

  Because I'm always just like, I was just like, well, it's always like the worst version of something. Like, I think about what, um, back in the, uh, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple. I know you've done a ton of episodes on Steve Jobs, too. And netbooks were really, really popular, and they were pressuring Steve. And even like his friend Larry Ellison's like, "Why aren't you building netbooks?" And he's like, "Netbooks?" And he goes, "Because they're just shitty laptops." And so he says, instead of being, in his words, "Instead of taking resources and building a shitty laptop, a product shouldn't exist," he redirected them, and they wound up inventing the iPad. And like, I thought that shift was like very interesting. So that's the way I feel about music, like, intro music for podcasts. Yours is the lone example where I'm like, "This is excellent." I didn't know until just now that you were the one that made that.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, in a fit of inspiration. And it's funny, because people, early on, tried to hire me to make intro music for other podcasts, and I just couldn't do it. It was really just 60 minutes of magic. I mean, that's how long it took me. I kind of figured out the beat. I figured out the vocal tone that I liked. I grabbed a few quotes, and boom, it was done in a flash. It was just like one of those magical moments of inspiration. And anyway, so, yeah, Walt was a creative, someone who built empires of the mind. When I think about someone like da Vinci in that, like, actual artistic skill, because Walt was an okay artist.

• 6:59David Senra?

  He was not a great animator.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Illustrator, but he was not a great animator. But da Vinci was. He was exceptional. He just had that kind of eye-hand-eye coordination that I guess I lack, and just the ability to perceive things in a certain way that I just don't think I see the world the way that he does. And his curiosity goes in a different direction. Walt was also an extremely curious person, but he was curious about things that never were, right? About things that could be created. Da Vinci was curious about things as they are in the world. And I think I lean more toward that Walt Disney model of things as they could be and never have been before.

• 7:38David Senra?

  Yeah, I remember I was like poking a little fun at you a few months ago through text messages, because I was going to Tuscany, and I was like, "I read Isaacson's biography of da Vinci, which is great, but it's like 800 pages." And I was like, "Give me the best da Vinci book that you ever read." And I'm in Tuscany, and it was so bad, I literally left it at the hotel. It's like, "Here, we have this." And I was like, "Ben, what the hell was that?" It was like pages and pages about just like the way that he would draw like a hand that was like bent. I'm like, "Why did you tell me to read this? Like, I really enjoyed that part."

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Well, because I think it's difficult to understand da Vinci and what he did unless you do, at least on some level, grasp the science of what he was doing and what had come before. So anyways, but we did get a little bit in the weeds. I'll give that to you.

• 8:22David Senra?

  I think that's an interesting observation, that essentially he had the most attention to detail of things that already exist. Like, you know, his notebooks are famous, like, how, like, all a little detail in like a leaf, for example.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:33David Senra?

  Where Walt was like, "I want to invent things and bring things to life that don't exist," or the, what you called empires of the mind.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Da Vinci and Isaac Newton, they both, they did it in different ways, which I thought was interesting. Da Vinci would write in his notebook, describe, and then he would write something, whereas Isaac Newton would write out actual questions of things that he wanted to answer. The thing that I love about Isaac Newton with his notebooks, which are similar to da Vinci's in some ways, but he called it his wastebook. In other words, like his trash book, like his book of scraps and notes. And I think everyone should have a wastebook, because it really takes off the pressure of what you're thinking about, right? Of, "I don't have to come up with anything refined. I don't have to come up with anything insightful. This is just where I'm going to dump my wasteful thoughts." And I think it's in those moments of-

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Of unimpeded creativity that you have some of your most insightful realizations.

• 9:30David Senra?

  Do you have like notebooks? Do you have journals? Like, do you do this?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Tons. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:34David Senra?

  What's in them?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Waste, like a lot of trash, you know, a lot of trash.

• 9:39David Senra?

  Or personal? What is this, though?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  I have one for each. So I do keep a journal and I started keeping like a very detailed journal since I got diagnosed with cancer. But then I also have a lot of creative notebooks where I will draw very poorly. I will plan out episodes. I'll just kind of start writing kind of thoughts on historical figures and their place in history and how they might relate to my own life. Just kind of little essays, mini essays, just a little paragraph long. And I get some of my best insights that I end up pulling out of there and putting into scripts for episodes from that.

• 10:13David Senra?

  Talk to Rick Rubin about this because he said, you know, he's worked with all the, um, probably some of the most talented artists that have ever existed in music. And he said something that was interesting one time where he said that Eminem might be the most obsessive artist he's ever worked with. And I asked him to elaborate on that. And he was just like, well, he's just constantly writing. And if you look, he's like, no, he's got not millions, but you know, hundreds of notebooks. And Rick asked him one day, he's like, well, how much of what you're writing do you actually use? He's like, almost none of it.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Again, it gives you that feeling of openness, which I think is really essential in any creative pursuit. Of course, there's a time that comes for refining and for polishing. But if you try and start there, you know, I think everyone's had that feeling, at least in like high school, you're trying to write an essay, you get that blank page and you just have no idea where to start. For me, the introductions to my episodes are the hardest part. And so if I let myself get stuck there, then nothing good ever happens. And so I will just write the most garbage, you know, Leonardo da Vinci was an artist, you know, like just terrible, terrible introductions so that I can just get into the meat of the episode and I can just get the juices flowing and then I can return

• 11:23Speaker 01

  to that intro and work on it later.

• 11:25David Senra?

  Why did you start How to Take Over the World to begin with?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Well, because I wanted it to exist in the world. Essentially, um, I was reading this biography of Napoleon and I found myself extremely inspired. And at the time, I was listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast. Loved him. And he had done three or four interviews in a row that I just wasn't interested in. And so I started thinking to myself, who do I wish Tim Ferriss would interview? And I realized I wish Tim Ferriss could interview Napoleon. Obviously, that was impossible, but I immediately had the realization, well, I could do that. I could be Tim Ferriss for dead people, was the idea that popped into my mind. And so I immediately went and searched for it. Who's already doing this? And I really would have been content just to find a podcast and start

• 12:10Speaker 01

  listening to it. But I couldn't find it. And so I thought, oh, okay, there's no way that I'm the only person who's interested in this, so I'll make it. And so that's where the idea came from.

• 12:20David Senra?

  What year is this?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  2018.

• 12:22David Senra?

  Okay. Was Napoleon your first episode?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Napoleon was my first episode.

• 12:25David Senra?

  Which biography?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Uh, Andrew Roberts.

• 12:27David Senra?

  Of course.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Great biography. Napoleon was the first one. I decided to call it How to Take Over the World. But I didn't want people to get the idea that it was just conquerors. So from there, so it was Napoleon, and then it was Steve Jobs, and then kind of the formula was set for the next eight years of my life.

• 12:41David Senra?

  So what do you think are some more of the ideas that you learned from studying these people and from reading these books that you applied to your own life, whether it's work or personal?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Well, it's a big question, right?

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Because I do think that like, there's so much. And as life goes on, certain lessons stand out to you more at certain times than others, right? I know you do a lot of the same biographies, right? Because reading it with a fresh set of eyes, it's just like an entire new experience.

• 13:12David Senra?

  You mean rereading the books?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rereading the books. It's a new experience. But like, some of the things I've been thinking about recently, for example, is I think you actually do an exceptional job of this with Founders, which is the most important realizations are negative realizations, are things that you should not do or things that you should not focus on. So one of the great examples, Steve Jobs, uh, he's at Next, right? He leaves Apple, he founds Next. And they go to this retreat in Carmel, and he's got his founding team there. And they lay out their five top priorities for a Next machine. And it has to be under $10,000, it has to come out by such and such a date, it

• 13:55Speaker 01

  has to have this computing capabilities, it's got to have, you know, certain other capabilities, five things, okay? And so he asks the founding team, of these, which is the highest priority? What is the most important? And so they go around and they discuss, and everyone makes the case for the thing that they're working on. Their CMO is advocating for something, their head of software is advocating for something else, head of hardware is advocating for something else. And they get to the end, and he says, okay, well, the answer is all of the priorities. We have to have all of these things. As a result, it comes out late, it comes out over budget, it comes out over engineered, the Next machine is a terrible machine.

• 14:34David Senra?

  It was so bad, it almost put them out of business. And then he had to sell off his hardware division. Do people know, there's a time in Steve Jobs' life where he was a software entrepreneur?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:43David Senra?

  Against his own wishes.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yes. And even the software itself should have been really successful, and he almost submarines that as well. He manages to get an okay exit out of Next, but I mean, he, he tanks it. I mean, it's terrible.

• 14:56David Senra?

  Me and you just read the book, I think it's called like Steve Jobs in Exile, which I'd highly recommend.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Really good book.

• 15:01David Senra?

  Okay. And so then you fast forward 10 years.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  So, so he is a, at this point in time, he is a terrible executive. That's, I mean, objectively, both in the way he's leading and in the results that he gets when it comes to the market. Fast forward 10 years, he has returned to Apple and his mindset has totally changed, where now he's able to make trade-offs. And so he looks at the iPod, and he says, okay, this is a device that is under-engineered in a lot of ways. There are already other MP3 players on the market that have more storage capacity, can read more file formats, uh, can do more, just more robust MP3 players. And he says, you know, I don't think any of that matters. I think the only

• 15:45Speaker 01

  thing that matters is getting a great user experience that makes it easy for people to quickly get to their music. And so they go to market with this iPod, this MP3 player that is deficient in all these ways. And then it's one of the most successful products of all time, because he is able to make that trade-off, right? Of saying, this, this, all these things don't matter. And I think every great product, every great leader, every great decision comes from understanding that trade-off and realizing what does not matter. And I think, like I said at the beginning, you do a great job with this, because Founders, you said it doesn't have intro music. There's so much that

• 16:25Speaker 01

  it lacks, that especially 10 years ago, people would have told you is necessary to a successful podcast. And you just stripped all of that away. And you said, I actually don't think any of that matters. The only thing that matters is connecting people to these stories of the founders and the insights.

• 16:40David Senra?

  Me and you had a conversation about this like, probably three years ago. And, you know, because you script way more than I do. Like, I have my notes and highlights, but I could literally record an episode of Founders today on the same book, do it again tomorrow, it's gonna be a different episode. It's just like, whatever happens to be on top of mind at that time, as I'm like reacting live to what's going on. And your whole thing was just like, yeah, but what like some kind of like cohesive story. I was like, that's not what I do.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  That's why I think our podcasts are different in a subtle way, and that's, that's fine, right? So it's gonna be a different thing, because you can think about, okay, the iPod was sort of under-engineered from a hardware standpoint, but had this really elegant software that connected people. For other people, it's gonna be the opposite trade-off, right? It's going to be something, you can look at Elon Musk with the original, um, Tesla with the Roadster. And people said it needs great range, it needs to be affordable, because people who go for electric cars are very cost-conscious. They do it because they don't want to spend money on gas and that sort of thing. And he had sort of the opposite realization, which is, no, actually, we can go way up market. People don't care about any of that stuff as long as it goes fast and it is cool and it's beautiful.

• 17:48David Senra?

  Yeah, I think he said sexy, is the way he wanted it to look.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  And so you can go, I mean, multiple examples from history that I can think of.

• 17:55David Senra?

  This idea of breaking trade-offs that you and I've talked about in the past, I think is really interesting. Your example for the Wright Brothers, I think, is really, uh, another like great way to describe the idea that you're talking about. Do you want to tell me?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  So that's where I had this original realization, is reading about the Wright Brothers. Because at the time that they're trying to solve flight, there are dozens of other people trying to solve flight. It's popular at the time. It's, uh, it's like the AI of the moment, right? A lot of different people are working on it. Everyone realizes it's the future. So why do they succeed? Well, because everyone is doing the obvious thing. And what's the obvious thing? You're trying to get something in the air. So you're focusing on propulsion and lift of like, you're focused on trying to make something fly. And Wilbur Wright realizes, that's actually an easy problem to solve. The hard problem to solve is control, is once you're in the air, can you stay in the air? Because he actually realizes

• 18:48Speaker 01

  this from looking at birds. He's looking at birds and he realizes, wow, if you look at them, they're making micro adjustments, you know, multiple micro adjustments every second. They're shifting their wings, they're moving up and down, they're moving all the time. And so he realizes, we actually don't need to focus on lift or on getting into the air at all. We need to focus on, once we're in the air, how do we stay in the air? And so he goes to North Carolina, he builds these gliders. And for multiple years, they are just working on control, on once we're in the air, how do we stay?

• 19:20David Senra?

  And a glider, really, it's like a big kite, is the way you think about it.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And they go to North Carolina because there's wind coming off the ocean all the time. And so they just have someone on the ground holding rope while he's in this giant kite, figuring out, all right, how do I steer? How do we, how do we change this thing to make it so that we can stay in the air? At the end, he basically slaps an engine on it and it's done. He was right.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Once you figure out how to stay in the air, the problem of lift was trivial. And so it was that realization that actually, lift is not, this is not an important problem to solve, that allows them to focus on the more important thing.

• 19:55David Senra?

  So why do you think breaking trade-offs is such a profound idea?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Because especially today.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  There are all sorts of ideas about things that matter. So for example, your daily routine. I could tell you that yoga is important for your daily routine. I could tell you that lifting weights is important. I could tell you that journaling is important. I could tell you that meditating is important. And you'll find people that tell you all these things. So you have all these ideas of all these routines that you should be doing for your wellness, for your health, for to be successful in life. If you took all that advice, your day, your morning routine would go until like 1:00 in the afternoon, you would never get anything accomplished, right? It's your ability to say, okay, one of these things actually is so important that you can take it to the negative, that you can say it's worth cutting out this and this and

• 20:49Speaker 01

  this and this in order to do. So until you are able to actually make a trade off, until you are able to say this is more valuable than that, things don't really matter. Like there's so many priorities competing for your time and attention. You have to be able to make trade offs if you're going to be successful.

• 21:05David Senra?

  How have you done that?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  You know, as Steve Jobs said, focus means saying no. So it's about all of the things that I don't do, all of the opportunities that you get as a podcaster that people bring to you that I'm sure you experience as well, that you just say, no, I'm not going to do that. So for example, I told you early on, people came to me and said, but we want you to design our intro music. And so at the beginning, I was trying to do like a lot of that work because it was money and early on I just needed money so that I could keep podcasting. But as time goes on, I just realized, no, I need to, I need to stop producing other people's podcasts.

• 21:41David Senra?

  You were producing.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  My First Million, yeah. And eventually I just told them.

• 21:44David Senra?

  That's how I found you.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, I just need to, I need to get out of here. I need to focus on my own thing. I have to stop producing for other people. I have to stop launching these side businesses. I have to stop my agency, which I ended up shutting down and just focus on this one thing so that it can be as successful as it can be.

• 22:03David Senra?

  Hey, real quick, instead of having ads in today's episode, my partners Ramp, AppLovin and Deal are donating to Ben Wilson's GoFundMe. If you are in the position to do so, please consider donating as well. The link to do so is in our show notes. I would greatly appreciate it. Okay, so we have a handful of ideas that you picked up from the eight years that you've been doing this project. Zeal was one, the importance of breaking trade offs is another. What else do you have?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  What makes someone a great leader? And in many ways, that's like the question.

• 22:31David Senra?

  That you're trying to answer.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  That I'm trying to answer through telling the life stories of these people. That's right.

• 22:35David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  And in some ways it's different, right? Because I study conquerors and artists and entrepreneurs. But the thing I've been looking for is the through lines that connect all of those people. And actually, there's not that many, right? Because again, people are very different. There's different archetypes and different types of leaders, but there are a couple. And one of those things, and I think probably the most important, is number one, they have vision. Actually, one of my favorite quotes about vision comes from Genghis Khan. And I love it because it's from Genghis Khan, right? It's from like, and it sounds like Silicon Valley guru advice from like 2010, right? But his, his quote is, without the vision of a goal, a man cannot hope to manage his

• 23:20Speaker 01

  own life, let alone the life of others. And when I saw that, I thought, wow, it really is true that the same thing that makes Genghis Khan a great leader is the same thing that makes Edwin Land or Steve Jobs a great leader. They have vision, they have a goal. And then the second thing is that they're able to express or communicate that goal. So across any domain, these people are excellent communicators. That changes, the medium changes. Some of them are great writers, some of them are great speakers. Some of them are great at writing essays, some of them are greater, better at long form, some of them are great at one on one, some mask.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  But in any way, in any situation, in some way, they are great communicators. So they have a vision and they're able to communicate it to a lot of people. And the third thing I would say is they are able to focus. So they're able to shut out everything else. And to me, those are like the three great through lines of great leaders across industries, domains, conquerors, artists, entrepreneurs. That's what links them.

• 24:30David Senra?

  But do you find as like you're studying these people, like you notice where you might be deficient in these traits? And are you able to like change your behavior once you have the access to new information?

• 24:39Speaker 01

  I hope so. You know, it's not, I am trying to communicate it to other people and I'm trying to be helpful as a Sherpa to connect other people to great leaders. But I hope that I'm able to internalize those. I try to, I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that I'm doing it as well. I'm sure you do as well, right? Like you're trying to implement the stuff that you're learning into Founders Podcast.

• 25:00David Senra?

  The whole activity is just completely selfish. It's just like, I didn't have positive examples from childhood. I didn't have a mentor. I didn't have anything. The, the whole founders is going to be 10 years old this month and like 10 days from now or something. And the whole idea came from this random interview with Elon Musk I saw in 2012. And he was asked, like, you come to this country with no money. You didn't know anybody. Did you have mentors, like who helped you? And he's like, no, I didn't have mentors. I looked for mentors in a historical context. And he says, I thought reading biographies and autobiographies were helpful. And the time was like huge, Matt, this is like huge Tesla fan and they only had like the model last time. And he mentioned like Henry Ford and Nikola Tesla. And now I can't even remember the other people in there. I've probably seen.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Edison, yeah.

• 25:41David Senra?

  Yeah, Edison.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Edison is basically the same person, by the way.

• 25:44David Senra?

  Ben Franklin was another one. I wanted you to say more about that in one second. And I was like, oh, I should just like read more biographies and autobiographies. And you start doing that and you're like, oh, this is super valuable because this person lives an entire life. And then somebody, essentially the way I think about it is like, somebody had a 40 year career, somebody spent multiple years writing about that, documenting all the, the lessons that person learned. I can read it in 40 hours and then turn it into a podcast that you can listen to in 45 minutes. That compression is insanely valuable for people that, you know, where their time is excessively, you know, valuable and scarce.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:17David Senra?

  Why do you think Edison and Musk or Edison and Elon are similar?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Well, their lives are just linked in really remarkable ways. Musk himself has pointed this out. He said, the car company is called Tesla, but in many ways I'm more similar to Thomas Edison than I am to Nikola Tesla. Because he is a great inventor, but more than that, he's also like a great industrialist. He's great at bringing products to market and making them successful. Their personalities are extremely similar, their backgrounds are extremely similar, their physiognomy, like they look very similar. They both have these massive heads that people would comment on. Like they, there's even this one, their, their fathers are very similar, that they're both these kind of like entrepreneurial, but kind of crazy and like they don't have a great relationship with them.

• 27:07David Senra?

  There's some wild stories in Edison's biographies because you remember, he was the most famous person, when he was alive, was the most famous person in America.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:13David Senra?

  And so like Walt Disney said Edison was his hero, Jeff Bezos said Edison was his hero, like you hear this over and over again. But I remember reading this book by Edison, I think it was published in like 1957. And when he was like five or six years old, he like misbehaved and they lived in like this little town or little village. They literally put up a note saying that, come to the town square on a Saturday morning and watch me beat the shit out of my kid. That literally happened to him. And then you hear Elon tells these crazy stories. I think Eric Dorgensen was on this podcast earlier about his book of Elon and where I think Elon relates to story one time where his dad gets in his face, and I think Elon's like 10 or something, and he's just screaming for hours about how stupid and useless and that he'll never be successful.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Well, and both of them were considered like actually kind of dumb as kids. So in Elon's case, it's probably because he's like a little autistic and has trouble communicating with people and emoting with them. In Edison's case, it was because he was mostly deaf and so had trouble communicating with people for that reason. And so, yeah, they, they were not like shepherded towards greatness as children. They kind of had to fight for it because people didn't think they were bright initially. There's even one weird biographical element where, you know, Elon is from South Africa, but his mother's family actually have transplants. He has deep roots in America and Canada. So Elon's family was in Canada and he had like a great grandfather who was a.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Like a politically minded preacher, who got in trouble with the government and so fled over the border from Canada to the US and ended up living in Minnesota or Iowa. Edison has, his grandfather on his maternal side is like the exact same person, but he was in the US, was kind of a preacher, kind of got in trouble with the government, people ran him out of town, they had to move to Canada across the border. So it's like weird biographical things between the two of them that make you wonder if it's like the same person reborn. It makes you believe in reincarnation.

• 29:12David Senra?

  You collect these things more, even more than I do. Where you like, you pick up on these weird things. Like you just said, a lot of these people have giant heads. People talk about how big their head is.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oprah was one of those, by the way.

• 29:22David Senra?

  Who?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Oprah.

• 29:23David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  So when she was an actress, like they couldn't find hats for her that weren't big enough to fit over her.

• 29:28David Senra?

  I have, I have something, I was like tormented when I was a kid because my head like basically is this size, but I like, I kind of grew into it. But like, my brother, friends, my friends were over when I was like in elementary school and he's like, "Shut up basketball head." I'm like, "Oh no, he said, he said the nickname." And now, and then they brought it back to school and then they called me Lollipop because I was super skinny and I had this giant round head.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:49David Senra?

  But no, so you mentioned the big headed thing. You mentioned that they had weird diets, which I think, didn't Edison like just drink milk or something?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Milk, he was very into milk for a while. Yeah, I would only drink milk.

• 30:01David Senra?

  So they had weird diets and then insane levels of energy though, is another thing that you would pick up on. Again, it's just like mentioned, it's sometimes not even a main part of a book. You're just like, "Oh, that's weird." It's like, it's mentioned a few times about this guy has unusual, Napoleon's same thing, unusual levels of energy.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was one of those things, I felt like I was going crazy, like a person with a cork board is connecting all the strings. But like the first five biographies I did, Napoleon has a quote, "If you want to dine well, dine with Campesaris." That's one of his good ones, right? "If you want to dine poorly, dine with LeBron." He's kind of making fun of him because he's German. "If you want to dine quickly, dine with me." Because he would eat dinner in like 15 minutes, right? And get back to work.

• 30:39David Senra?

  But his dinner was like a whole chicken.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, well, no, because he ate, well, as he got older, he got kind of portly. But when he was young, he was known for being a peckish eater. Not only would he eat quickly, but he would eat light. He would not eat very much at all. And it was commented on how little he ate. And then you read about Steve Jobs and he has all these weird diets. He eats almost nothing. He'll go on diets where he only eats apples for months at a time, right? And he eats very little. And then you read about Vladimir Putin, and this is someone who would eat like a boiled egg in a day, you know, as his entire diet. And then you read about Joan of Arc and she fasts all the time and she barely eats anything. And before I realized it, I've got like 20 stories of all these people who are all extremely light eaters. And it's like, wow, something weird is going on here.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  And you know, the realization I've come to is it's obviously not about the food, right? It's not about the food. But what it is, I think food is a good test for if you're obsessed with something. Do you find yourself skipping meals? Do you find yourself forgetting to eat? That is a really good litmus test for whether you are truly obsessed with something or not. And all these people are obsessives. And so, yes, they eat very peckishly because they're so obsessed with something else.

• 31:49David Senra?

  I think when you had these three ideas that you were connecting, I think the fourth one, you said focus, focusing, maybe obsession could be interchangeable. But like, I think you would have to add, like the fourth like leg of that would have to be obsession.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Obsession.

• 32:00David Senra?

  Like, there's no write about books about normal, well-adjusted people. Like, they're all obsessive. I mean, if you look back, even on that counter, there's probably, I don't know, 25 books. I see John D. Rockefeller looking at me right now. It's just like, every single person they wrote a book about is just obsessive about weird shit.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  I think, for me, I would love to know what book you think best communicates that obsession. For me, there's one book I, well, there are a few books I reread, but there's one I reread every year. And it is Arnold's Education of a Bodybuilder.

• 32:29David Senra?

  It's literally right back, it's on the right shelf, one, two, three, five books up. I can see from here.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  And it's because a lot of these biographies or autobiographies are written retrospectively. And Education of a Bodybuilder is written right in the middle of it. And you can just feel the obsession, right? This is someone who not, was obsessed in the past and then now has gotten to a better place. This is someone who is obsessed right now, who can't stop thinking about bodybuilding and his craft. And so I just, even though I'm not...

• 33:02David Senra?

  No, you were jacked.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was more jacked.

• 33:05David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  But anyway, but like, that level of obsession comes through. I don't think I've found anyone who's better able to communicate what it feels like to be in that, in the moment than Education of a Bodybuilder.

• 33:17David Senra?

  I think he just, he also does in that book, because it's the first like 120 pages. You don't have to read the first 120 pages because the second half of the book is literally his workouts.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I don't agree with that.

• 33:26David Senra?

  I think he's 30 when the book is published and you know, I figure it's an autobiography of the first, you know, there's 30 years of his life. But how you were just connecting all of these traits that appear across, whether they're conqueror and artist, they were living in different parts of history, different parts of the country, or the world, rather, like, there's like through line there. He identified the same way that I got to the top of this weird, obscure profession. Because at the time, being a bodybuilder was, he was like a freak. Like, you were a weirdo. There was almost no money in it. It's like, what are you doing? I think when he started in Austria, he said there's like five bodybuilders in the entire country.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:57David Senra?

  It was like, his parents literally thought something was wrong with him.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:00David Senra?

  And he's like, "Well, actually, if you like break down where I started and how I, and where I'm at, and then look at all the things I used to get there." He's like, "I'm going to use the same exact playbook that I got to the top of bodybuilding to build a business empire," he talks about, "to get to the top of movies." He didn't mention politics, I don't think. But like, he's like, "No, I'm just going to take that same playbook." And he's calling his shot before he does it. He's only 30. He's like, "I'm just going to run the same playbook and these same traits. And if I apply this discipline obsession to whatever I aim it at, I will be successful." It's incredible.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and to the point about politics, you know, as a foreign-born person, he cannot be president of the United States. Governor of California is basically the highest office that you can achieve for someone from his background. And he achieved it, right? So yes, like across four domains, he does it. And he says that he is obsessed with the stories of Alexander the Great and Napoleon and people like that.

• 34:53David Senra?

  Charlemagne.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, he loves that stuff. And it's interesting because it was, you talked about, it was kind of looked down on. And so like, his parents are concerned, like people, it was viewed as shady and weird. But having said that, he talks about how once he is locked into a vision, a goal for himself, everyone starts helping him, right? People at lunch at his middle school, or I guess at this point he's in high school, are like, "Hey, Arnold, you need to get bigger, have my milk." You know? "Oh, like, you need to rest up for your competition, let me carry that for you." People are doing stuff. There's this good quote by Goethe, the author. He says, "At the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you."

• 35:38David Senra?

  I love that.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  It's such a good quote. And you see that in the life of Arnold, like when he commits and he has that vision and he articulates it to everyone. He's like, "Hey, I know you guys think this is freakish, but I'm going to achieve this." Everyone is like, "Okay, what can I do to help?" And all these strangers are helping him.

• 35:53David Senra?

  I'm so glad you said that. I think that's such an important point. My friend Daniel Axel, founder of Spotify, said this about me. He's just like, "You're very easy to understand, so therefore you're very easy to help." He's like, "All you care about is podcasting, that's it." So it's like, if somebody, and you have this passion, you try to like preach to other people and so therefore if somebody wants to help you, you're very legible. Like, it's not like, "Oh, how can I help this guy?" It's like, "Well, he's just obsessed with podcasts." So there's a million different ways that you could help him in that domain. And I feel that the great founders do this too. They're able to explain in just a handful of words what's important to them. And the example I always use, like if you went to the studio back there in the other house and you see on the desk where I record founders, they, there's just one sticky note that's right in front of me. I don't even think you could see it on camera. And it says three words, insanely great products. And like Steve Jobs was able to describe what was important to him

• 36:37David Senra?

  when he was 19 to when he was 55, insanely great products. "Do you want to make insanely good products? Then come with me. If you're not interested in this, remove yourself from my life." He's very easy to understand.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that idea. That's a great framework, make yourself easy to help.

• 36:52David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Because that's connected, of course, to having a very clear vision. And once you do have a clear vision, and once you make yourself easy to help, it really does, it feels like people are conspiring to assist you. It's like stuff just starts popping out of the woodwork to get you where you want to go.

• 37:06David Senra?

  Tell me, you've studied way more like religious figures than I have. You've done more episodes on them. Tell me what you like, what you've learned about reading about these kind of people.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've done a few religious figures, Jesus, Brigham Young, Joan of Arc. I mean, in some ways, actually, even though I'm a Latter-day Saint, so Brigham Young is the one most connected and well, and Jesus are the most connected to my faith tradition. Joan of Arc, even though she was Catholic, is maybe the one that's captured my attention the most. How much do you know about Joan of Arc?

• 37:33David Senra?

  Almost nothing.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Really interesting.

• 37:35David Senra?

  I listened to that episode, but it was like three years.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a long time ago. I mean, really interesting, a really interesting person. I mean, she's a great example of what we're talking about, right? Because she comes onto a scene, she's like 15 years old. She's a girl. It's the Middle Ages. People are literally like swinging swords and throwing spears, right? She's no place on a battlefield. She's so young and besides being young, she fasts a lot. She's like malnourished, she's this thin, right? She's little. And the French have been trying to kick the English out of France for years, for years and years and years, and making no progress.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  And she shows up and immediately, once the French start following her, they have success. And it's impossible to explain. It is actually one of those things that makes you like start to believe in the divine because you're like, "Whoa, I think what is going on here?" But if you want to explain it in a material sense, it just is, there's only one thing that's different about her and everyone else, which is before her, the King of France and these dukes that are assisting him and all these field marshals, they all have these competing priorities and all this stuff they're trying to do. And then here comes along this young girl who says,

• 38:55Speaker 01

  "I have one priority, that one priority is winning this war against the English. God is on our side, follow me, we will be victorious." So she has just that clarity of vision. Then everyone lines up behind her and they immediately start having success because of that clarity. And so it's just this remarkable example of...

• 39:17Speaker 01

  She lacks literally everything else except for focus and clarity of vision. And that, and only having that is enough to be victorious.

• 39:26David Senra?

  I don't know why, but there's this great essay by Paul Graham that comes to mind when I hear you speak about this. It's just like, he was like, well, what's more predictive of success? Intelligence or determination? And he has this like thought experiment in there. He's like, well, let's say you start out with one person that's 100 out of 100 with intelligence and 100 out of 100 with determination. He's like, it doesn't take long if you just, you keep the intelligence and you just take away determination. You have this brilliant, yet ineffectual person. And he's writing to entrepreneurs and he goes, if you do the reverse where you keep, keep determination at 100 out of 100, but you take away intelligence. He's like, you have someone that winds up rich, but they have like trash hauling businesses or something like that. They just won't stop. So they eventually stumble into something, a way to serve other people.

• 40:09David Senra?

  And they just keep doing, because their determination is at 100, at max level.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Well, you look at these people. I don't think Elon Musk is the smartest person at any of his companies. He's very, very smart. Don't get me wrong. He's extremely smart. But you could probably find an engineer with a higher IQ at Tesla, definitely at SpaceX. You could with a higher IQ than Elon. The same thing with Steve Jobs. He was not the smartest person at his company. But they are the most determined. Like you, you just, you don't find people like that. They are insane people in how determined they are. Elon has a great quote. Someone asks him, how do you stay an optimist about? Cause he's trying to accomplish these big things. He's trying to go to Mars. He's trying to save the world in terms of save our climate with, with electric cars.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Save the world from AI with Grok. And so they say, how do you keep your optimism? And he says, optimism, pessimism, screw that. I'm going to get it done. And that's it. That's the level of determination. Like he doesn't think about optimism, whether he can do it or he can't do it. It's just, I have to do it. It has to be done. And so that feeling, that, that's level of determination is what separates these people from everyone else.

• 41:24David Senra?

  I've heard your Brigham Young episodes. You did two or three?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 41:28David Senra?

  Multiple parts?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:30David Senra?

  Were excellent. If that was your main takeaway from Joan of Arc, what would your main takeaway from Brigham be? Aren't you related to him?

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is my great, great grandfather. Yeah.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  From Brigham, I think it is my, my main takeaway was, A, again, finding something you believe in. This is, this was someone who was a true believer. Number two, unceasing action. Again, this is someone who's not, not that smart. Like a lot of the people who followed him were a lot smarter than him. But this is someone who is unbelievably determined and was just relentless. Just would not stop. You know, uh, there's, there's a good quote about, um, another Latter Day Saint, Brandon Flowers, okay? Lead singer of The Killers. And The Killers were a part of all these group of bands that got big in the early 2000s.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  So you had The Killers and you had Franz Ferdinand and whatever, The Strokes. And they all have albums that hit it big at around the same time. Brandon Flowers is Mormon, doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, doesn't smoke, doesn't really party. And so they were interviewing, I think he was the lead singer of The Strokes. And he was saying, we all had these hit albums at the same time. And like, we have a hit album and we're touring and we're partying or having a good time. And like, I'm in the middle of this and all of a sudden I read, The Killers have put out another album. And I'm like, will you please calm down? We're trying to enjoy the fruits of our labor here. And it's that feeling of relentlessness. That's what you get when, when competitors talk about these people who succeed.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  It's always like, will you please slow down? Will you please act like a normal person? Because the level of determination relentless action that they take is not normal.

• 43:17David Senra?

  And you saw that in Brigham?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  I saw that in Brigham Young. I mean, he had more of that relentlessness than, than almost anyone I've ever read about.

• 43:25David Senra?

  What about Jesus?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Jesus, of course, is depending on your belief, like part God. It's difficult to, uh, to square with everyone else. But Jesus, the thing that separates him is, well, one of the things you see in early Christianity is something that's similar to Nike. I remember reading about Nike, reading the biography of Phil Knight. You're kind of waiting for this moment of like, all right, when does stuff really, what changes? And soon you realize nothing changes. The company grows 50% every year for like 20 years. And it's just this idea of compounding. And it's the same thing with Jesus.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  You're waiting for like kind of the big break of Christianity and it never really happens. It's just Christianity grows like 50% per year, every year for centuries. Until it becomes the dominant ideology in, in the entire world. Jesus is his ability to persuade, I think, is, uh, is the number one thing that I took away from him. There was something about him and we can get into some of it. The Paul Johnson biography, I think, does a really good job of.

• 44:39David Senra?

  That's the one I read. Because it's a, it's a biography of Jesus written by a believer.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:44David Senra?

  And my point was like, like my mom was like a fundamentalist Christian, you know? Unfortunately, she like, she took it to a very extreme. Like she got diagnosed with cancer and to the point where like she tried to pray her cancer away, you know? And like took me like two years to convince her, uh, to go to an oncologist. And then at that point, I'm living in Miami, she's in Orlando. And like, if I literally, I had to drive up there to go to every appointment with her. Because if I didn't go, she would just skip the appointments. So it's like, like I have like a hard time reconciling this even to this day. Because like, you know, I went to church every single Sunday against my will, many, many cases like Wednesday night. But my point was just like, I wanted to make an episode, not, I wanted to make an episode as like,

• 45:26David Senra?

  if you believe that Jesus is, you know, Christ and God, that you'd get something out of it. And if you don't believe that, what are the facts that we don't like? Nothing supernatural, just like, what do we actually know about the person that we know existed?

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:38David Senra?

  And that, I think Paul Johnson's biography is like the best. If you, if you want that story, I think Paul Johnson's biography is the best book to read on that.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Well, and because Paul Johnson talks about how often the eyes of Jesus are described. All the time in the New Testament, it's talking about, and Jesus looked and Jesus beheld. It's always talking about where he's looking in his eyes. And it's one of these things, this is another one that's, it's kind of like the light eater thing that you're like, whoa, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. So many of these people are light eaters. So many of them, people talk about their eyes.

• 46:11David Senra?

  They have these intense stares.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Intense eyes and these intense stares. Whether that is Steve Jobs or Alexander Hamilton or Jesus, like all these people have these remarkable stares.

• 46:22David Senra?

  Out of the conquerors, the dictators, the religious figures, the artists, the entrepreneurs. If you could only study one category of these people personally, what do you find most fascinating?

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Probably the conquerors. I just think that, um, life is made of hierarchies. We're all competing in these different hierarchies. Uh, whether that is social, whether that is career, economic, athletic, artistic. People compete. That's what people do. And it forms these hierarchies. But the highest hierarchy, the one that kind of is at the top of everything else is the hierarchy of violence. The, the people who can most effectively channel violence. And that's conquerors.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  And so they, uh, are the ones who sit atop like the artists. They commission all the great art and the great merchants, the great entrepreneurs, the great founders, like, ultimately kind of have to be responsive to, to politics at the end of the day. So I think it's, those are the most interesting stories because that is the pinnacle of human achievement is conquest.

• 47:39David Senra?

  Are there any other books that you reread every year? Like you said, you reread The Education of a Bodybuilder by Alvin Schuster.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Well, one I read for fun every year is Ender's Game. I do, have you read Ender's Game?

• 47:50David Senra?

  I don't think so.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  That's fiction that you would love.

• 47:52David Senra?

  Yeah. Um, I've, I've listened to the audiobook.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:56David Senra?

  Yeah. Cause I think, um, I got, I was really interested in Sean Parker for a while. This is probably like 10, 10 years ago. Whenever he popped, he had, he popped up on Twitter one time and just had this epic run and it kind of disappeared. I was like, what is going on here? And I remember hearing him in an interview talk about Ender's Game. And I think I listened to the audiobook probably like a decade ago.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And then Mind of Napoleon, since I discovered it, I have reread that every year.

• 48:16David Senra?

  I just did another episode on it. Again, same thing. 300 pages of just Napoleon, his own words, published in again, 1956, 1957. Like it's one of the best books ever, you could ever read.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  One of the things that I think, I think you highlighted well, that I've been thinking about recently is, Napoleon was an unbelievably religious person. And that's obviously not true in a traditional sense. He was not very Catholic. He was not like a believing Christian by any stretch of the imagination. But the way he talks about destiny, destiny was clearly his God.

• 48:50David Senra?

  He says destiny must be fulfilled. That is my chief doctrine.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yes. And he treated it, destiny like God. He had this unbelievable faith in it. And I actually think that Steve Jobs was an incredibly religious person too. He was a believer, even though it's not a traditional, it was kind of this California atheistic, agnostic Buddhism. Right? But he really, really believed in it. And I think that sincerity of belief is part of what allowed them to be successful. I think people who are like kind of double minded are, are always unstable and unable to make.

• 49:25David Senra?

  What do you mean by double minded?

• 49:27Speaker 01

  People who espouse things that they don't really believe in, who maybe believe only lukewarmly in what they're actually trying to pursue. Like you are a great example of a real believer. Like you believe in founders, in the mission of founders and what it's trying to accomplish. And you can tell, there are certain podcasters you listen to, they mostly believe, but they don't totally believe in what they're doing.

• 49:52David Senra?

  We had a podcaster dinner last night and you should see the text, my partner and co-founder, Rob Moore, sitting behind you. The text I sent him at like six this morning. It's just like, oh boy.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Like, so for example, Napoleon,

• 50:10Speaker 01

  true believer, like, he kind of was able to cast aside Christianity because he didn't really believe in it, and have this other religion that he very sincerely believed in. There's another, I can't remember which king it was of France, but he was a Protestant. He had grown up a Protestant. And they wouldn't accept him as king as a Protestant, so he had to convert to Catholicism. So he said, "Paris is worth a mass." And he converted to Catholicism. That king, of course, was not a great conqueror. Like, you are never going to be someone who accomplishes great things in life if you don't have a genuine sincere belief at the heart of what you do.

• 50:46David Senra?

  I love the summary of that idea as double-minded. That is really great.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  That's a phrase from the Bible. I didn't come up with that. I think that's in the Old Testament, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

• 50:59David Senra?

  Yeah, the way I think about this is like, we talked about a couple of traits that we've now added. Obsession is the fourth one, and maybe a fifth one would be like the ability to evangelize. Like, it doesn't matter like what it happened to be. Like, thinking of Rockefeller, because I see him, you know, his face right now. And like, what does he evangelize? He wanted to impose order on what he saw as chaos. And the fact is, like, he controlled not just a commodity, but an entire industry. Those brand new that he got in on, essentially from day one. And he was able to evangelize highly successful other founders in that same industry. To like, sell their businesses and to come with me on this mission of imposing, you know, order into this chaos.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Because Rockefeller

• 51:42Speaker 01

  has these two influences in life. His father, who has a mania for money. His father is obsessed with money, and he is-

• 51:50David Senra?

  And having multiple families.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  And having multiple families, right?

• 51:53David Senra?

  He's a bigamist.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  He's a bigamist, he is a huckster, he's always selling these fake cures, whatever. He has mania for money. And his mother is incredibly religious, right? She's old Puritan stock, like, real, real Christian woman. And he discovers this biography of Amos Lawrence, who gives away crisp dollar bills, is what he says. And gives away $100,000 in his lifetime. And he's like 10 years old, and he tells his childhood friend, "I'm gonna be worth $100,000 someday. I'm gonna do it too." And he like, you know, because Amos Lawrence is the guy who gave away $100,000. And he found in that the ability to bring together his two passions, which were money and Christianity.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  And so he was able to justify those two things and then have this like, very sincere belief. I think my favorite quote about belief comes from Phil Knight. And he talks about, in Shoe Dog, trying to sell encyclopedias and then trying to sell-

• 52:55David Senra?

  Mutual funds.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Yep, mutual funds. And he's not that great of a salesman. And then he starts trying to sell Tiger shoes, and he's an exceptional salesman. He'd sell like crazy.

• 53:05David Senra?

  Can't keep them in stock.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yes. And he says, "What is the difference between the first few things and the third?" And he says, "Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible." I love that quote. "Belief is irresistible." And it's so true. When you find someone who really believes, it's irresistible.

• 53:20David Senra?

  Yeah, passion is infectious. Like, there's people, I always talk about this guy named Steve Rinella. You know, he's a podcaster, a writer, he makes this show on Netflix, he does a bunch of things, right? I think primarily, he might describe himself as a writer, and his writing is incredible. But he has a passion for the life of outdoors. Hunting, fishing, camping, these are things I don't even do. But the guy is so, first of all, so intelligent, and is mission-driven, right? And so passionate. I said one time, I was like, "This guy could read, he can make a podcast of reading the phone book." And I would just listen to him. He's just like, "I'm not even interested in the same subject he is, but his passion has infected me." And then he's also taught me a ton of, a ton about like, the natural world and history,

• 54:03David Senra?

  and all these other people that played a role in like, the frontier and all this, all the crazy stuff. A lot of it being American history. Yeah, it's just like, I got completely wrapped up in this guy's passion, and he made me part of his mission.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  That's what's irresistible about it, right? It's like, it's not even something you care about, and yet for that moment, you kind of get sucked into this vortex of passion.

• 54:23David Senra?

  Yeah, and then he pulls, like, very similar to the work that you and I do. He pulls like, these ideas or these principles out that he might have learned from, on a very grueling 11-day hunt in Alaska, but that are applicable to whether you're building a company, or conquering a nation, or, you know, creating a sculpture. It's like, these principles you can adapt, you know, across these different domains, these different professions. Is there anything that you feel, because our work overlaps a lot, that like, you have discovered that I'm missing?

• 54:51Speaker 01

  You really believe in the insights. And I really believe in the power of the story. And I don't think either of those approaches are wrong. So I don't think there's anything missing. Like, I don't think there's anything I have found that you haven't found, or at least nothing that comes to mind. Because honestly, like, a lot of the lessons are the lessons. You know, you learn them pretty quick. For me, that's why I like to focus on the stories. It's because, but sometimes when it's framed in a slightly different way, with a slightly different problem, or a slightly different setting, all of a sudden, it clicks for you. You know, Brigham Young, I learned the same things that I learned from Edwin Land, or I learned from Joan of Arc.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  But just that slightly different setting, that different personality, the way the challenge is framed, will make it click differently for you at a different time. So that's why I get very intrigued by the stories, and that's just why we have different approaches, I think.

• 55:51David Senra?

  So that, I think, is the perfect time or spot to transition into like, the second thing that I want to talk to you about, which is, I've said, I think, a few times in this episode, like, you're one of my favorite podcasters. My life has greatly benefited from your work. And I think you're world-class at what you do. And I think I've told you this even before, you thought there was a business here. And I remember these conversations we were having about like, "Hey, ditch the agency, stop producing," like, doing all this other stuff, right? I remember that one night when we were in Austin, it was me, you, and Cliff Weitzman. Do you remember this conversation?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:21David Senra?

  And essentially, me, you, and Cliff talked about your business and your podcast for like, probably 90 minutes. Because both Cliff and I were like, super fans of your work. And we're just like, "Man, if you just focus, like, you have the thing. You've already done the difficult thing." And so, you know, I obviously called you, I'll give some background here. I was about to record with Miki Malka, I was in the Bay Area. And, you know, I try to sell ads for you all the time. I don't get any money off it. Just do it because I love you and I want you to succeed. And I remember like, "Hey, Ben, I only got like 60 seconds, I'm about to record, but do you have any, I have a good partner for you, I think. Do you have any ad inventory?" And you're like, "Uh, well, something's going on with the podcast, I should, you know, I need to tell you about." And then I was like, "All right, just tell me now."

• 57:04David Senra?

  And he's like, "You know, I don't want to like ruin your recording." And I was like, "Ben, what the fuck is going on?" And you're like, "I have cancer." And I was like, "Oh, shit." And then I was like, "I'm gonna call you back, I'm gonna call you back when I'm done." And then, we obviously talked about it, and then you did what I think is one of the most profound episodes I've ever heard, which is on how to take over the world feed, and it's called the cancer episode. And you lay out, like, what you're going through right now, and then your your perspective on this. It's just like,

• 57:38David Senra?

  I don't know a word to say, it's remarkable. So can you just tell us like, what's going on right now in your life? And then what's going on in your mind as you go through this experience?

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, so,

• 57:53Speaker 01

  you know, I was feeling terrible, I was feeling really bad. And I went in and saw a doctor, and this is just this primary care doctor. I didn't even have a doctor, because I don't like to go see the doctor. So I'd met this woman for the first time. And I say, you know, "I got all this stuff going on, I'm losing weight, I can't really explain it." And she starts poking around in my body, and she pokes me and says, "What's that?" And I said, "I don't know."

• 58:15David Senra?

  Where did she poke you at?

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Right here, right in my liver. And she said, "You need to, you need to go get scanned right away." And so I got scanned, and I had a lot of cancer, like, a lot of cancer. The point, some of these oncologists were like, "How did you just keep functioning normally? How did you not come see a doctor earlier?"

• 58:37David Senra?

  What was your answer to that question?

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Everything in my life, you get aches and pains, and they all go away. I had always gotten better, you know what I mean? My back hurts, okay, rest a little bit, it'll get better. And so, yeah, stuff had started hurting, but I was getting older. And I just thought, stuff would get better. And it was really only after months that I thought, this is really not normal. And so that's why, that's why I hadn't gone in earlier. I think that's true of a lot of men, by the way. So, you know, go get checked out if something feels off.

• 59:14David Senra?

  Didn't you say that you were initially reluctant to go to the doctor, and then you were putting your

• 59:21David Senra?

  symptoms into Claude?

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I still like, I still was putting it off. Even as things were getting worse. And I put my symptoms into Claude and Claude sort of said, this isn't the kind of thing like going next week when you have a chance is the kind of thing like, go in right now. If you can't be seen right now, go to an emergency room. And Claude was right. So if I, if I had been untreated, if I lived in a world where there are no cancer treatments, I probably would have been dead within a few months. It was really, really bad. I lost 40 pounds. So, things were, were very bad. And the initial prognosis was one year. And if you go and look up, the survival statistics

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  for the type of cancer I had and the amount of spread that I had, the five year survival rate is 0%. So, this is all stuff I'm reading and it's, it's very sobering. Having said that, the amount of new treatments that are coming out for all sorts of different types of cancers is remarkable. I mean, we live in a really remarkable age. And so, I hope not to die in the next five years. I have to like, kind of live in two different worlds. One being, I have to prepare, I have to prepare my family, that I might not be here. But at the same time, I've also got to live like I've got my entire life in front of me because

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  that also might be the case. And so, that's, that's where I've been, is trying to like live two lives at once. One in which I die sometime in the next year, and one in which I've got 20 years.

• 1:01:00David Senra?

  What kind of cancer do you have?

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  It's called neuroendocrine. Primary, not neuroendocrine carcinoma, stage four, metastatic. So that just means, neuroendocrine means the cells that form your endocrine system. So that's kind of your hormones, as well as your neurological system. So that's like your nerves. So it's those types of cells. It's very similar. It's related to small cell, like smokers cancer, small cell lung cancer. But mine started in the lungs as like a sort of very not aggressive cancer. And then at some point, it spread to my liver. And at that point, it became metastatic. And it transformed and mutated and became very aggressive.

• 1:01:47David Senra?

  Where has it spread to?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  The liver is the main thing. And then the lungs and the spine and, and my brain. The brain is maybe the biggest issue right now, that we're trying to work with.

• 1:01:59David Senra?

  And on the episode, you were talking about some kind of therapies and drugs that you were trying to do. What have you done so far?

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  So far, I've just done chemo. And I finished chemotherapy, for now. Excellent. It feels great to be done. And now I'm starting on a drug called tarlatumab, which is, we'll call our second line. So, the chemo did a good job of pushing back some of the cancer. I feel way better than I did at the beginning of this. And now we're just going to see if we can keep that going. And if tarlatumab works for me, then I've got great prospects. And if it doesn't, then we gotta try and figure out something else in a hurry.

• 1:02:35David Senra?

  And I don't want to poke and prod you and make you uncomfortable. But we have four small kids. If there's anything that anybody in the audience can do to help you, we just, I want to give them as much detail as possible in surface area to hopefully find some lucky thing for us, for you and your wife and your kids. So if you can describe like, the drug that you're on, we were on the phone two days ago about this. Like, what are some of the prospects? What are the good news? Because essentially, like you're just, we just need to buy you more time.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03David Senra?

  Because there's just way more, whether it's AI, whether it's just immunotherapy, whether it's just new drugs, like, we just need to buy more years, is what we're trying to do. So explain what's going on with this new drug.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so tarlatumab is, it's technically not an immunotherapy, but it's very similar to an immunotherapy. And, you know, the encouraging news is, tarlatumab was initially approved for people with small cell lung cancer. And there, it helped extend life expectancies by like six months to a year, which is still, you know, a good time that you would take. But there is a certain subset of people who have my type of cancer, who have only been on the drug for two years, and they've been on it for two years, and it's working. And

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  that's all we know. It's only been two years. So maybe they're, maybe it's going to stop working any moment now. But maybe not. So that's the hope that we have right now. But the assumption that I'm trying to make is that this will last for a certain amount of time, this drug tarlatumab. And so then we've got to find something else. Every cancer is unique, has its own special snowflake. And it's got these, these different receptors, different markers. And so one that I have is called smarka or smarka4. And so that's one where there's not a lot of great therapies yet, but there are a lot of clinical trials. And so that's maybe the next thing that we're looking at, is if tarlatumab stops working

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  for me, then we can go in some of these trials. That's like the next thing that we can attack with this cancer. So I'm just about to start this new drug, and hopefully can continue to keep things at bay.

• 1:04:50David Senra?

  Is that covered under insurance? How does this work? Is it in short supply?

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  So, it initially was not covered under my insurance, but they just had a new study that they got a positive indication for, like, just this month. And so, now it is going to be covered, which is great news. And so now, the next thing that we're looking at is, can we enhance this with a custom mRNA vaccine, to make it more effective? That's sort of right now, the cutting edge of cancer treatment. And, and that's what we're looking at, at spending money on right now.

• 1:05:33David Senra?

  Do you want to talk about some of the same stuff that you shared, in terms of like your outlook? Like, you're a man of faith.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43David Senra?

  I don't have the same faith that you have. I have no idea what happens after, you know, somebody dies. But I was just, again, I think that one of that, that episode you made is one of the most profound podcast episodes ever created. I can't imagine what you're going through. Because your kids are all five and under, right? You, you said in that episode where it's like, I think it was the quote maybe by Nietzsche, it's like, if I could live my life over again, the same exact way, I would like pick the same life. So like, you're a good man. I've been telling everybody this, like, much better person than I am, for sure. You, you found, I think, something you love to do. You have this, this beautiful family, you have this faith, you have all these friends, you have everything that you wanted in life. And that might be, that, that, that future, like,

• 1:06:26David Senra?

  deprived from you. And yet, you're not like, the message you're putting out there is not like, oh, pity, or woe is me, or I'm all sad. It's like, almost unbelievably positive, for lack of a better description.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  I really, I just, I really believe that. Especially when you study history. And you study, you know, I think about Napoleon, he's fighting in, in France, in the War of the Third or Fourth Coalition, or whatever. And his men, he, his armies keep getting wiped out. And so by the end, they are just new conscripts. As soon as they can get them, they put them on a horse and they send them out to the battlefield. And they've got, they call them like, children running around on chickens. Because it's like, baby, baby kids, it's like 16 and 15 year olds riding around on these like new horses that aren't even

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  trained for combat. And so you have all these like 16 and 15 year olds dying in war. You read about the amount of disease. It's like, look, if, if I go next year, you can't study history for long and just not realize, I've had an amazing life. I really have. I, I would choose this life over again. It's been great. I have a wife who I love. I have great kids, four kids who I, I really love. I found my vocation, my calling in life. Like, I wake up every day excited about what I get to do. That was not the beginning of my career. You know, I have worked, it's, you know, working consulting is not exactly the coal

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  mines. But like, I didn't, I didn't love it, you know? And I loved, and so I've got to spend years doing the thing that I love. So, life ends a little bit early, maybe. If it does, that doesn't mean I have this like very unfortunate life. I still feel like I've had a very fortunate life. And so, you know, context, when I'm going through pain, like, it's not always easy. And I have bad moments. Like, I think people can get the wrong impression from reading, or from watching that podcast. Like, for other people who are going through cancer, or going through disease, like, you guys know, you have moments, okay? But that's okay. I just try and remember that, like, for the most part, I've had a

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  very charmed life. And I really believe that to be the case.

• 1:08:53David Senra?

  Mr. Man, I admire you. I'm glad we're friends. I really love your work. I'm really glad you chose to do this with me. I know we were thinking about timing and like, you know, I didn't want you to be like reluctant of it, because I do think, like, there's a bunch of positive externalities, and like unpredictable externalities that are going to come out of this conversation. I would just say, like, in closing, like, if anybody's hearing this, and we could do anything, whether you have resources, drugs, anything that we've, that could help Ben and his family, please get in touch. We'll leave contact information in the show notes. We'll leave Ben's email address, if you're cool with that, in the show notes as well. But like, you're a good dude. You got a bad hand. And like, I want to do anything I can to help you. Thanks for taking time.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Well, I, if I can end with one more thing, which is to say, you know, I am alive in, you know, at least in some part, to, due to the influence of a man named John Huntsman, who was a billionaire from Utah, who decided the thing that he wanted to do with his money was found a world-class cancer institute in Utah. And I tried going through the medical system, outside of that. And then I got put in this world-class cancer institute, and I've had remarkable care since then. People know me, and feel like they know me because of the podcast. And people have been remarkably generous. But when you're in this situation, you just can't help but think of all the people who are probably just as good of people

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  as I do, who don't have the type of resources, don't have the type of audience that I have. And so, I guess, I would also just like to put in a plug for like, everyone else. Like, I do have a lot of resources. And so if you would know someone else in your life who could maybe use it more than me, like, also be thinking about them, think about donating to Huntsman Cancer Institute, or other, you know, cancer research and stuff like that. So other people can be helped out as well. I like, I would really appreciate it.

• 1:10:51David Senra?

  This is not an act. This is how he's been since then. Thanks, Ben.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  All right. Thanks, David.

• 1:10:55David Senra?

  I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.