The Exchanges

Q excuse day-to-day Um, lack of urgency. You still need to be, uh, impatient on a daily level, but patient on an annual level. Additionally, can you tell me the people who thought long-term, they were still, maybe you can give me examples, but that doesn't mean that they were broke five or 10 years into starting their company, or that they didn't have traction, or did they? Am I wrong?

A So, The, the, to like close the loop on what you just said, I agree completely. If you think of like, there's not there any entrepreneurs that had a longer term perspective than Jeff Bezos and his line about this was like, yeah, we have long term, but like, we're going to take step by step ferociously was his motto. Step by step ferociously, not like, oh, we're going to lollygag. It's like, no, no, no, I'm fine being, you know, you know, we're going to be the company we want, 1015 years from now, but every day for the next 10 to 15 years, like we're pushing the pace and we're doing as much as we can. Um, people that were broke five or 10 years in, Uh, James Dyson, for sure. He was literally going to sleep covered in dirt because he's trying to build a vacuum cleaner for the entire time, going, going, going inside, crying himself to sleep as his kids are small, and then his kids are completely grown up. He was in massive amounts of debt. He couldn't find no one. The reason he owns a hundred percent of his companies, because no one would, would, uh, would actually want the equity, which is hilarious considering how valuable it is now. But also he was like, uh, he had second loans out on his, on his, his second mortgage on his home. He was crying himself to sleep.

AI assessment note: “people that were broke five or 10 years in, Uh, James Dyson, for sure.”

Q And basically, for the listener, Michael Dell, I believe, at the age of 1617, 18, in college, in a college dorm, he was selling computer parts to help people assemble computers, right?

A He was, he started Dell in, as a, really, the prehistory of Dell really happened when he's, like, 16, 17. He officially started as a freshman, in his freshman dorm at University of Texas. But the, the Fortune Could the kid that grew up reading fortune magazine possibly predict that I'd start a company that broke into the fortune 500? He goes, yeah, I always thought big. He doesn't try to hide. He's like, yeah, I had a lot of confidence. Like I knew I could do this. I believed I could do this. Now, did he think he'd hit a 26? Probably not, but he got there even faster. That's the point. He had the belief first and then he demonstrated the ability.

AI assessment note: “He was, he started Dell in... officially started as a freshman, in his freshman dorm”

Q Is there a commonality of you being different and thus being able to charge more and profit more?

A I don't, like, the one person, if, if you ask, like, my own personal Mount Rushmore of, like, history's greatest entrepreneurs, is they actually had, like, uh, some of them obviously have big margins, like Apple, right? But then, like, think of Sam Walton. Like, Sam Walton had the tiniest margins. Why? Because, like, his idea was, like, hey, I'm gonna be totally committed to this one simple idea, which is, like, everyday low price. And so, the margins are small. Raising Cane is one of my favorite entrepreneurs. His margin's, like, less than 10%. So, yeah, I don't, I, I think these ideas can work For, it really just depends on the industry and the business, but like you see them appear over and over again, whether it's a high margin business, a low margin business, if it's physical goods, if it's luxury goods, if it's software, it's just like kind of the same personality type over and over again.

AI assessment note: “some of them obviously have big margins... But then, like, think of Sam Walton.”

Q Because, like, Steve Jobs did, did not. Correct. And so, can you be highly disagreeable and still loved by your children? Can you be highly disagreeable and still be proud of how you treat one another?

A So there, there is a devastating, um, line in Steve Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson, because Walter was collaborating with him as Steve was dying. And he told Walter one of the reasons he wanted to do this biography is because he wanted his kid, he sacrificed so much of his time at Apple that he wanted his kids to know the kind of person he was and what was important to him. That's a devastating line. Dyson, from what I understand, uh, has great relationships with, he's still married to the same wife, has great relationships with his kids. Some of them work inside the company, some don't. Um, but yeah, again, I spent a lot of the, as you know, because you listen to the podcast, I spent a lot of time talking about their childhood, their relationship with their father. Dyson's dad passed away when Dyson was like nine. And he said, you know, he's writing a biography when he's 75, and he still cries and gets sad that his dad, he didn't get to know his dad as an adult, his dad didn't get to see him grow up, see his success, meet his grandchildren. And so I think having that experience was just like, man, I want to make sure my kids don't have that massive hole that I had in my life. Not any fault of his own, his dad died of cancer at a young age. Um, no, so I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but yeah, you, you, you definitely see a lot of these highly describable people. L…

AI assessment note: “no, so I don't think they're mutually exclusive”

Q Who's the most disagreeable person you've ever studied?

A Ooh, that's a good question. Um, I mean, James Dyson's gotta be up there because, uh, if you see the bookshelf that's in back of me, it's an order by episode number, uh, starting in the upper left-hand corner, so it goes all the way down. And so I'm, I'm gonna hit, like, 400, uh, biographies read of History of Good Entrepreneurs this year, and my number one recommendation is still his first autobiography. He wrote an autobiography when he was 45, and he wrote another autobiography when he was 75. They're both great, but the first one's really great. The reason I recommend that one is because it's All struggle. The 90% of the book is just him failing over and over and over again and him refusing to give up.

AI assessment note: “James Dyson's gotta be up there because”