Michael Jordan In His Own Words

What I learned from reading Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. ---- Relationships run the world: Build relationships at Founders events ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you. A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs? Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent? What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors? Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- Episode Outline: Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention play well when everyone is watching. It's hard, but it's fair. I live by those words. To this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing, and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche. People talk about my work ethic as a player, but they don't understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me. You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared. Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. I knew going against the grain was just part of the process. The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be. I would wake up in the morning thinking: How am I going to attack today? I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. In all honesty, I don't know what's ahead. If you ask me what I'm going to do in five years, I can't tell you. This moment? Now that's a different story. I know what I'm doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what's ahead. I'm so connected to this moment that I don't make assumptions about what might come next, because I don't want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen, or might not happen, you start limiting the potential outcomes. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you. A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs? Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent? What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors? 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 ---- 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

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

• 0:00David Senra?

  I wanted to make an episode on this book that Michael Jordan published when he was about halfway through his career. And so I spent the week reading that book and I also read this long form piece about Jordan when he was 50. And when I was done with all that and I was just reviewing all my notes and highlights, I didn't think I had, I just wasn't as excited about it. I didn't think I had enough good information to actually make an episode. And so since that wasn't good enough, what I'm going to do instead is I'm republishing this episode that I made about Michael Jordan that I do love. And it's based on a book that I absolutely love and highly recommend you buy. It's called Driven From Within. And so even if you listen to this episode when it first came out three years ago, I would listen to it again. And if you haven't heard it before, then you're in for a treat. This is one of history's greatest competitors in his own words.

• 0:42David Senra?

  And I just want to tell you about two quick things before we get into it. I'm hosting two more conferences this year. The first one is July 29th through the 31st in Scotts Valley, California. The venue is absolutely gorgeous. It is surrounded by beautiful California redwoods. The second one is in September 27th through the 29th in Austin, Texas, directly on the Colorado River, in a secluded spot 15 minutes from downtown Austin. These events exist. I do this for one reason, to help you build relationships with other founders, investors, and high value people. The last event that Venna did in March, sold out and was a massive success.

• 1:20David Senra?

  People traveled all over the world to be there and they left with new friendships, new business partners, new advisors, new customers, new investors, and new energy and inspiration. It is so important to invest time, energy, and resources into building these relationships. The best way I've ever heard this put was from someone that designed in-person relationship for family offices. He said, "Relationships between two people like this, these investor founder types, they produce nonlinear returns." Here are a few details that you need to know before you attend. Number one, I ran out every single event I do, I ran out the entire venue. That means every single person you see there is there for the same reason and has the same interest as you. Number two, they are all-inclusive locations. That means you get yourself there and I take care of the rest. Your lodging, your food, access to all the events, it's all taken care of.

• 2:06David Senra?

  Number three and four are related. Number three, these are events for already Successful people that have already progressed in their career, that have already built a successful career. The price should not be a stretch to you. And if you were just starting out in your career, the podcast is free. It's a world-class education on demand for free. Listen to it, use those ideas to build your work and then come to another event in the future. So that leaves us number four. These are smaller events. This is intentional. The one in beautiful Scotts Valley, California, among the redwoods is going to be around 120 to 130 people. The one in Austin is going to be around 150 people. I will, of course, be there the entire time. The one change I'm making for the second and third event that is different from the first event, way less stage time for me and way more small group conversations. If you want to attend, do not dilly-dally.

• 2:50David Senra?

  I'm doing both of these events in partnerships. These events are being advertised not only on this podcast, but on Business Breakdowns and Invest Like the Best. I'm doing that in partnership with them for the Austin, Texas event. And then the Art of Investing podcast as well for the Scotts Valley, California event. So you are welcome to attend both events if you'd like. Some people have already bought tickets to both events. You can see more details and apply to the event by going to founderspodcast.com/events. The second thing, and I'll make this really fast. In the episode that you're about to hear, Michael Jordan talks a lot about how his career was made better as a result of the studying that he did of the great people that came before him. I have made myself a tool and now it's available to you. So I now have made you and me a tool that allows you to do the exact same thing. It is called Founder's Notes.

• 3:33David Senra?

  It's available at foundersnotes.com, founders with a N, just like the podcast. And it allows you to get access to every single one of my highlights, notes and transcripts for every single book and episode I've ever done. It's in one giant database that you can search. So you can search by keyword. You can have Sage, which is the AI assistant, search and synthesize the data for you. Or you can read highlights by book. An existing Founder Notes subscriber sent me this message this week. He says Founder Notes is literally a compounding tactical advantage over my competition. So at the end of this episode, What you're going to hear me, you're going to hear me use Founder's Notes to answer the question, how did history's greatest founders think about hiring? What you hear was not committed to memory. This is the most important part.

• 4:15David Senra?

  It came from me doing a keyword search on hiring in Founder's Notes. This becomes a superpower for you, or a compounding tactical advantage, as the one subscriber said, because it gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders on demand. So make sure you stick around to the end to hear that. I think the last 20, 30 minutes is remarkable. And of course, don't forget to subscribe at foundersnotes.com. That is foundersnotes.com. And now I hope you enjoy this episode of Michael Jordan and his own words. His relentless determination produced six NBA championships and some of the most spectacular performances in sports history. While his enduring grace and unique sense of style made him equally famous in the worlds of fashion, business, and marketing.

• 4:59David Senra?

  In Driven From Within, Michael makes it clear that the basis for his phenomenal success came from the inside out, thanks in part to those who guided him along the way. His skill, work ethic, philosophy, personal style, competitiveness, and presence have flowed from the basketball court and into every facet of his life. Nearly three years removed from his last turn as an athlete, Michael's 20th Air Jordan shoe has helped push Nike's Brand Jordan division to nearly $500 million in sales. This is a book about the power of collaboration and teamwork, the awe-inspiring energy generated when people combine their creativity and passion and a fearless desire to lead.

• 5:41David Senra?

  Whether it's waking up at 6:00 AM to work on fundamentals as a high school junior, or spending hours with legendary designer Tinker Hatfield on the intricacies of state-of-the-art shoe design, Michael Jordan has never wavered in his desire to be the best. Everyone knows the results. In Driven From Within, Michael Jordan and those in his inner circle reveal the philosophy that made it all happen. So that is from the inside cover of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Driven From Within, and it was written by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. So I was not expecting to do this book right now. It's actually 200 pages into another book that hopefully will come in the next few days. But ever since I read that almost 700-page biography of Michael Jordan, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

• 6:24David Senra?

  Just the ability to look into Michael Jordan's mindset and operating system really motivated me, it really fired me up, actually. And so I had read, like briefly, the introduction to this book. And I was like, you know what? I need to do this right now. I feel compelled to. I can't put this book down. So in the last few days, not only did I finish reading, I read this entire book, but I also would go on YouTube and every free moment, whether I'm washing the dishes, I'm in the car, I'm going for a walk, whatever I've been doing, I've been looking up videos and listening to Michael Jordan speak. Not videos about Michael Jordan, but literally downloading into my mind as much as I could just him talking.

• 7:09David Senra?

  And that is what also this book, because most of it, there's a couple like little, he calls them vignette, little stories from people like his mom, some of his oldest friends, the shoe designer, Tinker Hatfield, that he's worked with for 20 years on the Jordan Shoe and, you know, his main business. But the vast majority of what I'm going to share with you today is just straight from the words of Michael Jordan. And then you and I will have the ability to download his mindset straight from him. And there's some ideas that I've learned from both these books that I don't think I'm going to forget. And I'll make sure I'll point them out to you as we run over them today. So this is Michael talking like, why does this book exist and what it's about? And when I'm about to read to you, remember, he's not talking about his playing career.

• 7:53David Senra?

  He's talking about his business. And what's fascinating, so this book is, you know, almost, what, 20 years old, something like that? And I think it's a great illustration of what a lot of these other great minds that you and I have been studying, they always tell us to never interrupt the compounding, that it's hard for our minds to grasp that all the profits are far into the future. So 20 years ago, it's already a Jordan Brand, which he refers to as Brand. So in the book, he'll call it Brand Jordan. In modern day, he says it's a Jordan Brand. So

• 8:24David Senra?

  I don't want you to get confused about that, but I'm gonna read it as it appears in the book, which is brand Jordan. But the Jordan Brand, you know, over 20 years ago was doing $500 million in sales. Fantastic business, right? You fast forward 20 years in the future, he did not interrupt that compounding, and now they're doing seven times that amount, 3.6 billion a year. So let's go to this. He says, no one, and remember, he's talking about the business. "No one could have predicted the outcome because I was never following someone's lead or operating off an existing model. There were no models for what happened at Nike." As you remember, if you listened to the podcast, I just, the previous podcast, when he signs at Nike, they're doing $25 million a year in revenue. And a large endorsement contract for an athlete at the time would be like $100,000.

• 9:07David Senra?

  So he says, "There was no models for what happened at Nike, and certainly nothing close to what we have created with brand Jordan. Looking back," so again, this is why the book exists and what it's about. "Looking back isn't about celebrating the results as much as it is about understanding the process that produced those results. It's been about leading and staying true, authentic to those fundamental values that flowed downstream from my parents and later Coach Dean Smith." That's his college coach at UNC. "Moving through the business world full-time, I recognize that the structure of success is no different there than it was on the basketball court. Great companies have a lot in common with great teams. Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention will play well when everyone is watching."

• 9:51David Senra?

  And so, right there, his, what really surprised me is his complete dedication to practice, how much he talks about it over and over again. And that is one of the main ideas I learned from Jordan that I don't think I'll ever forget. It was so surprising to me. And it's something he's gonna repeat over and over again. You know what? It just struck me when I was reading the inside cover to you a few minutes ago. And I didn't make the connection until, for whatever reason, it just popped in my mind there. But if you go back, like, you'll see, you know, I've done an extensive amount of reading and studying of people like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, or the three that popped in my mind, over decades of their career, right? And what's fascinating to me is how much they, they have a handful of ideas that they repeat.

• 10:36David Senra?

  Over decades, Jordan shares that trait with them. There's a lot of things that he's saying when he's 35, when he's 40, that he's still repeating when he's almost 6 years old today. So let's go back to this. "There's no shortcuts. I've always believed in leading with action, not words. And I learned very early to follow my instincts." This is, again, these ideas he's going to repeat over and over again. "My standards have always been mine alone. I've never tried to live up to the expectations of others, and everybody knows the results. This book is about the process. The values that form the foundation of my playing career are the same values that define Brand Jordan. I truly believe those values never go out of style." So then he starts the very beginning of the book, saying, asking a question.

• 11:20David Senra?

  "Will there be another Michael Jordan? Sure. There is no doubt a player will come along who will be able to build on what I've accomplished, just as I built on the example of great players before me." And then he talks a little bit about the growth of the NBA and the game since he's retired, and that there's a, obviously, it's a way more successful as a business in general, a lot more fans, and so the rewards to the players are not only larger, but they come quicker, and he's not sure that's actually beneficial. So he's saying, "There wasn't a lot of corporations looking to invest in young NBA players in 1984. It's often the other way around today." Meaning that you could have, he had to prove that he had the ability to play, and then he got the rewards.

• 12:03David Senra?

  He's saying that there, being, players today are being rewarded on future potential. And that, this is his opinion on why that could be potentially detrimental. "It's often the other way around today, which makes it a lot harder for young NBA players to realize the depth of their potential. It's hard to spend all summer working on one aspect of your game when you've already received the payoff. I never had that problem." And so now he's going to go into, like, what motivated him. "I wanted to prove what I could do." This is something he repeats over and over again, too. "When my play started providing me with rewards, then I wanted to prove I deserved them. I never felt the desire to rest on what I had accomplished. I never felt like I deserved to drive a Bentley when I got my first contract, or live in a mansion."

• 12:47David Senra?

  There's actually a story I'm going to share with you later in the book, which talks about his... Really surprised me how financially conservative he was. I was not expecting that from him. And it's actually kind of funny what motivates him to be so conservative, too. Because he was terrified at the idea of ever having to get an actual job. Those things might be symbols of success to some people, but there are a lot of people who confuse symbols with actual success. What's left after you got all the money and buy the best car? There's nowhere to go from there. And to his point, he's like, I just focused on achievement, and I knew that the financial rewards would come from that achievement. When we won one championship, I wanted to win two in a row. When we won two, I wanted to win three in a row because Larry Bird and Magic Johnson

• 13:32David Senra?

  had never won three straight. Nothing of value comes without being earned. So I guess I should pause here. Everything I'm reading to you right now is coming one right after another. There's not really a narrative to the book. What I really feel is, so it goes in order of the design of the shoes, goes through their thought process, the growth of the business as a result of all this. But really, a way to think about this book is just Jordan just speaking freely, like off the cuff, like if you're having a conversation with a friend, just downloading into your brain everything he learned from his, not only his playing career, but building the brand, and giving you his mindset and operating system himself. So he's saying, nothing of value comes without being earned. We're going to get into his motto, which he got from his high school coach, which I think is fantastic.

• 14:16David Senra?

  But he talks a lot about the fact that he looked at himself as a leader. He says, that's why great leaders are those who lead by example first. You can't demand respect because of a title or position and then expect people to follow you. That might work for a little while, but in the long run, people respond to what they see. I practiced hard every day because I wanted every one of my teammates to know what I expected out of myself. If I took a day off, then I know they would, too. Just like my high school coach used to say, it's hard, but it's fair. I live by those words. And then a few pages later, he's just got this great sentence, which really is just an echo of this idea that you and I have talked about over and over again, that

• 14:57David Senra?

  the score takes care of itself. Another rather surprising thing I learned about Jordan. He just focused on being as good, as great at his craft as possible. And he knew if he did that, then he'd get the rewards he deserved. "I figured if I was good as I could be at playing sports, eventually it would pay dividends. I didn't know how, but my main focus, or excuse me, my focus, was to be the best player in whatever sport I played. That's all I ever thought about." So at this point in the book, he's still reflecting on his early life. This is about what his dad, like, we talked in the last podcast, you know, the fact that his dad told him, "You're not, you're not good at anything. Go in the house with the women. Get out of here." Like, really burned, like, an extreme sense of, like, motivation in

• 15:42David Senra?

  him. And so, there's two main ideas. He's gonna, I'm gonna start this page on him talking about his father's opinion of him when he was a kid. But really, the thing about Jordan that I think is two, he's got two really good ideas on this, on this page that he shares with other people. I'm gonna, the shorthand on a note I left myself was, "Have one speed. Go." That is something I learned from Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese. He was a mentor of Steve Jobs, hired a 19-year-old Steve Jobs. And he said, he's like, "When I gave Steve Jobs a job at Atari, like, he did, there was no, he had one speed. He was all out, all the time." And then, this really, the second idea, really surprised me, not because of the idea behind it, but because he was, he said it explicitly, and this is an idea you and I have talked about over and over

• 16:27David Senra?

  again, that if you want to be truly great at something, find work that feels like play. So this is Jordan and his dad. "He didn't think I'd amount to anything, because I had no hand skills, no mechanical skills. The way my father looked at it, there was no guarantee I'd be able to make a living." Remember, they're just like a normal, you know, maybe lower-middle-class family, country family in Wilmington, North Carolina. So, his idea, his dad's idea is, like, you have to be able to, if you're a mechanic, you can always, you know, fix things for other people, then at least you're guaranteed some kind of way to, to make a living and to support yourself and your family, right? So he's like, "That's, that's what I did. That's what you should do." Because I had no hand skills, no mechanical skills. That's the way my father looked at it. There was no guarantee I'd be able to make a living. So if you didn't have the skills, there'd be no guarantee I'd be able to make a living.

• 17:12David Senra?

  But I never thought about that. All my energy was focused on getting where I had to go. And Jordan talks about one of the motivations of that. I wanted the freedom to do what I wanted to do, and I wanted to do it my way. To this day, and this is shocking because Jordan is widely known for one of the greatest work ethics of any sports, any player in sports, in any sport ever, right? And but he's saying, to this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche. People talk about my work ethics as a player, but they don't understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me. We were playing a game. Why not play as hard as you can?

• 17:56David Senra?

  And so it's on this page, his mom is talking about stories from his childhood that this sentence might be surprising, right? Michael wouldn't have done anything if we didn't remind him, not when it came to sports, but just doing chores, going to look for a job. He would have laid around and looked at the TV all day. And so I think a lot of people have that problem, like, oh, I don't feel motivated. You're probably a driven individual in general. You just picked the wrong profession. If there's somebody out there that has to, you know, dragging themselves out of bed, like, oh, crap, I don't want to go do what I'm about to do, then find something else to do. If you told Jordan, hey, I gotta go work as a mechanic, I gotta go sit in an office from nine to five and answer emails, these are examples he's actually used in conversations, and I think they're also appear in this book. You know, he's like, to me, that's torture.

• 18:41David Senra?

  I'd have to force myself to do those things. I wouldn't work very hard at them. But if you say, hey, I have an opportunity to be a pro athlete, then I will work from the time my eyes open in the morning till I go to bed at night, and no one will have to push me from behind. But what's interesting is it wasn't always this way. So that leads me into the next section where this is about his first mentor and a constant desire to improve his skills. And this is his, this is, excuse me, his high school coach. So it's a guy named Coach Herring. Coach Herring is the guy that gave him that life motto. It's hard, but it's fair. Coach Herring was the first one to see in me what I saw in myself. He picked me up every morning my junior year, took me to the gym before school and worked me out. He was my pusher. He was one of the coaches who would just talk to you. You have to stay focused, MJ.

• 19:26David Senra?

  You can't do this, MJ. Get your grades up, man. Get your grades up. Most days, I enjoyed it. Some days, I didn't feel like going. Remember this whole idea about I didn't feel like doing it? Because he explicitly talks about your feelings don't matter. Business is about service to others. When he is playing, he feels it's his obligation. Somebody paid their hard, they worked all week. They paid their hard earned money to buy a ticket to watch me and to play, to entertain them. And to that degree, I think it's smart to have a motivation that's bigger than yourself, right? But his point is, it doesn't matter if my knee hurts, my ankle hurts, I don't feel good. I have an obligation because I'm serving other people to go out and give my best effort. So most days, I enjoyed it. Some days, I didn't feel like going. But those were the days that Coach Herring would push me.

• 20:09David Senra?

  Eventually, Michael's able to play that role for himself, right? He made this big old poster with the drill, with all the drills listed, and we went through them every single day. That's how it got started. I wasn't a great athlete at the time, but I wanted to be. I wanted to be admired. I wanted to be respected. I wanted the girls to respect me, too. All of that drove me a lot more than most people think. I didn't have any status at the time. If that's what you saw, meaning, you know, I wasn't the best player, wasn't excelling. I was going to prove you wrong. Just watch me. That was my mentality. And then he has an idea that I think is very, again, surprising, that he starts with low expectations. And then he'll tell you over and over again, you should be concentrating on the fundamentals.

• 20:54David Senra?

  But what I found interesting is like, he started with low expectations. But once he reached that low expectation, he didn't rest on his laurels, right? He picks the next target. But as he's moving up that progression, he's building confidence. So let's go into this, you'll see what I mean. My expectations were very low. I wanted to be the best player at the park in Wilmington. Then I wanted to be better than my brothers, or the guys in my neighborhood. These were my expectations. Then, he's talking about the progression. Make the varsity team in high school. Impress the coach. Get a four-year scholarship to a major college. With each, and then he ends that sentence there. But if you think about it, he's like, go to college. Win a championship in college. Try again to win a championship.

• 21:38David Senra?

  Get, go to the NBA. Spend seven years trying to win one. Then I'll win two. Then I'll win three. And I was watching this other interview with him. And it was like, real quick with a reporter, but they're like, hey, you've just won three. Isn't that enough? He's like, enough for who? Might be enough for you, but he's like, no, there's always something else, something that's coming next. So it says, with each progression, I gained confidence. And he talks about what he learned from his college coach. Coach Dean Smith's system wasn't about excelling at one phase of the game. He was about excellence in every phase of the game. Scoring, rebounding, passing, playing defense. And so part of the progression that had to occur to get him to the next level is the fact

• 22:20David Senra?

  that his coach lies, his high school coach lies to get him into a five-star basketball camp. And before, Jordan's just isolated in North Carolina. He doesn't know how good he is, but his coach sees other people playing. He's like, you can play with these guys. So he winds up lying, gets him into the basketball camp. I'm not going to repeat stuff I already covered in the last podcast, but this was new information, was the fact that the guy running the coach, or excuse me, running the camp, was so impressed that, originally, Michael was only supposed to stay for one week. And so the guy running the camp, his name is Mr. Garfinkel, calls his parents and like, don't pick up Michael. And so this is his mom, Michael's mom, relaying the memory. Each week, we would sit there talking about, you know, their finances were tight.

• 23:05David Senra?

  They had to stick to a budget, stick to figure out which bills we can pay this week, which ones we can't. So we got this guy calling, saying, hey, you know, come, Michael needs to stay for a second week, we don't have the money for it. And this blew my mind. Each week, we would sit down and figure out what bills we were going to pay. We had paid for one week of basketball camp when Mr. Garfinkel called. We told him we only had one week, one call to say, hey, Michael needs to stay for another week. This guy's like, you don't understand, your son's going crazy. So it says, he called, we told him we only had money in the budget for that one week. Mr. Garfinkel just let us have it. He told us we didn't know the skills of our son. I said, sir, that's okay. We paid for one week and we're coming to get him. He

• 23:49David Senra?

  said, I'll give him the money. And then Michael jumps in and talks about what this camp gave to like his confidence and his ability, hey, I can play with the best, the best people around. I'm as good as they can, or excuse me, I'm as good as they are. I was full of energy after that second week. I thought I must be doing something right. All I wanted to do was to improve, to keep getting better. I became a sponge. I got a glimpse of what success looked like. So I'm going to fast forward in the book. He's in Chicago, rookie year, right away. He's like, okay, this guy's not playing. And so there's going to be some stories from friends, two different stories from two different people in here. Let me give you the first one. You couldn't help but notice this guy was different from all of us who were already there with the Bulls. His practice habits were unmatched.

• 24:34David Senra?

  And so that's an easy, you know, that's the idea that he repeats over and over. And it's an easy idea for you and I to use in whatever field that we're in. We're, we just make the commitment. No one is going to prepare more than me. No one is going to practice more than me. His level of effort, his level of competing stood out. He always wanted to take it to the next level. If the other guys didn't take their effort, their effort up, then Michael had no problem embarrassing them. And so then we have another story on the same page from a different person. Really, the note I left myself on this page is practice, combined practice effort and education. You ever see Star Wars? Yoda's this little ugly thing, but he's the Jedi Master. He's the guy who taught everybody. Everybody went to Yoda for knowledge. When you sit around talking to any older person who's lived their life to the fullest, they have great stories

• 25:18David Senra?

  to tell because they've had great experiences. Michael is Yoda. He's always been an old soul. That's probably attributable attributable to the education that he got from his parents, the education he got from Dean Smith in college, and then the education that he got in the Olympics with Bobby Knight. He was more mature than the average 21-year-old kid coming into the NBA. And you see that maturity too, if you watch The Last Dance, because his rookie season, you know, think about it, you're a kid from a small town, now you're dropped into Chicago, you have a nice contract, you know, not nearly comparable to what athletes today make, but you're making a lot more money than you've ever made in your life,

• 25:59David Senra?

  you have more freedom, you have people, even though, you know, at the time, I think, they were like, they didn't even sell half the arena in Chicago. But, you know, you have, you probably feel good about yourself. He goes looking for his teammates one day, knocks on the hotel room, goes in, and he sees most of the Bulls. Remember, the Bulls is a crappy team, bunch of, you know, average players, not really serious about their craft. Goes in there, there's a bunch of girls, there's a bunch of alcohol, there's a bunch of people doing cocaine, and he just turns around, and he's like, "All right, well, I'm leaving, I'm out." And so, the maturity for a 21-year-old person to not give in to the temptations because those temptations would get in the way of what his goal in life was, that is

• 26:42David Senra?

  very rare. So, this next section is called uncompromised. And I want to pull, before I read this to you, I want to pull out, I have a bunch of notes from these talks that I was listening to the last few days. One of them comes, there's like this long, it's like an hour-long talk that's on YouTube, where Michael's just sitting down and being interviewed by the magazine cigar aficionado. And they're talking about, this is like two years before The Last Dance is released, and they hear the rumor, and they're like, "Well, it's not out yet." But he says, Michael said something that was very interesting, I think ties into this section of the book, where he's like, "Listen, if you're going to watch The Last Dance, it's going to show my unwavering dedication to the game." And

• 27:24David Senra?

  really think that, I think unwavering and uncompromised are similar ideas, what he's talking about here. "Some players look at me for all the wrong reasons: marketing, admiration, money made off the court. They don't understand the foundation I had to create to support everything that came afterward. They don't know about lifting weights at 7:00 AM, practicing hard every day, finding ways to motivate myself for every game, sitting up half the night with an ankle and a bucket of ice, or hooked up to an electronic stimulation machine. They don't know about any of those things. In a sense, my experience created a vision that obscured the hard work and commitment. With all the attention on the surface, it's easy to become confused about the source of the money and glamour."

• 28:09David Senra?

  And the great maxim that I think would condense or distill what he's telling us here is the fact that the public praises people for what they practice in private. The public praises people for what they practice in private. They're seeing the money, they're seeing the private jet, they're seeing the commercials, they're seeing the championships. They don't see the hours of practice, the fact that I'm getting my knee drained, my ankle's messed up. I woke up at 7:00 AM this morning, I lifted weights before practice, I worked on drills after practice. And so he gets to his punchline here. You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared. And so he continues this theme. Don't pay attention to the wrong things. Pay attention to the way I play the game. Pay attention to my passion.

• 28:54David Senra?

  Pay attention to the idea of focusing on improvement every day. Pay attention to my commitment. Commitment cannot be compromised by rewards. Excellence isn't a one week or one year ideal. It's a constant. There will be days when you don't feel on top of your game, but your commitment remains constant. No compromises. Look around, and just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights, no cameras, no glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. So something I learned that was surprising in this book is the fact that Jordan almost

• 29:39David Senra?

  left Nike to set up another company. And this is just a few years into his career, so this is Jordan talking about it, then I want to talk about, then we have his agent, David Falk, talking about this time. And I love comparing the same diehard competitive spirit that Michael Jordan applied to his game. Phil Knight had that same competitive spirit in building Nike. And so it says, "So when my contract was coming up, he came to us and said," so he's talking about, "there's two executives at Nike, Peter and Rob, that were really like Jordan's liaisons to Nike. And so they wound up dipping out and saying, "Hey, why don't we start our own company? You own equity, you can build the business." And so Jordan's talking about this. "So when my contract was coming up, they came to us and said, 'Let's go out on the edge. Let's do something different. Let's start our own shoe company.'"

• 30:23David Senra?

  Peter was our lead designer and I had worked very closely with him. And Rob was a very good friend of the family. And so Jordan's really about loyalty and personal relationships. So he was contemplating this. And so this is his agent talking about that. But Michael was at Nike and it was becoming the most successful endorsement in the history of professional sports. To say that I was in shock would be an understatement of the century. First, I thought Rob was a really close friend and to think that he would have done all this behind my back amazed me. Second, starting your own company seems, at this point, seems the kind of thing, or it is the kind of thing that seems really sexy, rather, and exciting to a client because they're not seeing the downside. I had a meeting with Michael's parents, who were very, very competitive. And I said, "You don't understand.

• 31:07David Senra?

  This is going to be like World War III for Phil Knight. And Phil is a very competitive guy. This is his number one talent leaving and he's not going to say, 'No problem. You have my blessing. Take my number one endorser. Good luck.'" Phil is a competitive guy. Nike wanted to take over the world. Michael wanted to take over the world of basketball. So that drive was mirrored from one another. They are parallel stories. And I love that that's stated explicitly because if you read, I've read, I've done, I've reread Phil Knight's book, I don't know, like probably like 30 podcasts back or something like that. I did another episode on Shoe Dog. Now I've read two books on Michael. I've spent a long time studying him. I do believe that, like, that is my understanding as well.

• 31:51David Senra?

  And I'm glad it's stated explicitly here. They are parallel stories. It's the same idea manifested in two different personalities in two different industries. So what they wind up doing here that's smart is they're using the other offer as a leverage. So David and his parents talked Jordan out of doing this, but then they use that offer as a way to get equity and to actually get brand Jordan. Nike put a big deal on the table that expanded our line, gave me more creative control. This is, uh, Jordan's speaking here. Gave me more creative control and approval rights. Within Nike, it appeared we were expanding the line when in essence, we were starting another company beneath the Nike umbrella. Rob and Peter understood my feeling. They told us to use what they were trying to do and to get what we wanted from Nike. And that's what we did.

• 32:35David Senra?

  So then there's this great story about when Michael Jordan gets to meet Warren Buffett and gets to hang out with and spend some time with him, and they really realize like this is a different animal, same beast. And it has to do with how they come about making their decisions. I've always wanted to know what successful people used when they were evaluating deal or making a decision. I was with Coca-Cola earlier in my career, and they would put me on a dog and pony show all over the country to meet bottlers. It would take almost eight days. I'd go into supermarkets everywhere shaking hands. On one of those trips, I was in Omaha, Nebraska, and I had the opportunity to meet Warren Buffett. He invited me out on his boat. First of all, I don't like boats. Now, this is the richest guy in the world at the time, and he's the largest shareholder of Coke.

• 33:17David Senra?

  I said, "Mr. Buffett, I don't mean to offend you, but I'm afraid of boats." He said, "Don't worry, we have life jackets." I told him, "You're gonna have to give me two to get me on that boat." And so then they have this decision, or, excuse me, this discussion. I asked him about his decision-making process. What do you think about when you're making your decisions? What is your thought process? And he says, "Whatever my gut tells me, that's what I do." And so Michael's like, "Oh, I'm the same way." I thought that was pretty wild, because up until that point, I was just, when he's talking about making decisions, I was just asking myself, "What do you feel?" Once I made a decision, I didn't think about it again. It was strictly off gut. That's how I made a decision to go with David Falk. That's how I evaluated deals before I signed my contracts. I don't think about it again

• 34:01David Senra?

  from that point forward. It's still amazing to me that, given the decisions Warren Buffett makes and the money that transfers with those decisions, that he still goes with his gut. It just felt good hearing that from a guy like him. Or, excuse me, I just felt good hearing that from a guy like him. And so now we got to the part where I mentioned earlier how it was kind of surprising how financially conservative it was. And so Tinker Hatfield, main designer, like he calls him, his right-hand man in the Jordan Brand for the design of the shoes, goes to visit Michael. It's a few years into his career, and he goes to his house, and he says his first house after he got married was a normal place. It wasn't anything special whatsoever. And he was a major superstar by then. That was an interesting

• 34:42David Senra?

  aspect to Michael. That reminded me, because there's this great story. Bill Gates goes to visit Steve Jobs, and they're working on a deal. And he goes to his house, and Bill goes, he sees like his house, he sees his family, and you know, Bill at the time had been living in, I think it's called like Xanadu or whatever his His, he's got like a 60,000 square foot house on the lake in Washington, right? That, you know, got a lot of like attention because there's like leading technology of its day and all this other stuff that he built into it. But he asked Steve Jobs, he goes, do all of you live here? He couldn't believe, he's like how modest, relatively modest for the amount of wealth that Steve Jobs had, that he didn't need to feel to do the same, you know, what Bill was doing.

• 35:27David Senra?

  So this is Michael talking about that. It's always been very conservative financially. That came from my advisors and I listened to them because I was scared. You don't want to be like some of the guys at the end of, end of their career with nothing to show, looking for work. That was scary to me. The idea that at some point in time, I'd have to go get a job. I've seen a lot of people who had opportunities to be successful and wealthy, but they made critical mistakes. I pay attention to those things. Money never drove me. Sure, I wanted to be successful. I wanted the nicest things that success brings, but my passion was pure. The way I played and the way I go about things has never had anything to do with money. And part of this that motivated him was the fact that even when he was in his early days of his career, his mom would, would repeat the story of Joe Louis. I didn't know that.

• 36:12David Senra?

  I've heard the name Joe Louis. I didn't know what, what she's about to tell us. I often told him about Joe Louis, the boxer. He died homeless. He didn't even have money to bury himself. He had no discipline and no direction. And then just a quick paragraph, two ideas that he repeats that I think are worth reiterating. One, blinders on focus. So just like when the horses, they put the horses on the blind, the blinders on the horses so they don't look left and right. They just look forward to whatever their goal is. I think a lot of successful people in life have that mentality. And then the Steve Jobs quote that I repeat over and over again, that remind me of, reminds me of, there's a lot of parallels between Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan. So you'd be a yardstick for quality. People are not used to an environment where excellence is demanded. So he's saying, I'm very secure in my ability to focus on what I want.

• 36:57David Senra?

  If I have a goal, no one is going to deter me from what I want to do. I'm going to get up and work out in the morning and do all the necessary things I have to. I am not going to be talked into looking the other way. When I got to the point where I was a senior partner on the Bulls, the guys, the guy who had been there, the guy who had been there the longest, I started to exert my leadership vocally. I guess you could say I became a tyrant, or at least that's how some people chose to interpret those actions. That's not how I viewed it. I knew what it took to come from where we were in 1984. I had put it on the line and I had earned the right to let my teammates know what I expected of them. And it was no more than I expected of myself. I played in front of 8,000 people night in the beginning.

• 37:41David Senra?

  That never determined how hard I played. It's easy when 18,000 people show up to watch you to play and every game is sold out. It's not hard to find your motivation in that environment. I was playing when Chicago Stadium was half empty and my effort was exactly the same.

• 37:59David Senra?

  And a lot of what Jordan has to say, and he says this in interviews too, I need to start reading some of my notes to you because I'm going to get to like towards the end of the book and not include the notes which I think are very valuable in just hearing them talk as well. But it's about managing your mind and this mindset. So in addition to practice and just saying, hey, no one is going to out prepare me. No one's going to practice more than I do in my craft, right? That's another idea that I'm going to take from Jordan. The other idea is another main idea that I think, at least I definitely struggle with is like, I'm constantly worried about what's going to happen in the future or like, hey, I'll be happy. I'll be satisfied when I get to X, you know? And then you get to X and you like play that game with you. And it's one thing I learned about Jordan that is just shocking to me is he just lives and thinks about this moment.

• 38:44David Senra?

  He did it when he was playing in the Bulls. He did it when he became an NBA owner. He talks about it when he's building Brand Jordan. He talks about it now as almost a 60-year-old person. And actually, let me just read this to you now because this is when he's 58. And he says, "I want to go through, I want to go through a day or a week, not worrying about what I have to do on Wednesday or Thursday because I won't then enjoy Monday." It's just this more living in the moment. He has different ways to say that same idea. All is now, all you can focus on is this moment. And the example I used in the last podcast was the fact that, you know, he just won his sixth championship, he's playing the piano, throwing champagne everywhere, they're smoking cigars, and the guy's like, hey, you got another one in you. He's like,

• 39:27David Senra?

  it's the moment, man, live in the moment, we're enjoying this now, we'll worry about that in October, that discipline it takes. And I think you'll be a lot happier. I think that's also why, if you have little kids, like, you know, they're just usually happy, and even if they're upset, they get over it really fast, because it's all, for, you know, an 18-month-old, like my son is now, it's like, everything is just whatever's happening at that moment. And I think everybody, like, every human struggles with that, but especially driven, motivated people struggle more. And I think we have to learn to live in the moment, because if not, you're compromising the present. Like you just said, if I'm worried about what's happening on Wednesday and Thursday, it means I can't enjoy Monday. And I have limited Mondays left. He talks about, you know, I'm, he might be 54. I said 58. Now, coming to mind, I think he said I'm 54. At this point in the interview, he's like, I'm

• 40:12David Senra?

  54 years old, you know, I have a limited time left. Whatever, he's 54, 58, same difference, you know? But his point is like, I have limited Mondays left. I'm not going to ruin them by worrying about something. I'll worry about Wednesday when I get to Wednesday. I'll worry about Thursday when I get to Thursday. So anyways, let's go into this page. This is, know what you want and don't rely, oh, don't really pay attention to other people's expectations of you. Another thing I learned from Kobe Bryant, too, because he was given this interview with Ahmad Rashad, and he talked about, you know, when you go through struggles, like, what about the fans' expectations of you? It's the question Ahmad Rashad's asking Kobe, and I love it, because Kobe has like the stanky face, the stinky, like, ugh. Like, if you're, you taste it, or you smell something really gross, you can just hit him with the

• 40:54David Senra?

  stanky face. And he's like, and he shook his head immediately. He's like, the expectations will never be higher than my own. And I think that the idea there is like, you've really messed up if there's people that have, that are able, that are capable of putting external expectations on you that are higher than your own. Back to this note, focus on the present moment, and then it's all you can control. Oh, focus on the present moment, it's all you can control, and then why not me? So let's see what Jordan's saying here. All I knew was that I never wanted to be average. I just wanted to follow what I felt. My father put a challenge in for me, in front of me. I knew what he expected. So back to, you know, be a mechanic, be whatever.

• 41:32David Senra?

  The expectations I had for myself were beyond my father's expectations. My thoughts were way beyond the idea of preparing myself for a job so I could be like the guy down the street. I had dreams. They were my dreams and I had no fear of them. And this is an important sentence. I knew going against a grain was part of the process. I wasn't limited by someone else's view of how my dreams should look, or whether they were reasonable or not. So then he talks about like, what do you do after you identify the goal? Put all the work in and then let the future emerge. That is a lot different than forcing the issue because you're worried about an outcome that hasn't been determined yet. Anything can happen if you're willing to put in the

• 42:13David Senra?

  work and remain open to possibilities. Dreams are realized by effort, determination, passion, and staying connected to that sense of who you are. Why me? Why not me? And he's not saying, oh, don't worry about the future, whatever will happen will happen. He's saying the point is like, if you did everything possible, if you know, you put all the work in possible, then let the results land where they are. That's not the same thing as just being, oh, whatever may be will be. No, it's like, I'm going to do my level best and then if I know I do that, I will be okay with whatever happens. And so let me give you a quote from another interview. "I never feared about my skills because I put in the work. If you put forth the work, then what are you afraid of?"

• 42:56David Senra?

  And then this is a line from his Hall of Fame speech. "Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion." So then another idea that's going to pop up in this book over and over again, it's really an introduction and why he's worthy of study is his extreme mindset. This is the extreme mindset of Michael Jordan. So he says, "If you want to win, you have to pay the price. It's not complicated. If somebody didn't want to hear that from me, fine. Go play somewhere else. Come on, man. You might be sick, but you can still play. I remember when we were playing Detroit and one of our guys was bent over after getting hit. I said, 'Don't let them see you in pain.' You know why? Because they're going to do it again and that's going to take your mind off what you

• 43:39David Senra?

  need to be doing. Show that you can stand up to whatever they have to give. Let them know it's not affecting you and they won't do it again." But every time you wimp out, you bitch about it, you cry to the ref, all that, all I'm going to say is shut up and play. You know what they're trying to do, don't let it happen, play right on through that stuff. And so that is one of his main criticisms about the players that came after him. The fact that they don't look at it, they look at like, it's almost like there's an echo to what we learned from the great advertisers of the past. The fact that a lot of people are saying, hey, I made, I made some tires, buy my tires. It's like, no, you think the best ads is service first. It's like, what can I offer you?

• 44:22David Senra?

  But Jordan's point was like, they paid money for you to, to play, like you should show up and play, right? And what he's saying right here about you gotta learn how to play through the pain, don't let people see you struggle, whatever the case is. For some reason, when I got to this section, it made me think of a, of a paragraph that takes place in Henry Ford's autobiography, My Life and Work. Because Henry Ford had the same mentality about service first. You're serving your customer first and your feelings and desires come second. And so he's writing these words almost 100 years ago, but it echoes exactly what Jordan's mentality was when he was playing basketball. "I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that he must always have an atmosphere of good feeling around him before he can do his work.

• 45:05David Senra?

  There are such men, and in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance on feeling, they are failures. Not only are they business failures, they are character failures also. It is as if their bones never attained a sufficient degree of hardness to enable them to stand on their own feet. There is altogether too much reliance on good feeling in our business organizations." And Michael's not just preaching this, like he actually lived this. That's what gives his words, I feel more weight. This is a continuation of this extreme mindset of Michael Jordan. A leader has to be willing to sacrifice to help everyone else get to where they need to go, where the team needs to go, rather.

• 45:50David Senra?

  No one could take days off with the Bulls because I never took a day off. Horace Grant and I had a falling out because he wanted the day off here and there, and I would chastise him for it. That's what leaders do. They set a standard and everyone has to live up to that standard. It is the same in every great organization. You have to rise to our level. We are not going to drop down to yours. I apply that standard to whatever I do. And this is his mom on the same page reflecting on this. Michael earned every bit of this. I tell people, do you know how many ice packs? Do you know about the ice packs on his knees? How he hobbled out of Chicago Stadium sunnites, barely unable to make it home. I remember that day in Utah, they call it the flu game, which we learned is the food poisoning game. I'll never forget that day.

• 46:34David Senra?

  I told him, "Don't play tonight. You were too sick." And what did he do? The best came out because you find that little bit of strength where you keep going, when you keep going. That's determination and focus. The idea that he wasn't going to give up until he had given his last. That is life. Give it your best and all other good things will come to you. Then a few pages later, there's just two sentences, two ideas that are conveyed in two sentences that I want to bring to your attention. And this is Tinker Hatfield describing what it's like to work with Jordan. He's just deadly, coolly efficient. And then Jordan talking about how he approaches everything, which I love. I focus on the little things. Little things add up to big things.

• 47:17David Senra?

  And for some reason, when I was reading this page in the book, it made me think of, I did this two-part, it's like one of the longest episodes of Founders. It's the Peter Thiel episode. I think it's back in the 30s, something like that. I read Ryan Holiday's book Conspiracy, which I thought the storytelling in that book was fantastic, and then Peter's book, Zero to One. And there's something, I heard Ryan on a podcast one time, he was doing like the book tour, doing these interviews to publicize that, the release of that book. I think that's probably how I found the book. Anyways, he said something about Peter Thiel's approach to the conspiracy, to get revenge against somebody that he felt wronged him. And he's describing the whole arc of that book.

• 48:01David Senra?

  And all the different decisions that had to go into, from Peter's perspective, the successful outcome. And the sentence was, "It was ruthless efficiency and hyper competence." That's the same description of Michael Jordan as well. Now, remember, the point of studying Michael Jordan and people like him is because it's not like the person walking around, the average person, has anywhere close to this extreme mindset that Jordan does. This is an example of that. This guy telling a story has been Michael's friend for 25 years. And this is Michael Jordan's "you can't ride the fence" story. This is crazy. I was really close to Ralph Sampson. Ralph had a big Puma contract. When I would go up to Boston with Ralph, we'd go to the Puma warehouse.

• 48:46David Senra?

  I would do the same thing when I'd go out to Nike with Michael. They'd say, "Whatever you want, pick it out and we'll ship it to you." I had my closet separated out, half Puma, half Nike. Michael comes to my apartment. We're getting ready to go out and he says, "Man, it's kind of cold. Can I borrow one of your jackets?" I said, "Sure, go in the closet." He went in there and saw everything separated out. He's in there a little longer than necessary and he comes out of my room. He has taken all of my Puma stuff out, brought it to the living room, and laid it on the floor. He goes into the kitchen, gets a butcher knife, and literally cuts up everything. This was like his second or third year in the league. He literally took a butcher knife to it all. When he's done, he picks up every little scrap and walks it down to the dumpster.

• 49:30David Senra?

  He then says, "Hey dude, call Howard tomorrow and tell him to replace all of this. But don't ever let me see you in anything other than Nike. You can't ride the fence." That's how Michael thinks. Now, we're going to fast forward in the timeline. This is Jordan talking about his time on the Dream Team. And so, one of the sentences that stuck out from last week's book, or a couple, the book, the last book, rather, was that Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice. And then he says something, or the author says something that just gives me goosebumps, gives me chills. They were deceiving themselves about what the game required. Think about the extreme mindset of Michael Jordan. This is not only like, you have multiple levels,

• 50:12David Senra?

  like it's extremely hard, you know, what, 400 players, something like that, 400 people, I forgot the exact number, can get to the NBA. Then the even smaller number gets to be an All-Star. An even smaller number gets to be chosen for the Olympic team. This is who Jordan is talking about. And then he's saying, even when you got to that level, they didn't understand the importance of practice. They were deceiving themselves about what the game required, but they already got to the Olympics. What are you talking about? And I was thinking about that. I was like, well, how many of those players? Yeah, they got to Olympics. They had individual accolades. They got deep in the playoffs. None of, a lot of them, none of them won six championships on that team. And a lot of them never won a single championship. So I think that really ties into like this

• 50:57David Senra?

  extreme outlier mindset that Jordan possesses. So I'm just gonna read nearly this whole section to you, because I thought it was very interesting. He says, "The 1992 Barcelona Olympics was one of the best times of my life." You're talking about the greatest players in the world. Guys who had every story written about how great they were, all the things they could do and had done on the basketball court. All I thought about was, I want to see this for myself. I want to see what those, these guys are all about. That was my motivation going to the Olympic Games in 1992. We were coming off back-to-back titles. I was exhausted, but I had to see these guys for myself. I had played against them, but I wanted to see how they practiced. The best part of the whole thing turned out to be the practices.

• 51:39David Senra?

  All we did was line up and play. Chuck Daly, the coach of the Olympics, he'd just say, "Come on, guys. Let's go hard for an hour or two. Let's get loose." That's all he did. He didn't coach. He didn't call fouls. He just threw the ball out there. The games were competitive as hell. It was up and down the court. We had 12 players, but John Stockton had broken his leg, and Christian Laettner was on the team, but he was still in college, and no one would let him in the games. We played five-on-five. If Magic got off to a good start, or anyone else, the talking would start. These were the teams. Me and Scotty, Chris Mullen, Larry Bird, and Patrick Ewing. That was our five. They had Magic, Drexler, Malone, Charles Barkley, and Robinson. Think about this.

• 52:22David Senra?

  He beat Magic in the finals, beat Drexler in the finals, beat Malone in the finals, and beat Charles Barkley in the finals. That is crazy. I didn't realize that till I read the sentence. "We whip their ass every day." In Monte Carlo, we got into the most heated match of all time. Magic was telling us how great the Lakers were and how Showtime was the best basketball. Me and Pippen are listening to this on the way to practice, and we say, "Okay, we're going to show you what the new kids are all about." Me and Magic talked trash back and forth all day. I was guarding him, and I'm saying, "You don't have Kareem now. You've got to do it all yourself." At the other end, he was guarding me, and I blew right by him. I'd be trash talking. "This isn't your old team." We beat them so bad that when the game was over, Magic said, "We ain't leaving. We've got to keep playing." Scotty and I looked at Bird, and we said, "We're ready to go."

• 53:07David Senra?

  Magic said, "Why are you ready to go?" And we said, "Because there isn't any competition here." Magic didn't speak to us for two days. So another thing that Jordan says in this book, I've also heard him in interviews multiple times, is that it's important, like, if you're being authentic to yourself, if you're making decisions from your instinct, that's the only way you're going to have long-term success. Because you can't, if you're just following fads, you're trying to fake something, like, you can only do that for a short amount of time. And then he combines this with the idea, it's like, skip the shortcut. Like, it's supposed to be hard. It's hard, but it's fair. Remember his motto? This is going to remind me of, there's a quote in that book, "The Hour of Fate." I forgot which Founders episode it is, but you'll see it in the archive if you're interested,

• 53:48David Senra?

  because it's about the partnership, like, the, I guess, the feud and then the unlikely partnership between Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. But Theodore Roosevelt's somebody I'm going to read multiple books on in the future. I've already done, I think, what, two or three podcasts on him at least? Because he's just a very fascinating individual, and he lived, I feel, multiple lifetimes. Because he dies relatively early, when he's 60. "The River of Doubt" is a great book about, like, towards the end of his life and just the crazy things that he would do. That's also in the archive. But in "The Hour of Fate," it said, um... Roosevelt was forever at it. He was a curiosity, always pushing and straining and admonishing friends around him to do the same. Theodore loved to row in the hottest sun over the roughest water in the smallest boat. He is not one for shortcuts, Jordan isn't either, so he says,

• 54:34David Senra?

  "We have become a shortcut culture. To a certain degree, we define success on the basis of fictional attributes. If a guy has commercials, a lot of money, the girls, the car, then he's considered successful, whether his performance matches all those things or not. Success to me has nothing to do with how much money you have or what kind of car you drive. I always wanted to know where I fit in with the best. Authenticity is about being true to who you are, even when everyone else wants you to be someone else. It is a lot harder to become the best you can be when you're focused on trying to be the best version of someone else. There's nothing authentic in that. And if it's not authentic, then it's not going to last." And so that reminds me of something he said in this interview, this cigar aficionado interview,

• 55:15David Senra?

  because it's like, you know, you own an NBA team, you got businesses going everywhere. What is most important to you? And so Jordan says, "Of all the things I'm involved with, my strongest passion is the Jordan Brand, because I can impact that in a much greater sense than owning an NBA team. To be able to continually talk to that consumer, to interact with that consumer, it's not dependent on how the season ends. This is the most important part. If I had to pick, if I had to pick of all the things I'm involved in, the most important is the Jordan Brand because it's my DNA. It's in my DNA. It is who I am." This is a story coming from the preparation and his work ethic that he was previously applying to basketball. Now he's applying it when he's in the minor leagues, trying to be a baseball player.

• 55:58David Senra?

  And really, this is the Jordan doesn't have an off button story. What Michael did to get himself ready to play baseball was grueling. He would get up every morning and go to the complex way ahead of the other players. He'd get into the batting cage, swing the bat, and knock around the ball. He would do this for an hour to 90 minutes. Then the team would show up and Michael would go through the regular practice, which ran about three hours. Then he would go back out for another hour. His hands were so raw that the calluses would rip open every day. The trainers would wrap his hands in gauze and tape. He looked like a prizefighter. The next morning, Michael was back in the cage, swinging a baseball bat for hours. He never missed a day. Not only did he not miss a day, he never said a word about his hands. That's how you get ready.

• 56:43David Senra?

  Once the on button is pushed, there isn't an off button. So another idea, I love the fact that Michael was always talking about something he learned from his parents, something he applied for the rest of his life, is that you've got to take negatives and turn them into positives. So he's got this really famous commercial, Nike commercial. It's the Nike commercial about failure. And I'm just going to read to you real quick because I pulled up the transcript. "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games 26 times. I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed." So he's asked, I'm going to combine this with something else I heard him talk in this interview, he's like, "What's your biggest regret?" "I don't have regrets.

• 57:28David Senra?

  To win, you have to lose. To be successful, you have to have something that wasn't successful. To be happy, you have to have disappointment." And to me, that's the idea he's expressing. I just have one sentence for you here. He's talking about the commercial that I just read to you. "The idea of not being afraid to make mistakes or using negative outcomes to create positive ones was great." And so let's go back to this mindset. The reason I'm talking about, hey, you get close to Jordan, you hear his words, you read books about him, you watch his interviews, you're really downloading his operating system and the mindset that he approached his craft. And he talks about the mind over and over again. And he says, "The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further.

• 58:12David Senra?

  The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal." How weird and twisted and crazy this is. You have a goal, your own mind is trying to play tricks so you don't accomplish that goal. "The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal, but you have to see past that. Turn it all off if you're going to get where you want to be."

• 58:40David Senra?

  I'm going to read this again. "The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt." This is Michael Jordan. This is not a soft, weak person. And he's telling you, "My mind tried to do the same thing to me." This is extremely important. "The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that. Turn it all off if you're going to get where you want to be." So there's a couple quotes, before I go to the next page, from my notes on all these talks I've been watching. So one of this, I think, that will help. And Michael says, "Work ethic eliminates fear." And actually, you know what? Before I go back to my notes, what he's talking about, the mind playing tricks on you, that you're going to be fearful.

• 59:25David Senra?

  Work ethic eliminates that. Jeff Bezos, in the next page, Jeff Bezos, what Michael's about to tell us reminded me of what Jeff Bezos said. He says, "Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over." So Michael's saying, "I was as prepared as I could possibly have been for that moment. I couldn't go back and practice a little harder. I knew I had done the right things to prepare myself for that situation. One way or another, I knew I was prepared to be successful." Now, if you know you haven't prepared correctly, which is what Jeff is just saying, is the root cause of stress, or you haven't worked, and that you haven't worked hard enough, that's when other thoughts and emotions creep into your mind. That is stress. That is fear. Pause here. Go back to this.

• 1:00:09David Senra?

  "Work ethic eliminates fear." Right? Back to Jordan's paragraph. "It is the same process for doing anything, anywhere in life, no matter how big or small. Whether it's running a corporation, taking a test in the second grade, or taking a shot to win the game. At that moment," and I double underline this sentence, this is fantastic. "At that moment, you are the sum total of all the work you have put in. Nothing more and nothing less. If you are confident that you have done everything possible to prepare yourself, then there is nothing to fear." Back to my notes on the talks. "I have total confidence in my skill, so I am not afraid." It's the same idea. He's expressing, I think, like 15-year gap between those two ideas.

• 1:00:53David Senra?

  So it's obviously very fundamental if he's still talking about it. More notes. "I know I can play this game, and I know I can play it at the highest level. You've got a lot of guys with the ability, but they don't have control of their mind." I'm not making this up. How many times is Jordan saying the same idea over and over again? The importance of having control over your mind. A lot of people can run and jump and shoot, but they don't have the killer instinct and the confidence in themselves to perform those skills. Let's go back to this Zen. You know, he's having influence by what he learned from Phil Jackson, from the psychologist, the meditation, the living in the moment, like the Zen Buddhism idea. I want to allow whatever is going to happen to happen at its own rhythm. That is just, there's a single quote on an entire page.

• 1:01:38David Senra?

  I want to allow whatever is going to happen to happen at its own rhythm. Something he told Oprah that's kind of similar to that thought. If you chase something, you might not get it. If you put forth the work, the next thing you know, it's bestowed upon you. Okay, so now he's got a bunch of ideas on this page. So my note is, my driving force was to show people what I could do. Wake up and go on the attack. We are on the offense all the time. So there's a, you can find these principles of Nike in the early days. I think their first marketing manager is one that wrote it out. But they said that, we're on the offense all the time. Jordan was the same thing. And then find ways to trick yourself. So let's see what this is about. My driving force, my passion was to impress people with what I could do. It was the idea, somebody might be sitting in the stands who had never seen Michael

• 1:02:23David Senra?

  Jordan play before. I thought about that person who had never experienced the excitement or the entertainment I could provide. I would wake up in the morning thinking, how am I going to attack today? And then the idea of, you know, even how do you, how do you have that motivation every day? Even after you, now he's got the accolades. He's All-Star, gold medals, MVP, championships. You gotta trick your mind. You gotta play games with yourself. I never knew what my motivation would be until something during that day. It wasn't easy as I went along because I had accomplished so much. I had to trick myself. I had to find a test within the test. I look at these kids today and they don't know how to trick themselves. They don't even understand the need to find a way to get yourself ready to play at that high level every night.

• 1:03:10David Senra?

  And now we're going to see that again, he's holding everybody else to a high standard, but not a higher standard than he held himself. And so this section reminded me of that quote I say to you all the time because I think it's extremely important to know. Comes from founder Four Seasons, Izzy Sharp. Excellence is the capacity to take pains. Before I read this section to you, let me read some more quotes from these interviews that I think are echoing what I'm about to read to you. Remember earlier, he's saying, "I'm not going to fall down to your level, right? My competitive drive is far greater than anyone else I've ever met. We have a goal, a vision to obtain. Sometimes you have to do it when you're tired. It's a test of your will to succeed." So how does this relate to what's happening? He's talking about when he's playing on the Wizards,

• 1:03:52David Senra?

  goes from being GM to going down, trying to get the players. At Washington, Kwame Brown said, "I was hard on him, and I was, because I never believed he had ever tried to push himself. He had developed bad habits, and I don't believe in bad habits. Tomorrow's kids are going to have to see someone playing hurt, see someone practicing the day after winning a championship. We have to provide examples so they can relate to that ideal. Otherwise, we'll lose the gap, that it starts to fade away. And 20 years from now, you'll never see someone play sick or get out on the floor with a sore ankle." So on the same section, we have a friend of his, like, add to what Michael's saying here. "I saw a guy sitting on the training table for two weeks with a sprained ankle.

• 1:04:37David Senra?

  Michael had a back spasm one day, and we literally had to carry him off the floor and drive him home in the bed of a truck because he couldn't move. They gave him treatments, and they gave him heat treatments and cold treatments all night long, and he played the next night. He had fluid drained off his knee, I don't know how many times. One night, he had 22 cc's of fluid drain. Do you know how much that is? And that was before the game." So again, I think Michael's words resonate because they're not just words. It's not, he's not telling you, "Hey, you know, Scott, you have a migraine. Get in here. Hey, your back's hurting." You know, because in The Last Dance, Michael and Kurt Cohn play, like, he's like, "Just go out there and be a decor." He, that wouldn't work if he didn't do it himself. And so what did he say? "You have a goal, don't you?

• 1:05:21David Senra?

  You have a vision to obtain. Well, sometimes you're going to have to do it when you're tired, and sometimes you're not going to feel well. You have to do it anyways. It's a test of your will to succeed." Let me go back to my notes. There's another thing he says in this other interview. If you love something and your goal is to be successful, there's a certain price you have to pay. There's a certain accountability you have to hold. Later in that same interview, he says, everything comes with a price. And I'm going to read the last note I have on this and then I'll just finish with the book. Because really, this is something he said about his dad. And he's saying it 25 years after his dad was murdered. And part of the reason founders exist is, of course,

• 1:06:04David Senra?

  we want to learn how they thought about work, the ideas they had. They spent 40, 50 years over their career. They've obviously picked up useful information that is useful for future generations. But work is just a smaller part of life. It's really to learn how you have a great life. And so outside of the work relationships, I think about the personal relationships a lot because these are life stories. They're not just work stories. And really, something that I feel like I've benefited greatly from reading these books is understanding the profound impact that the relationships, how your relationships with other people affect their journey in life. It could be your close friends, obviously your kids,

• 1:06:49David Senra?

  your life partners, your spouses, whatever it is. But there's two, he just has a few sentences. There's just two ideas that jumped out at me. It's the fact that he's having this discussion 25 years after his dad died. So the impact that you're going to have, if you have kids now or maybe you have kids in the future, like how important that relationship is to your kid. And know that's going to affect what you do with them. Your actions are going to affect their lives long after you don't exist anymore. And then Jordan's ability to process and to get control of his mind and to take one of the most negative things that could ever happen to a person and say, hey, I didn't have control over it. I didn't want it to happen. But moving forward, it's going to have a positive impact on my life, he says.

• 1:07:31David Senra?

  So this is when he's asked about his father 25 years after he died. I had him for 32 years. I never look at it from a negative sense. So he's talking about, I'm not, yes, I wish he was still here, but I had him for 32 years. Obviously, he was murdered. I think about him practically every day.

• 1:07:51David Senra?

  So those two ideas, like, yes, I didn't want that to happen, but I had him for 32 years. I got a relish in the fact that I did have him for that long, for that period of time. I wanted more, but I didn't, I don't get to control that. I had him for 32 years, and even almost three decades after, he's no longer with me. I'm still thinking about him every day. So let's go back to the book. This, I almost ended on this because I thought it was so, such a great thought. Like, it doesn't have to be someone else. It could be you. And so he says, "For the 20th anniversary shoot, we asked, who's going to be next? Who's going to come along and take Michael Jordan's spot? In one way or another, just about everyone is going to go through that kind of search. The idea that it could be you is something

• 1:08:32David Senra?

  all of us can relate to when we think about our goals. It doesn't have to be someone else getting all the accolades. It could be you." And then we have Michael explicitly talking about the fact that building a team on a business is extremely similar to building a team in a sport. Difference is, one is negative sum and one is positive sum. There's only one NBA champion. There could be many, many successful businesses. And really, he's going to touch on one of his, another main idea. The ones that, at least I'm going to take away is the idea, okay, practice, right? The importance of practice. Believe in practice is the, is the way I would distill that idea down to its essence. Believe in practice, live in the moment, and then the importance that listening is a superpower.

• 1:09:16David Senra?

  How shocked were you when you, if you listened to the podcast, like, the fact that everybody around him talked about Michael's one of the greatest listeners? That is not, from the outside, does not look that way, right? So let's go to what he says here. "We bring our personalities, our visions and our creativity to discussion." He's talking about the team at Jordan Brand. "And we don't give a damn about getting credit. We are there to create something beautiful, something representative of what the brand is all about. What I think they like about me is I can admit when I'm wrong, and I can accept criticism, and I can accept creative insight coming from someone other than myself. There are a lot of people who can't do that, or won't allow us to do that. They all feel like it's an attack on their intelligence, or a negative comment on their ideas. They want so much

• 1:09:57David Senra?

  credit that they can't share the credit. But that dynamic is just as destructive inside a creative team, or a corporate setting, as it is on the basketball court." In its highest form, business is a team game. The teams that can accept that philosophy are the teams that get the best chance, long-term, to be successful. Team sports are no different. Give me five guys who want to work hard and play together, and I'll take those guys every time over more talented players who can't come together for the good of the group. For years, people viewed me as an individual and not a team player because I scored so much. But I was a team player. I was just filling my role in it at that time. Brand Jordan is no different. Even though my name is on the product, it's a collaborative effort.

• 1:10:40David Senra?

  I have the same kind of commitment to the brand that I had to basketball. I have an intense focus and desire to make the brand successful. But I'm not so dominant that I can't listen to the creative ideas coming-- remember, "listen," he said that word-- but I'm not so dominant that I can't listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people, listen. Those who don't listen, don't survive.

• 1:11:06David Senra?

  And then Jordan closes with just a reminder that you just have to focus on the moment. All is now. In all honesty, I don't know what's ahead. If you ask me what I'm going to do in five years, I can't tell you. This moment, now that's a different story. I know what I'm doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what's ahead. I'm so connected to this moment that I don't make assumptions about what might come next because I don't want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen or might not happen, then you open up the possibility of making mistakes. You start limiting the potential outcomes. I don't make assumptions. I know what I know, and I deal with my life based on what's happening right now.

• 1:11:51David Senra?

  And that is where I'll leave it. To get the full story, buy the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 213 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon. Okay, so what you're about to hear is this question I was asked a few months ago. I actually recorded this a few months ago. They asked, "How did history's greatest entrepreneurs think about hiring?" All the answers. People think I have a better memory than I actually do. You know, if people say, "David, you have a great memory." My wife would laugh at that because I forget things all the time. It's not that I have a good memory. It's I reread things over and over and over again. Every single answer, every single reference you're about to hear in this 20-minute mini-episode came from me searching all of my notes and highlights. That option is now available to you.

• 1:12:35David Senra?

  If you like what you hear, if you think it's valuable, if you're already running a successful company and you want an easy way to reference the ideas of history's greatest entrepreneurs in a searchable database that you can go through at your convenience anytime you want, then you can go to foundersnotes.com and sign up.

• 1:12:52David Senra?

  I want to start out first with why this is so important. There's actually this book that came out in like 1997. It's called "In the Company of Giants." I think it's episode 208 of Founders. It's two Stanford MBA students, if I remember correctly, and they're interviewing a bunch of technology company founders. And in there, Steve Jobs is one of them. This is, you know, right, I think, even before he came back to Apple. And they were talking about, "Well, yeah, we know it's important to hire, but in a typical startup, a manager or founder may not always have time to spend recruiting other people." And I first read this, Steve's answer to this, you know, I don't know, two years ago, and I never forgot it. I think it's excellent. I think it sets up why this question is so important.

• 1:13:34David Senra?

  And you should really be spending, especially in the early days, like basically all your time doing this. "In a typical startup, a manager may not always have the time to spend recruiting other people." Then Steve jumps in. "I disagree totally. I think it's the most important job. Assume you're by yourself in a startup and you want a partner. You take a lot of time finding a partner, right? He would be half of your company." I'm going to pause there. "This idea of looking at each new hire as a percentage of the company is genius. Why should you take any less time finding a third or a fourth of your company or a fifth of your company?" When you're in a startup, the first 10 people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is 10% of the company.

• 1:14:15David Senra?

  So why wouldn't you take as much time as necessary to find all a players? If three, three of the 10 were not so great, why would you start a company where 30% of your people are not so great? A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does. Okay. So to answer this question, the advantage that, um, that I have making founders and that you have as a byproduct of listening to founders is not only that I've read, you know, 300 something biographies of entrepreneurs now, but I have all of my notes and highlights stored in my Readwise app. And that means I can search for any topic. I can look at the past highlights of books or I could search for keywords. So what I did is first of all, like what I've started to do with these AMA questions is

• 1:15:00David Senra?

  I read them, decide which ones I'm going to do next, and then think about it for a few days. I don't put any, I just literally that, I know that's the next question, just let my brain work on it in the background for a few days. And then I'll go through and start searching all of my notes. And so that's what I did here. And so there's a bunch of, you know, I don't have, I may have like 10 or 15 different founders talking about hiring. The first idea is the most obvious, but I think probably works best when you're already established. So Steve Jobs is talking about, hey, you know, the great way to hire is just find great work and find the people that did that and then try to hire them. When you're Steve Jobs, that's a lot easier, right? Than if you're just somebody that doesn't have reputation, maybe you don't have resources,

• 1:15:44David Senra?

  maybe your company's rather new or not as well-known. David Ogilvie, I just did Confessions of an Advertising Man a couple of episodes ago, I think 306 or something like that, 307. And he did the same thing. But he's David Ogilvie at that point. So he would find, he'd go through magazines, find great advertising, great copywriting, and he'd write the person a letter and then set up a phone call. And he says he wouldn't, he was so well-known and, you know, he's one of the best in his field, that he wouldn't even have to offer a job, just the conversation, then the person would, he would want to hire the person, never mention it, and the person would apply to him. And so again, I think if you can do that, then of course, it's straightforward.

• 1:16:26David Senra?

  Find somebody who does great work. Usually you can do this. I actually have a friend, I can't say who it is. He's doing this right now, actually. I have a friend that's really good at doing this. He's finding people that do great stuff on the internet and then just cold DMing them and then convincing them to work on things. And that usually works, especially with people, like younger people earlier in their career. There's a bunch of different ways to think about this and a bunch of different ways to prioritize. So the first thing that came to mind, but I found surprising, is you read any biography on Rockefeller, and he had a couple ideas where he felt the optimization, table stakes, that you're intelligent and you're driven and you're hardworking, right? We don't even have, like, if you're listening to this, you already know that. But he prioritized

• 1:17:09David Senra?

  hiring people with social skills. And so this is what he said, "The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee, and I pay more for that ability than any other under the sun." There's the second part to this, though, and this also works well if you have access to more resources. Rockefeller would hire people as he found, as he found talented people, not as he needed them. It's not like, okay, Standard Oil has six open spots, let's go find six candidates, right? He'd come across what he considered a talented person. It didn't even matter if he didn't know what they were going to do. He's like, I'm just going to stack his team. And if you really think about his partners at Standard Oil,

• 1:17:50David Senra?

  he essentially built a company, an executive team of founders, because he was buying up all their companies. So it's very rare. But there's a line from Titan I want to read to you. "Taking for granted the growth of his empire, he hired talented people as found, not as needed." And then I found another idea in the hiring, like the actual interview process. So there's this guy named Van Eever Bush. I did two episodes on him, I think it's 270 and 271. He is the most important American ever in history in terms of connecting the scientific field, private enterprise and the government. The most important person to keep alive for the American war effort was FDR. The second one was Van Eber Bush. Van Eber Bush is like the Forrest Gump of this historical period.

• 1:18:35David Senra?

  He is involved in everything from the Manhattan Project to discovering like a young Claude Shannon, to building a mechanical computer. Like this guy literally has done, he's just, he pops up in these books over and over again. If you were reading about American business history during World War II and post-World War II, you are going to come across the name Van Eber Bush over and over again. I read his fantastic autobiography called Pieces of the Action and I came across this weird highlight. And so this is his brilliant and unusual job interview process. And so he's talking about this organization he's running called AMRAD. At AMRAD, I hired a young physicist from Texas named C.G. Smith. The way I hired him is interesting. An interview of that sort is always likely to be on, on an artificial basis and somewhat embarrassing.

• 1:19:18David Senra?

  So I discussed with him a technical point on which I was then genuinely puzzled. The next day, he came in with a, with a neat solution and I hired him at once. Here's another idea. This is from Nolan Bushnell. Nolan Bushnell is the founder of Atari, founder of Chuck E. Cheese and Steve Jobs mentor. He hired Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs was like 19 at Atari. He would ask people their reading habits in interviews. This is why. One of the best ways, his whole thing was he wanted to build, all of his companies laid on a foundation of creative people. So that's what he's looking for. He's like, I need creative people. One of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question. What books do you like? I've never met a creative person in my life that didn't respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits.

• 1:20:00David Senra?

  Actually, which books people read is not as important as the simple fact that they read at all. I've known many talented engineers who hated science fiction, but loved, say, books on bird watching. A blatant but often accurate generalization, people who are curious and passionate read. People who are apathetic and indifferent don't. I remember, that's such a great line and I obviously agree with it. I remember one, I'm gonna read it again. A blatant but often accurate generalization. People who are curious and passionate read. People who are apathetic and indifferent don't. I remember one particular woman who during an interview told me that she had read every book that I had read. So I started mentioning books I hadn't read and she had read those too. I didn't know how someone in her late twenties found that this much time to read so much.

• 1:20:44David Senra?

  But I was impressed, I was so impressed that I hired her right there and assigned her to international marketing, which was having problems. This is why, this is why I'm reading this whole section to you. A job with a lot of moving parts benefits from a brain that has a lot of moving parts. It wouldn't be possible to have read that many books without such a brain. So do you see what I mean? Like, we start with Steve Jobs saying this is the most important thing that your role as the leader of the company and the founders do, right? And you are, and it's so important to study and this is why I'm glad this question exists and why I'm glad that I've, I took the time and I had like the foresight to like, hey, I should really organize my thoughts and notes. Cause there's no way I would have remembered all this without being, being able to search my Readwise, right?

• 1:21:27David Senra?

  But you have Rockefeller saying this is what's important to me. You have Bush saying this is how I hire. Now you have Nolan Bush now saying, well, here's another weird thing that I learned. Let me go through what Warren Buffett says about this. So this is about the quality. One thing that is consistent, whether it's Jobs, Buffett, Bezos, Peter Thiel, this just pops up over and over again. They talk about the importance of trying to find people that are better than you. The hiring bar constantly has to increase. Now, obviously the larger the company gets, that's impossible. Steve Jobs has this great quote where he's like, you know, Pixar was the first time I see, I saw an entire team, entire company of A players, but they had 400 players, they had 400 team members. He's like, at the time, Apple had 3,000. It's like, it's impossible to have 3,000 A players.

• 1:22:12David Senra?

  So there is some number. That your company may grow to where it's just, you're just not, you're not going to have thousands of A players. In my argument, I don't even know if you get a 400. I guess, I mean, I'll take Steve's word for it on there. And Pixar definitely produced great products, but it's probably a lot, lot lower than that as well. So Warren Buffett would tell you to use David Ogilvy's hiring philosophy. And so Warren said, Charlie and I know that the right players will make almost any team manager look good. Again, that is why it's the most important function of the founder, maybe directly next to the product. Or right above the product, actually, because those are the people building your product. We subscribe to the philosophy of Ogilvy and Mather's founding genius, David Ogilvy. This is what Ogilvy said, "If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.

• 1:22:56David Senra?

  But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants." David, or Jeff Bezos, rather, used a variation of Ogilvy's idea too. Jeff used to say in Amazon, "Every time we hire someone, he or she should raise the bar for the next hire so that the overall talent pool is always improving." And he talked about this idea on Amazon where the future hires that we do should be so good that if you had applied for the job you already have at Amazon, you wouldn't get in. That's a very interesting idea. Take your time with recruiting. Take your time with hiring. There's this great book on the history of PayPal. It's written, actually, I've recently become friends with the author. His name is Jimmy Sony.

• 1:23:39David Senra?

  And this is in his book. The most fascinating thing that I found was that PayPal prioritized speed. So from the time they're founded to the time they sell to eBay, it's like four years. Jimmy spent more time researching the book than, he spent six years researching the book. I always tease him because like you took longer on a book than they took to start and sell their company. It just speaks to like the quality he's trying to do. But as a byproduct of that, like obviously they move fast, but they prioritize speed over everything else, except in one area, recruiting. Max Levchin kept the bar for talent exceedingly high, even if that came at the expense of speedy staffing. Max kept repeating, A's hire A's, B's hire C's. So the first B you hire takes the whole company down. Let's read that again.

• 1:24:24David Senra?

  A players hire A players, B players hire C players. So the first B player you hire takes the whole company down. Additionally, the team, the company leaders mandated that all prospects, here's another idea for you. All prospects must meet every single member of the team. Now, the next one is the most bizarre. It makes sense if you study. I did this three part on Larry Ellison, three part series on Larry Ellison. I should read those books again because the podcast is like 50 times bigger than, than when I published those episodes and he's just, it's crazy. So he would hire based on the confidence, the self-confidence level of the candidate. Listen to this. I have tears in my eyes. I don't know why I'm laughing. Okay.

• 1:25:07David Senra?

  This is just so, because this is, you read about Larry Ellison and he's one of these people. It's like really easy to interface with because you just, you just know exactly who he is and what's important to him. That's why I think it's so funny. Ellison insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cockiest new college graduates. When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, are you the smartest person you know? And if they said yes, they would hire them. If they said no, they would say, who is? And they would go hire that guy instead. I don't know if you got the smartest people that way, but you definitely got the most arrogant. Ellison's, and this is why, the personality of the founder is largely the culture of the company. Apple is Steve Jobs. Apple's just Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives. Right?

• 1:25:50David Senra?

  I was just texting a founder friend of mine. He listens to the podcast. I actually met him through the podcast. And he's going through this like process of self-discovery. Like he's already started a bunch of companies that are really successful, but he's like, I think I'm more of this type of founder than the other type of founder. And that's good that he's doing that because he's, hopefully his next mission is like his life's mission. You know? And you can't get to your life's mission unless you figure out who you are. Ellison knew who he was. Ellison's swaggering, combative style became a part of the company's identity. This arrogant culture had a lot to do with Oracle's success. Here's another odd idea for you. Izzy Sharp, the founder of Four Seasons, actually could figure it out that in his business, which was hotels, right? That hiring the right person could actually be a form of distribution for his hotel.

• 1:26:35David Senra?

  He gave me the idea. Because of what? What do we know? What do you and I know in our bones? That history's greatest founders all read biographies. They all read biographies of people that came before them and took ideas from them. Izzy Sharp is trying to build Four Seasons. What do you think he did? He picked up a biography of Caesar Ritz. The guy that Ritz Carlton is named after, arguably the greatest hotelier of all time. And when he realized, oh shit, Ritz, he says, remembering that Caesar Ritz made his hotels world famous by hiring some of the foremost chefs, we decided to do something similar. So what is he talking about? Caesar Ritz went out and partnered with August Escafier. What Caesar Ritz was to building hotels, August Escafier was to French cooking. And so what happened is you partner with world famous chefs, people come into your restaurant

• 1:27:19David Senra?

  that's in the hotel because of the world famous chef. And now they know about your hotel. That leads to more activity in your restaurant that you own, but also leads to more brand recognition of your hotel. And then as a byproduct of that, more people staying at the hotel. So hiring as a form of distribution, this is fascinating. That is a fascinating idea. Okay, here's the problem. You can identify great people, right? Maybe they even want to come work. Like you've identified them, you've sold them, hey, this is our mission, this is what we're doing. And yet, humans have complicated lives. They have spouses, they have kids, they have a reason, maybe they can't move across the country to work for you, even though they want to.

• 1:28:01David Senra?

  So there's a problem solving element that you see in these books on you have to solve, like you've already identified the person, you've recruited them, they can't go for some other reason. Okay, well, the great founders are not going to take no for an answer. I read in this book called Liftoff, which is about the first six years of SpaceX. This is what Elon Musk did. They had anticipated his friend's issue. Having convinced Musk they needed to bring this brilliant young engineer from Turkey onboard, it became a matter of solving the problem. His wife had a job in San Francisco. She would need one in Los Angeles, right? Because that's where SpaceX is at the time. These were solvable problems and Elon's better at solving problems than almost anyone else. Musk therefore came into his job interview prepared. About halfway through, Musk told the guy that he wants to hire.

• 1:28:46David Senra?

  So I heard you don't want to move to LA. And one of the reasons is that your wife works for Google. Well, I just talked to Larry and they're going to transfer your wife down to LA. So what are you going to do now? To solve this problem, Musk had called his friend Larry Page, the co-founder of Google. The engineer sat in stunned silence for a moment, but then he replied, given all that, he would come to work at SpaceX. That's really smart. There is another idea when you're promoting. Are you going to promote from within or from without? You know, that's dependent on you, depending on what's going on. I do think this is interesting, though. There's this guy named Les Schwab, who built this really valuable chain of tire companies in the Pacific Northwest. I actually found out about him because Charlie Munger is like, hey, you should read this biography.

• 1:29:29David Senra?

  He said it in, he didn't say it to me personally. He said it to, in like one of the Berkshire meetings, that to study, Les Schwab had one of the most, one of the smartest financial incentive structures in any company that Charlie Munger had come across. So this is what Les Schwab did. He did not want to hire from, he didn't want to hire other people from other companies because they might come with bad habits. He liked to train his own executives. And so he says, in our 34 years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside. Every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires. They have all earned their management job by working up. And then another thing, if you're going to hire the best of the best in A-players, their A-players don't like to be micromanaged.

• 1:30:14David Senra?

  And so this came in Larry Miller's autobiography called Driven. He owns like, he owned like 93 companies all throughout Utah, car dealerships, movie theaters, all kinds of crazy stuff. But he also owned the NBA team, Utah Jazz. And what was fascinating is he's trying to recruit Jerry Sloan as the coach at the point. And Jerry Sloan would only take the job on one condition, and I really like it. I really like this idea. If you hire me, let me run the team and business. Right? That's what you're hiring me for. One of the best things we had ever done was hire Jerry Sloan as coach. At the time, he said, I'm only going to ask you for one thing. If I get fired, let me get fired for my own decisions. If you hire me, let me run the team/business. Here's another idea. From Thomas Edison that I think is fascinating.

• 1:30:58David Senra?

  Really, the way I think about a founder is like you're developing skills that you can't hire for. You're going to hire for everything else, but you shouldn't be hirable. And Edison wasn't. Edison, expressing his views on the preeminent role of applied scientists, which that's what he considered himself, coined the expression, "I can hire mathematicians, but they can't hire me." And so, when I read that paragraph for the first time, the note I left myself was, "Develop skills that you can't hire for. Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable." Estee Lauder would give you advice that you need to hire people aligned with your thinking and values. Hire the best people. This is vital. Hire people who think as you do and treat them well. In our business, they are a top priority.

• 1:31:38David Senra?

  So, this idea is like, that seems kind of weird, like hire people who think like you. There's obviously not one right way to build a business. I think that your business should be an expression of your personality and who you are as a person at the core. And so, I think there is an art to the building of your business. And the reason I use the word art, I don't mean in like a hoity-toity, you know, pretentious manner. That's not me at all. I don't even care about art at all, really. I mean that you're making decisions not just based on economics. Like, there are non-economic important decisions based on how you're building your business. Like, you could probably make more money doing a decision A, but decision A goes against who you are as a person, or you just don't like it, or it's just not as elegant or beautiful.

• 1:32:23David Senra?

  And so, therefore, you don't do it. So, that's what I mean about, you know, hire people who think as you do. And for whatever reason, when I read Estee Lauder say that, I was like, okay, that there's like this art to what she's doing. One thing that's going to be helpful in recruiting, this comes from Peter Thiel, I think this is the book Zero to One. Understand that most companies don't even differentiate their pitches to potential recruits into hiring. So, therefore, like they're just going to buy, as a byproduct of that, you're going to wind up with a lower overall talent base. And so, he says, "What's wrong with valuable stock, smart people are pressing problems? Nothing. But every company makes these claims, so they won't help you stand out. General and undifferentiated pitches to join your company don't say anything about why a recruit should join your company instead of money, instead of many others."

• 1:33:08David Senra?

  So, that idea of like your pitch. Your actual, he would tell you, you shouldn't be building an undifferentiated commodity business. But even above and beyond that, like the mission that you're trying to engage everybody to join you in. That pitch, that sale you're trying to make to potential recruits should be differentiated. It should not, if that person's applying to five other jobs, there should not be like, it's like, they may not like your mission, they may not like your pitch, but they shouldn't be able to compare it to anything else. Another quote from Nolan Bushnell, "Hire for passion and intensity." That's what he would do, or that's what he did when he found Steve Jobs. "If there was a single characteristic that separates Steve Jobs from the mass of employees, it was his passionate enthusiasm. Steve had one speed, full blast. This was the primary reason we hired him."

• 1:33:54David Senra?

  And one thing all these founders have in common is that he know how important hiring is. And when something's important, you do it yourself. This is again Elon Musk on hiring. He interviewed the first 3,000 employees at SpaceX. That's how important it was. "One of Musk's most valuable skills was his ability to determine whether someone would fit his mold. His people had to be brilliant, they had to be hardworking, and there could be no nonsense. There are a ton of phonies out there and not many who are the real deal," Musk said of his approach to interviewing engineers. "I can usually tell within 15 minutes and I can for sure tell within a few days of working with them." Musk made hiring a priority. He personally met with every single person the company hired through the first 3,000 employees. It required late nights and weekends, but he felt it was important to get the right people for his company."

• 1:34:37David Senra?

  And then to close on this, we started with Steve Jobs telling us why it was so important and why it should be a large part of how you spend your time. And now we'll close with what you do after. What do you do after you hire the person? And this is what he says, "It's not just recruiting. After recruiting, it's building an environment that makes people feel they are surrounded by equally talented people and their work is bigger than they are. The feeling that their work will have a tremendous influence and is part of a strong, clear vision." So that is the end to that 20-minute mini-episode. I just re-listened to the whole thing. And it really does, I think, it's a perfect explanation and illustration of why I think Founder's Notes is so valuable. Because some of those books I haven't read in five, six years.

• 1:35:19David Senra?

  And just the ability to have a searchable database of all these ideas, like this collected knowledge of some of history's greatest entrepreneurs to reference and then contextually apply to our own businesses, it's nothing short of, like, it's magic. That's really the way I think about it. I think it's a massive superpower. It gives me a massive superpower. I couldn't have made the podcast without it. I also think if you have access to it, it'll make your business better. And so if you're already running a successful business, I highly recommend that you invest in a subscription, and you can do that by going to foundersnotes.com.