David Senra in person: lessons from Joe Lamont's $25B ESW empire and the power of silence

Well, we have our first in-person guest of the show. We got David Sen from the TVPN Ultra Dome live. See you. How you doing, man? Good to see you, man. Finally in the Ultra Dome. Finally in person. Been How was the drive? Five times. It's a testament to how much I love you that you got me out of Malibu.

It was an hour and a half. Yeah, it's rough. I know. I did speeder and I do it every day. No, but it takes you an hour and a half at like Yeah, you go at like 5:00 in the morning. 5:30 in the morning. This is a different story. Anyway, this is I love this place though. You guys have an army back here.

We do have an army. You have the crew, the interns. Then I met the friends of the interns. Oh, yeah. We got everybody. Oh, yeah. We have intern friends. Lads, lads, lads. Lads studio. What is this? That's a chat. So, if if they if they saying how handsome you look, you you'll see it.

People are talking about uh yeah we're the chat is still talking about uh this debate over whether you can become generationally wealthy while having a child before age 30. What do you think? Obviously. Yeah. And they gave Michael Warren about Michael Shout out to Michael Dell Dell Technologies.

Don't say don't say too much because because that'll dox us. No, actually that that might be an interesting place to start. flew to Austin. I spent five hours with Michael Dell. Wow. Like two weeks, two or three weeks ago. Yeah. What was What was that like? What'd you learn from him? You know what?

What What surprised you because you've already you've already done uh a full episode on him. You've dug in. You probably spent days on his story. You know most of the facts. It's not only that. Like I listen to So I highly recommend every entrepreneur listen to his audio book because he actually narrates it.

And so I listened to it three Can you hear me? I listened to it three times. Uh, I listened to it three times and then read the book and then made the episode. Wow.

Um, there was like halfway through our conversation I said some I said something like I'm having a hard time rec reconciling like this paradox in my mind about between like your immen immense accomplishments and just like how normal you are.

And obviously he's a superlative and extreme person but he's unbelievably measured and controlled and kind and generous. It's just like one of my favorite people I've ever met. We got to get him on the Theo Vaughn podcast and see how he does there.

Uh I mean everyone in tech has been making the rounds and there's been multiple times when tech people have gone on Theo and they've had like kind of awkward starts like it took it took Zuck a minute to warm up. There was like the caffeine thing.

Oh, you know I don't I don't I think this is the mistake that people in tech make and you're seeing it with a bunch of other podcasts. They should definitely come here before anywhere else. This is not a joke.

It's like they see a number on a screen and they don't think about what that number represents and who that person is. And like you can just read some of the comments on some of these like mainstream podcasts. It's like this guy's 6 years old. He's in his underwear in Missouri. He's got like unemployed.

Like he's not the person you're just optimizing for the number when you should optimize for the quality of the people in the audience. Yeah, that's for sure. It's insane to me. Uh well, you know who's optimized for the quality of the audience? Colossus Magazine.

There's a new uh I love how you printed out while we wait for the print edition. don't have the print edition yet, but you can still go subscribe. Patrick Oanaughy has printed uh a a warehouse full this time. Um have you had a chance to read through the Joe Lamont profile?

I I get I got Patrick's, you know, obviously like my brother. I talked to him like every day. There's actually an interesting um something we can talk about that that I called him about yesterday. Um I actually think moving forward and I told him this yesterday and I told him again today.

I was like, if you give me more than a day to read it, we if on especially in these long form profiles. Totally. I should do an that is good enough if you read the whole thing. It takes like an hour and a half to listen to. So I read it.

I was thinking about printing the whole thing and I was like there's no way I can read this before the show. It's like 100 pages. I read it and then I threw it into 11 reader and I listen to it on the way out. Oh, that's good. And so it's like an hour and a half if you listen at 1x. Okay.

Um but I think that source material is so good. I could definitely do an episode of Founders and I was like just tell me in advance. 2 weeks and then we can drop it. But one of my favorite little stories from that is how so um Joe had sort of a non-traditional you know entrance into uh startups and business.

He was a Stanford undergrad. So no more more traditional in that sense. But but at the time that he was building um what was the software called? Sales builder or something like that.

at the initial but his name the names for his they're so great enterprise software it's like building a microphone like it's called microphone and I mean you look at some of the companies here like new view GCE still secure Ignite or object store accept prologic raven flow it's just like so there's two there's two things that stood out from the story one is there there wasn't a meme yet of of VCs being like I'm going to back the Stamford dropout they wanted to back executives that had experience and crazy access to talent and there were some early kind of garage success stories.

So, he was kind of following that. Um, but the other thing is is bigger companies, Fortune 500 companies refuse to buy startups. But then his pricing, did you see what he did with his like it's 100 grand and they're like, "No, we we don't buy from startups. " They come back, okay, we need it. No one else can do this.

It's 300. And it goes from like now it's a million, now it's 7. 5 million. Now it's $25 million. And everybody kept saying yes cuz you're the best. He did.

But but the other thing is the why now for the business, the initial why now and why it worked, not like the business catalyst was that they started sending this was at a time where they would just send you a letter and said you're preapproved for this credit card. You just have to fill this out. Credit card roulette.

Yeah. He Yeah. Yeah. So he would he signed up he he racked out half racked up half a million dollars of credit card debt and was was finally before he got his first customer still no VC would fund him at all.

He fin like he was basically like evaluating like bankruptcy like he had played it out in his head like it's going to be like seven years.

It's going to be really annoying but it doesn't matter if you have his calculus was like you you know how much debt you have going into bankruptcy actually like it doesn't going from a 100,000 to 500k. It's not that much worse to go through. You might as well do it do it the real way. So he just went full send.

Absolutely. and then and then basically made it all back from like his basically first couple customers. So I we have a mutual friend that we can't name uh that has been close and is basically Joe's been like a a mentor of his for a long time and actually like a funer of a lot of projects that he does behind the scenes.

So I've heard a lot about this guy. Yeah. And what I like about people is just like the people that chart their own path and and and intentionally go in the opposite direction. So everybody heard Buffett and Munger and they're like you should buy phenomenal businesses even if you have to pay more.

And so then everybody in the VM VMS like rollups they're like I'm going to buy the great businesses. And what he realized and I heard the story like probably two years ago it's like well okay so I have a lot more competition for the everybody wants the great ones. What about these shitty ones over here?

And he turned it into a math problem. He's like okay this is your ARR. This is your rate of attrition. Like I know exactly how much I'm going to get out of this in the next six years. They talk about it in the you know they they use different words that they talk about in the article.

He's like, "Okay, so I can easily buy this thing for two because I'm going to rip I'm going to pull out, you know, 15 over the next 5 years. " He just does it over and over and over again. And then I heard, I don't know if it was in if they said it, but like, you know, he bought out his uh shareholders.

He 100% of the company. And what I heard is like he's been taking billions. Yep. A year in dividends, his paycheck at the end of the year. Like, how much money did you make this year? I don't know, like $1. 5 billion. Crazy. Yeah. And no one knew who he was. Yeah. He's built a machine. A machine behind the scenes. Yeah.

The other thing is going dark going dark for 25 years and basically until this. Well, this is this, you know, this is like one of my fetishes is like these very silent family-owned businesses where they own 100% of them. You'll never hear about them.

I've been lucky enough to have dinner with some of these people and they're just again Yeah. I know you you you've talked to people that have written books about their family business. Yes. And and haven't released them and you're like, "Please let me let me" And they're just like, "No. " Okay.

So, I'll just tell the story. Um, so there's this guy, he's 76 years old. Okay, this is like one of my favorite dinners I've ever had and uh I had to be really careful here. So he started working in the family business when he was six. Okay, he's the second generation this family dynasty.

They own the original source of their wealth was one of the largest uh privately held shipping companies in the world. And when I mean privately held owned by his dad and now owned by him and his brother like it's just like there is no shareholders, no board of directors. It's just the family.

I've now become close with the third generation and I get insight on how they run their the family is a business and the business is a family and the way they go about things is just really really intelligent and so we have this phenomenal dinner.

You look up his reported net worth and it's like it's still in the tens of billions and it's like under reportported by a factor of like four cuz then he tells you about like oh yeah I put money into this and I never sold and it's worth this.

There's just crazy stories and he's also like super charismatic, one of the best rock and tours I've ever like been around and just super and he's still on it 24/7 like works all the time. And uh so there's two things that were funny. The this has happened a few times where families will commission real writers, right?

They they commission actual biography and I have a copy of a separate family. It looks like the book. It looks like a book you'd buy in a bookstore. The only difference is there's no ISBN number on the back.

Oh, so like some of the books I have, no one else in the world has these books besides like the family and the author and everything. Open AI would give you a lot of money for that. So, so there's two two funny things that that uh that he told me. Uh one that they commissioned one for his father and then one for him.

And I was like, "Dude, give me those books. Like, I would do such a good job on them. " Um and he without hesitation, he's like, "Absolutely not. " Like that's out of the question. I go, "Why not? " And he says something like, "I have no desire to educate my competitors. " Mhm.

And just like real fast and then um he Leave it to me in the will. No. And then no I I think so there's another founder the next generation. No but there's another founder who's 78 and I spent four days with her her the CEO and the top 40 executives.

Uh they were going through um how do they they wanted advice on like how to transition from a founder company. She's one of my favorite founders I've ever come across in my life and like to the next generation. And so after talking to all the executives spending time with them they're like okay so what do you think?

And after 4 days I go, when she's dead, you're This is like there's not like you're not replacing her. She's a singular individual. You should like either sell the company or go do something else cuz like there's no transition here. It's like what do you do when Michael Jordan retires?

Like I don't know, start rebuilding. Um but he said something funny because they're obviously in shipping. They now have real estate and they have finance and everything else. And he's got also one of the biggest boats in the world. And he had mentioned no but no he mentioned earlier though.

So early in the conversation he's like yeah uh when you read a lot of these biographies he had read all the bio same biographies I had read like Daniel Lewig Aristotle Nasis all these like shipping guys he knew all of them they would also run their company headquarters from their private like giant boats right giant yachts and so he he had mentioned earlier like yeah I spend you know part of the year I live part of the year on uh he said I thought he said boat he said ship so I was like yeah so like when like what month he's going to tell us I go so what what uh like when are you going to go back on your Oh, like how long you been in your boat for?

He goes, "What are you talking about? " I go, "You said like earlier you live on your boat. " He goes, "I don't have a boat. " I'm like, "Is this some kind of joke? " He goes, "I have a ship. " I go, "What's the difference between a boat and a ship? " He goes, "You can put a boat on a ship.

You can't put a ship on a boat. " So, my favorite conversations are these kind of people. And I I like obsessed with like older entrepreneurs cuz they're just so much smarter than like a 25-year-old startup founders. It's like not even They're not even It's like It might be an alien. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just like these people are just they just they have so much more experience. They have so much more knowledge. Like I just can talk to them for hours and hours and hours. Makes sense. Uh have you dug into the Trilogy software mafia? Are you familiar with this? No.

So uh this was some secondary research I did out of Trilogy. This is of course the the the the subject of that Colossus profile um on Joe Lamont. Um the in the9s Trilogy was on such a tear. They were recruiting out of MIT, Harvard, and a bunch of folks went through Trilogy and then went on to do cool things.

Eddie Ellie Seidman, the CEO of Tinder, was a Trilogy alum. Cyrus and Nick Ganju, founders of Zachdoc. Henry Ward, the CEO and founder of Carta. Crazy. John Lily, former CEO of Mosilla, and now he's an investor at Greylock.

Um and Andy Palmer, the CEO of Tammer, former former CEO of Vertica, which was acquired major major angel investor, invested in Carta in part due to his connection. Um there are 87 Trilogy mafia companies now on Crunchb.

So it's just like this very interesting I we we've heard that that Joe like keeps his team very tight, but clearly selects for extremely entrepreneurial people. They don't often get poached to like other firms that are doing the same thing. If you leave, you're probably going to start a company.

I I wouldn't want to make money the way he did, you know? But put that aside. Like what I do admire like I'm like the most pro-American person. Like obviously the son of Cuban immigrants. Like I grew up, you know, meeting people that literally came to his country, fled communism on a raft. Yeah.

Like so I don't like outsourcing anything. I've had tons of people try to advertise on the podcast. They're like, I have this outsourcing thing. I was like, I want to find a way to pay people more money, not less. Like I want to work with the best people in the world, and those people don't work for $8 an hour. Yep.

But I do what the thing I respect about Joe is like he he doesn't give a what other people think and he's willing to have his own thinking and then even if everybody's going in one direction. I was listening to your mischief uh on the way over here.

He had this great line where he's like if everybody's running fast to something they're probably running off a cliff. I was like that's a bar. That's a good bar. And so I like that Joe's like, "Hey, you guys are all doing this. So that means by default there's an there's an opportunity. " I called Patrick yesterday.

I was like, "It's kind of funny. You know, there's not any other people more obsessed with podcasts than me, you, Patrick.

We talk about this this stuff all the time and I was like everybody even now is still starting podcast and Patrick you know he has the highest value uh investing audience in the world and what I love about what he's doing is he's like oh yeah you guys are all going to go to the podcast I'm going to write what is that 15,000word in-depth profiles but they're so much better like the Neil Meta one um who's the paradigm guy I read Matt yeah this one yep like and they're going to keep doing it and he he'll tell you in the group chat like some of the ones they're working on Wow, they're crushing.

I just love this. It's a very special product. And and I went through when we were doing the show and we didn't have guests or anything and we needed a lot of material. I went through and looked at old New Yorker deep dives profiles. They're so good.

Old Bloomberg and old Forbes pieces and they're just not doing it at that level anymore. There are some profiles, but the one profile that was written in prestigious magazine about Zuck is all about like did he have the right team in place?

like it's like a diversity like referendum on diversity and stuff like brotopia type take which is just not really the story like that's a very minor piece of the Zuck story in my opinion.

I'm glad you said the New Yorker part because every single time I do a deep research report on every single person I'm working on just to get an overview and it's always like you I I want to have written like a New Yorker piece. One of my favorite you fantastic writers Jackson we read one on Mary Mer.

Yeah, the Mary Mer fantastic. I read that too. So um Jackson D you guys should have him on there. He's doing for the record. We have invited him. He needs to call in today. I don't know what he's doing. Nick, send him an invite. Have him join right now. I don't share like sharing the mic.

So, you have to come after I'm done. Send the the invitation like send the invitation for tomorrow.

But but the reason I I say that is because he put me on to one of he's like, "Hey, you have this this thought that I haven't heard anywhere else because um something that I've talked about is just like I actually think like introspection is one of the worst things like an entrepreneur can have.

" And I say some of the greatest entrepreneurs in history had low to no introspection. Like Sam Walton didn't wake up every day wondering like what his purpose of life was rehhating the the past. I wish I did this. This is like being a golden retriever. You have to maniacally be going after the tennis ball.

Not thinking about never thinking about the last tennis ball. No. Always the tennis ball. Excellent. So Jackson's like, "Hey, I heard you say that. Have you heard of this guy named Larry Gozian, which I didn't know who that was? " And so he sent me this great New Yorker piece. The piece was so good.

I made an episode on I think it's one of the best episodes I've ever done. It's one of my favorite. Like the guy's a little obviously crazy. Every single person I profound founders is crazy. But the the the it's better than a book. that New Yorker piece was better than if I read 600 pages uh on Gigosian.

But yeah, I I think there's like a clear again you we talk about like what's the white space all the time. It's like what Patrick and his team are doing. It's like there's a clear white space there. People write profiles, but like the profiles suck. There's no craft in them. Yeah. Yeah.

The the New Yorker care about who the person writing profile a lot. Well, did you did you did you guys ever cover you know how Patrick found Jeremy Stern? No. So I think you covered that I'm pretty sure you read this to me. I love when John reads things to me.

Uh the this I think it's the best profile ever written about Palmer Lucky. Oh, sure. Sure. I forgot the title. It had like a very uh Yeah, I I I know. You know the one I'm talking about like Jeremy wrote that. So Patrick Vulcan American Vulcan is it? Make sure it's by Jeremy Stern. Yeah. Okay. So So what did Patrick do?

Patrick's like, "This is great. Come do this for me. " And then he did something and then Patrick did something smart. Choked him with gold. He's just like, "Name your price. " So this is really important. No, this is a really important thing.

So the there's a line uh I sent to if you're if for startup found or for any founders trying to recruit people and there's this thing I I found in one of the books on Ogavi where he was looking up letters that the Medici family would write to the artists that they wanted to sponsor and there was this one sculptor they wanted to to to essentially be a become a patron of and then move to Florence and he's like says something like come to Florence but the last uh the way he ended the letter was one of the most gangster things I ever heard.

He's like, "Come, I will choke you with gold. " That's great. Great. Great. That's a bar. That's But that's exactly what Patrick is. He's just like, "Name your price. " The guy that does my clips. I just like same thing. Name your price. I don't I'm not negotiating with you at all. What do you want? Yep.

That's the number. send me an invoice. Pay today on my ramp card. Yep. Always. Um uh we were we were covering uh a bit on Oracle's latest latest moves. What? Give us the five minute founders of uh on Larry Ellison. So, I'm actually working on a Larry Ellison um episode. So, I've did three episodes on it.

It's like 124, 126, and 127, but that was probably like six years ago, and I reread the billionaire the mechanic just now. I was like, "Fuck, I don't think it's good enough to do another episode on. I need like a different angle here.

" So, there's a guy in my audience who I knew was like completely obsessed with Larry Ellison, and we've been DMing for years. He had transcripts for every single interview Larry Ellison has ever done. So, it's taking me a while, as you can imagine. But, that's the source material. That's great.

Highly likely it'll be out in three episodes from now. I'm doing Elon right now, which is killing me. That's why like I look like and I'm very tired. This outline is destroying me. Don't go on X right now, by the way. Why? It's going to make you rethink doing the episode. Why? He's in hot water.

He's basically he's pushing AI companions, which people are not a fan of. Yeah. Oh, is this like scantily companions? Yep. Okay. So, here I I'll tell you what I'm doing and this is why it's really important.

Um because you know you could people the very first episode of Founders September uh 2016 was uh Elon Ashley Vance's biography of Elon Musk was obviously an Elon fanboy. I was looking at Tesla's before they even had the Model S.

You know everybody that's a fan of his obviously goes through like these cycles of like you have to ride the Elon roller coaster. Well, you can say on the podcast I I I I made this episode before I went crazy.

No, but like the problem is and so like there's there's actually I think the best biography of Elon written is this book called Liftoff because it's the first six years of SpaceX. It's very fascinating. There's pictures where he's like standing in the rubble, right? Like iconic.

So what I decided to do is like listen man, I don't care about politics, culture stuff. I don't care about anything. I care about entrepreneurship, taking ideas from great people, actually building a business and just throwing it to the next generation to hopefully help people do that, right? Do that better.

So, no disrespect to Walter Isacson. I've read all of his biographies. The Elon biography is like written like it's a newspaper now, but you take an asset like or you take a liability and you try to flip it into an asset. So, I was like, "Okay, the problem is, no disrespect, there's no craft here. I like soul.

I like craft in in because I read for fun. Like, this is what I want to do. " This is like a news update. But the good news of that is it's in chronological order. So, the reason this is killing me is because the reading's been done for like 5 days. It's just been outline outline outline outline outline non-stop.

So what I did is like I'm gonna rip out every single thing about Elon. I'm not going to talk about his family, his wives, his kids, his politics, culture war. This guy's got brilliant ideas. So this is literally just what are the most enduring principles that Elon used across three decades and seven different companies.

And I really think I'm crafting something that's going to be really valuable. And I think you're gonna have to be some level of like intelligent to listen to it because I'm not I'm I'm gonna like jump from idea to idea idea rapidly and like you have to put the together yourself.

And it's just like hey this guy's been repeating the same principle for decades and it worked in Tesla. It worked at SpaceX. It worked in Neuralink. Why is this working might work in your work? You should know this.

You should have a tool where you can listen to this hopefully listen to it today or whenever it's out and then you listen to it a year ago, two years ago. Okay. I have a take on crap. So anyway, let me finish one thing. So when you get to the end of this, you're completely back on the Elon train.

You're like, "This is a singular person.

" Well, I think to people's credit, playing the ship, people a lot of the people posting these recent comments are on his team and want and and it's this this uh I think they're struggling with like wanting him to focus on what what rockets rockets and the things that But the rockets in orbit, sir, is like the take.

Yeah. He says that himself in the book.

It was really interesting because he was talking about what what do I have to do that if I don't do it it doesn't get done and he's like listen somebody else electric cars were inevit this is direct quote from the book I'm paraphrasing he's like electric cars were inevitable they were going to happen with or without me but the rockets were not and so therefore I should focus on that yeah I think people that want to go to Mars are concerned that uh you know what what takes down uh great men it's uh ladies liquor and leverage yeah in this case uh liquor leverage goonbots.

Um my my my problem is uh I would gladly give up uh the Mars ambitions if we could get a Tesla with a V12 in it. And I feel like every moment he spends working on rockets is another moment that I don't I don't have 1000 horsepower naturally aspirated screaming straight piped Tesla. That's my goal.

Anyway, on on the topic of craft, I was I I was trying to think about you you mentioned Joe Lamont. his business has been buying companies that are not generational products. They're not the iPhone. They're not these amazing monuments to craft.

They're businesses that deliver a little bit of value for a bunch of customers. And he and he has figured out a pattern of of offshoring some of the software engineering, running the business more efficiently. He is like the private equity buyout.

He's not trying to, you know, completely transform and like build a generational product. the product is not a product of craft like he is not a craftsman. Yeah. And and then I was trying to think about I think he's trying to be now the new one.

So, so on the flip side, I when I was talking to Delian um early on, Delianov at Founders Fund about uh like why how did he underwrite the investment in ramp, he was talking about software is can be like art and that and that the team there has like this attention to craft and they see that's why they hire the IMO gold medalists.

It's like why do you need someone that good? uh it's because they they see the product as like so so important even though it's in this highly competitive like particular like corporate card space. Um it's it's something that they take really seriously.

And I think that there's this it's not that there's necessarily one pattern that's correct. It's more of like this barbell and you can be on either side but you need to know what camp you're in. And so when I see Joe Lamont I see him as software as widgets.

he is crafting a machine that produces software and it produces it at the lowest possible cost and it all kind of looks the same and then I see on the other side uh like ramp and folks like that who take software development more as art and more as craft and both can produce outsized returns both are big well it's also where you apply the craft I would say that Joe from my read brings craft to the organization the trilogy right he has trilogy university yes and and you can you you I think you're going to struggle to build an iconic enduring company if you're not bringing craft somewhere, right?

Like totally Ferrari Ferrari is bringing craft to racing. They don't necessarily care about certain other elements. They're not bringing craft mechan mechanical and the reliability. You you said something like other end of the spectrum. Sure.

I I think like what I'm trying to drive home with founders and why I'm like completely clear is like there is no right way. Yes. Based on who you are and what you're into. Yes.

Um, so I just came I just flew from New York and I spent I always spent a ton of time with Kareem and Eric, uh, founders of RAMP and I specifically this last time spent two hours with them and I would like to talk about some of the stuff I've learned because I spent a lot of time with them.

But there's an example of this is like this is where people fail is they're like this Steve Jobs did it this way so I should just copy that. It's like yes authentic. Yes. Natural. So I was saying for a long time this is Michael Dell again. So, I was saying for a long time, you need to build a business.

It's very obvious when you read biographies to people. You have to build a business that's authentic to you. And then I read Michael Dell's autobiography, and I talked to him about this when I saw him in Austin a few weeks ago.

I read Michael Dell's autobiography, and again, the guy wants to IBM is the largest company in the world. It's the first company to reach a hundred billion dollar market cap. And this guy's like, I'm going to I'm going to compete with them with $1,000 out of my University of Texas dorm room. That's not an exaggeration.

And um and so he then brings in this older guy, I think his name's I forgot his name. It's in an episode, but the guy had a couple successful businesses and he works with Michael think for four years. And when he's 80, he's now looking back, I think he's 25 years older, Michael, something like that.

And he's like, listen, he's like, four years of this like I lost all my hair, my back hurt, I couldn't sleep, I had like intestinal issues, I had to stop. and Michael because like the competition was so intense and we had no money. We were under capitalized and we were just like going 247.

I'm dying and Michael was full of energy because he's like he built a business. This is his line. He built a business that was natural to him. So I was telling um I was telling Michael when I saw him in Austin, I was just like nothing we're doing with podcasting is like new.

I was like think about like if you ever read Robert Carl's biographies of LBJ, one of my favorite stories in there is W. Leo Daniels, right? And it's this guy, Texas Hill Country, right? This is like there's no internet. There's barely any electricity.

So there there this guy has like 90% market share with the the wives of farmers in the Texas Hill Country, right? And so he has this daily news show, right? That's on for a few hours a day. We invented that. You're telling me that somebody was doing this before us?

Here's the funny part, and don't let me let me go back to Cream. Don't forget that, please. So the crazy thing is, so he winds up getting like 90% market share in this area, right? So then he's like, okay, well, what should my sponsor be? Well, who's listening? What do the women in these houses need?

And he comes like they everybody needs baking flour. They all need baking flour, so I'll find the best manufacturer baking flour and they'll be my advertiser. He sells a ton of baking flour and he's like, wait a minute, I can just like make my own baking flour. So he starts manufacturing his own baking flour.

He makes like $50 million in like the 1940s or something. feastables and and then he goes, "What am I going to do next? " Like, "What can I do with this? " He's like, "I'm going to run for governor. " Yeah. And then people are like, "This is Trump before Trump. This is what I'm telling you.

There's an element of Trump to this. I've had vodka. " Yeah. But but so then everybody tells him, everybody tells him, "Nobody, you're not a professional politician. You can't possibly win. " But then he starts hosting these rallies. Remember in 2015, Trump was doing this.

And then like the rallies, there'd be like selling, it'd be like a monster truck rally. There'd be like 50,000 people there. Of course, that's going to translate from votes. So he wins the governorship of Texas and he moves his radio show into the Texas governor's mansion. And so he's still broadcasting that.

Then he the reason he's in LBJ's biography broadcast is because he runs uh then he's like, "What are you going to do next? " I'm going to run for Senate. He ends up stealing the election from LBJ. Lit legitimately stole the election.

But I was telling uh Michael about this and you know in Texas they teach Texas history before they teach American history. Right? If you go to any used bookstore in Texas, my favorite thing to do, there's huge sections on like you have American history, it's like Texas history. And Michael text me back the funny thing.

He goes, "Oh, I I must admit I I missed this part of Texas history. I was too busy reading computer magazines. I want to hit the table because that's exactly he picked the business that was authentic to him, natural to him, natural, completely natural. It's what he wanted to do. " Mhm.

Um, so the ramp guys like they're not they're like whatever the you guys I always have to like get the way people talk on the internet translated to me from you. So I don't know if there's a term for anti-slop but there's a term for anti-slop there. Perfect. Thank you. So if there's there's a very old term for this.

So the way I think of this have you guys ever heard of shoken? This concept explain it for the listeners.

So shogunin is this idea in essentially it's a almost like a Japanese word for craftsmanship and it doesn't matter if you're building you know a$22 billion fintech or you're sweeping the floor the Japanese if you're shoken you take pride in the activity making it making your uh you take pride in the activity itself and pride in making your work as good even if no one else sees it.

Yeah. And so what I would say about this is spending a lot of time with Kareem and Eric is one from the outside like they have very complimementaryary skills.

And what I would say like um especially with with Eric, one of the best sales advice and I think it was it was advice for sales, but I actually think it's advice for life and dealing with people that I've ever heard is uh Mary Kay, remember Mary Kay Cosmetics?

They built this like massive empire like going like door to door sales. It might have been like an MLM kind of kind of like the proto MLM. Yeah. And they drive around like pink Cadillac MLMs. They don't get enough underrated. Sometimes literally criminally rated.

The way the way that she the way that she trained her saleswoman. Yeah. She says, "Never forget that every single person goes through life with an invisible sign around their neck that says, "Make me feel special. " Mhm. And Eric has very understated charisma and he is gifted at salesmanship, at listening.

He's a very gifted listener, understanding what's important to you and then translating what's important to you into how his business can solve your problems. And so what I think I one of the things I admire about both Eric and Cream is like I like people that take what they do very seriously.

I don't care what that activity is and they work like dogs. I'm not into this like I'm not into work life balance. I don't like balance. I'm not a balanced person. I'm either I completely I'm at zero or 100 and nothing in between. And they're both like that. Yeah.

We're always telling you you don't have to destroy your life for this next episode. Deliver the product you want. It's possible. You have to push yourself. So there's a couple things I think they do really really smart.

Um one is and I think they both have commonalities is one they pay attention to every single little detail which is the point that you were making. to the point where like they're running a giant company. They have tens of thousands of uh customers. They have thousands of employees.

Their revenue growth is exploding right now. They have all these features. They did 300 updates. Yeah. To the product in the last year. And yet it's only 250 work days. Yeah. Like I think this was yesterday, day before. I don't know what day it is today. We sat in there.

It It's not like Eric and Kareem have empty schedules. And it was us three and we sat there and we talked about podcasting. Yep. and like the role it could play. What we talked a lot about you guys. Yeah. And what I like about them, I'm just going to like say random stuff. You guys jump in whatever you want.

But like the one example I use for them and I was just like listen I and I like how fast they make decisions and then when they make a decision they don't like oh we kind of like test it out. They go all in. They make big bold bets and they're willing to take a risk even if it will fail.

Where I think a lot the biggest mistake you can make in a world that's changing constantly. The biggest risk is taking no risk. And so I I use this example. I was like, is that an Elon quote or Sam? All I don't know. All my quotes come from other people. I have no original ideas. I need to I have no original ideas.

I think the original idea that you have that you beat the drum on is podcasting. The biggest risk is not taking Zuck. Shout out to Zuck. Can we get you have a What kind of What should we hit for Zuck? You're not going to be able to hear it. The Glazinator. No, but triple glaze. The glazinator of 30,000.

the glazator that was so what Eric and Kareem both do that they the commonality they have with history entrepreneurs is they bet on talent so they overpay for talent they're like they will find the best people in the world like their head of AI some of their designers some of their engineers the people they partner with like they're like that's the best person and let's make sure he's comp he or she is compensated at a level that makes sense and so I I was talking to I was like I really do think we have like John and Jordan are gifted at what they're doing.

And we had a long conversation about this. I was like, I'm telling you, man, I talked to a lot of people on a per minute basis. And I've told you guys this, you know, privately. I'll tell say obviously in public. It's like on a permanent basis.

I don't know anybody else that comes up with better, more simple, more effective, and inexpensive marketing ideas. And I go, I really think we have this huge opportunity for leverage.

It's like there should, if they have an idea, from the the idea to execution, since we trust them, we know they're talented, we should there should be no barrier. There should just be like here's a pile of money and next time you have a come with an idea do it and immediately they're like done. What else do you want?

It's like there's no like yeah that's obviously a good idea. John and Jordy are obviously talented. Like how can we get more out of the talent that we have around them? Um I just think that's there's just a million little ideas that they have like this.

Uh I remember I don't even know what the valuation is now but it went like it had like a huge jump. I don't think it was this time it was the last time but we were having dinner. It was going to be me, Kareem, and two other people. and me and Kareem got there first.

And it was the day that that announcement came out and Twitter was going crazy. They're like, "Ram's killing it. " And your side of the world with all these VCs are like fighting over this And um and Kareem shows up in the first 10 minutes, he's just like, "This feature is not good enough. We lost this deal. This isn't.

" He didn't mention a word. And I just sat there smiling. And you know, it's really hard for me to not talk for 10 minutes.

And I just started I go that's the reason your your perpetual your divine discontent is why you're so good because the the the value of your company is just the the the collective value of all the problems that you solve for your customers and he doesn't give a about taking a victory lap.

He cares about solving problems for his customers. And I like the fact that I can call them. I've called Eric at 1:00 a. m. his time and I'm like where are you? And he's like, "Oh, I'm in like Chicago and I'm like doing like customer meetings and like I recruit people and like I'm closing this deal.

" He's just like they work all the time. Working hard. Working hard. Work all the time. It's a good It's a good mantra. It's one thing you can control. Yeah. The Joe Lemon. Think about that.

I mean, that's excessive, but I think they were having they were in that piece, they were talking about this conversation he was having with Jack Welch, if I'm not mistaken, where he's just like, well, if you have a product that's working and you're willing to work 20 hours a day, it's really hard to lo to lose at that point.

Yeah. No. Uh, yeah. Find find your life's work. Find something that's uh what was the phrase? Not authentic. Natural. And then work constantly. And well, okay. So, this is again we everybody I'm so happy to see what's happened to you. Yeah. Uh I still consider myself your first listener. It's true.

You are literally literally a first listener. Um sent you the MP3 on Google Drive. Oh, and that's another thing. So, going back, I want to talk about um why I think you guys are really special. But it also goes back to the glazing.

It also goes back to what Eric and Kareem were willing to bet on talent when I was just like, "Guys, they have a thousand listeners right now. It was crazy. They're going to blow. I don't know anything. I only I know about podcast and I know how history's greatest entrepreneurs think.

I don't know anything about anything else. I promise you there's zero chance. They already knew you were talented, but they already knew it was obviously Kan's talented. They try to buy you and recruit you long time ago.

Um and they made a bet and they made a bet on talent, which again is something that Brad Jacobs does, that Elon Mus does, that Steve Jobs did, that all these people did over and over and over again is again these are ideas that are timeless. You can use them today. You can use them 100 years ago.

They were used 100 years ago. You're gonna be able to use them 100 years from now. Well, so get out there and use them. Get out there, folks. We have a 3 PM reservation. We do. We got to get We got to get offline. We got to get off air. It's hard to get uh this guy off the mic.

I wish that we could go We could go for another We could go for another five hours right now, but uh you in town tomorrow. Let's do it again. Run it back. I got to finish this episode. It's already I'm never driving here, guys. We're getting a helicopter. We're getting a helicopter. No, that's how the Kobe died.

It was it was a but it was foreshadowed in our first launch video. We we open it with us in a helicopter. We're going to be helicopter guys. So that's what me and Kareem and Eric were talking about your launch video. It's it's about type of helicopter. Not all helicopters are created equally.

We need to move the studio to Malibu. Anyway, the Center for Extreme podcast. We will see you tomorrow. Thank you for watching. Thank you for hanging out with us. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Leave us five stars. Have a fantastic evening. Have a great rest.