#34 Ideas That Built Empires

Today I wanna go through a lot of quotes and just notes that I've really gone through. And so my goal is to read as much as possible and to just gain and obtain knowledge by reading and really taking in. I use this app called Readwise, which is actually linked below. And it has a lot of quotes and it has a lot of things that I've saved even from books that I haven't read. And I wanted to put this episode together. Because there's a lot of quotes that I've just gained over the years, and I think it would really be helpful to go through it to really learn and get all the high points from everything that I've learned. So I want to start with the first quote, and it's about the journey. And this is for a lot of people. So Dietrich Mateschitz— I'm probably saying it wrong— he's the Red Bull founder, founder of Red Bull. And he passed away, I believe, a couple years ago back in 2021. But he said this amazing quote, and he says, "I love the climb. I don't care where the summit is." He is saying that the climb is the most important part. It's not the destination. It's not where the summit is. If you're climbing the mountain, you should enjoy the climb. You shouldn't want to just snap your fingers and be right at the top. The beauty in building a successful company or building anything is the journey, right? And this goes into the next quote: the journey is the destination. And that was by him again. The journey is the destination. I have it saved on my phone and it's a truly incredible quote. The journey is the destination. As long as you're on the journey, it's going to be rough, um, it's going to be hard, and it's going to be something that you're going to need to conquer. But that's even more reason to do it. Right? The journey, that is what you want. The character building, the story arc, not the actual end of the story necessarily. Like you want to get to the top, but the journey should be what you enjoy. Now, I talked about this in my last uncommon moment, but it's about attention and focus. And here's a quote that I've found just in my research. It's easy to get caught up in what's trending, the fear of missing something, also known as FOMO, or the pressure to share every moment. And my note here is you don't have to live your life on social media. You don't need to get caught up in doing the trending thing or have FOMO or the pressure to share every moment of your life. You know, so much of what fights for our attention is so far outside of what actually matters. That's another quote. And Kevin Kelly, I mentioned this in my last episode, pay attention to what you pay attention to. Now I want to go into On Leadership and Vision. So this is by Christian von Koenigsegg, I believe is into F1. He created, I think, F1 cars. And he says this, it is impossible to lead by following. Rockefeller has this great quote, am I using mind, my mind to create history? That's a great quote. Am I using my mind to create history? He believed in making one of the best companies in the world, building something Big, bigger than himself. Building legacy, building something that would be unmatched, unrivaled. The the next quote is second place is no different than last place. Rockefeller. I love this other this other quote. It's not in here, but it's like second place is first place loser. Second place is first place loser. It's a great quote. It's truly genius. Second place is first place loser. And Rockefeller says here. Second place is no different than last place. You know, if you're not first place, you lost. Winning isn't everything necessarily, but if you have beat your personal record, if you beat yourself, that's something to take pride in. The next quote is, business is war. You know, it makes it sound dramatic when you say this, but it is true. There is something to it where you can help other people out. And I believe in that. But also there is an aspect of business where you're going to need— you, you are going to need to layer up your protection. Your, um, you know, that's why people have lawyers. That's why people, um, have certain precautions. Business is a type of war in a way, right? Napoleon, um, the reason why you can pull many tactics from Napoleon like Elon Musk does is because Napoleon was in war, and so he knew how to lead people. He knew how to instruct his soldiers a certain way. And that's why Elon Musk learns from Napoleon. And Elon Musk— it might have been Elon Musk that would have said this, but business is war. Now I want to move into knowledge and learning, right? David Senra in episode 413— he's done a lot of episodes at this point. I think it's 423 now. He says you have no excuse to be the most knowledgeable person in any subject you want. It's true because you look at AI, you look at books, you look at the internet. The fact that we have the internet means that you can literally learn the most about a certain field in a certain, like in any timeframe. You could be learning about a certain field for the, like all of your life. We are so privileged in where we're at in history right now, because in history, you can listen to my podcast episode. You can take a lot of things from it. You can go to David, David Sinner's episode right now and listen to that. You can learn more. If you want to learn about business, you go to Founders or David Sinra's podcast or my podcast or Naval's podcast. You go to any other podcast and you can learn a lot. You can start reading books, you can learn about anything. And so you have no excuse to not be the most knowledgeable person in any subject you want. Now, Carl Sagan has this great quote about books and he says, books break the shackles of time. It's it's interesting because C.S. Lewis talks about this. You can basically view through books ten thousand people's perspective, the author's perspective. If I'm reading a book about Napoleon, let's just take him as another example. If I'm reading a book about Napoleon, I'm getting the author's perspective. I'm getting maybe Napoleon's words himself, so his perspective, maybe his wife's perspective, his kids' perspective. I can read a book and get hundreds of people's perspectives. I can read thousands of books and it breaks the shackles of time because without writing, without reading all of that, you would have a stagnant economy and you need to be able to have this ingenuity or this idea of constantly learning. Now, the next quote is mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock so many doors. And this is This applies to what I just said. This was from Kevin Kelly. Mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock so many doors. Again, this is the same thing, right? You can view many others' perspectives and that's through books. Now, a couple of things that I have as just notes is develop mentors in your field, right? You need to develop mentors, whether that's books, whether that's biographies, whether that's people in your field. You should develop mentors in your field and then embrace peer relationships in your field. If there's other people that are doing similar things to you, you should embrace that and take knowledge from that. Don't shy it away if someone's being, you know, they're doing better in their, their follower count or they're doing better with the podcast or whatever it is. It's like embrace people, embrace them, figure out what you can learn from them. Take knowledge from them and apply that to your own life and help others with that knowledge. Now, moving into like relationships and communication, Kevin Kelly has this great quote: If you ask for someone's feedback, you get a critic. If you ask for someone's advice, you get a partner. Now, this is really interesting because with workers, right, if you are asking people, right, for Let's say you have someone that you're working with. If you ask for someone's feedback, they're going to criticize you. But if you ask for someone's advice, you're getting someone that's really helping you, right? And helping you do things better. And I would argue that you need both. You need a critic, you need someone's feedback, you need your own feedback, you need to be your own critic. And you also need to ask for people's advice like Kobe did with MJ. Kobe Asked for MJ's advice, and he got someone that was like his lifelong friend. Now, if you ask for someone's feedback, you should be your own critic, and you should hold yourself to a higher standard. But also with these other people, they are also the same. Jeff Bezos says under promise and over deliver. This goes into Kobe Bryant's quote, just like Kevin Kelly and what I was talking about. Nobody should have higher expectations. Of you than you do for yourself. Their expectations will never be higher than my own. That's what he said. Even the fans cannot have more expectations than him. He will hold himself like he used to have blackout workouts where he would run miles and miles on the beach, and the goal was to black out. There was certain things that he would do, certain workouts, certain basketball workouts to push himself to the next level. You should be your highest critic. You're, and not to a point where you're over cynical or you're over critical of yourself where you don't put anything out, but to the point where, you know, you will hold yourself to a higher standard than everyone else. Now on execution, things are simply done or not done. Another one, idle hands are the devil's workshop. Time is money. That's another quote. That's one of the quotes that I've heard the most. And One thing that I keep hearing is I people throw around this term time is money, and I actually you can take it to the extreme of you know you don't go out and get a package from for your door from your door, and you don't meet up with people. And there's one extreme where you have too much, and then there's the other extreme of you need to save your money. And so you spend your time. And I would say I'm more in the middle of the road because I believe that if you can get help, if you can— let's say you have a house, it would be better to save your time if you're very productive. If you're very productive in everything that you're doing, it would be better to save your time, make more money on that time, and then pay someone to clean your house or do simple things like that. Right? And time is money. You will never— time is something you can never get back, but money is something you can always get back or earn, right? And time is money. That's what people know. That's why Elon Musk has 3 companies and he cannot miss a single beat. If he's on a podcast, it's for a purpose and for a reason, right? And that's one of the keys. Now we go into the next quote. From Rockefeller. Rockefeller was a genius, even though some people don't actually think that he was a good guy. He might have not been a good guy, but what he built was extraordinary, a big monopoly. And he has a lot of great quotes and little things that you can take from his life. So he says, action solves everything. That's really important because you can say you're going to do it. It's, it's Similar to the things are simply done or not done. You can say you're going to do it. You can prep all you want. You can wait for everything, right? And try to make it perfect. But the moment that you act, that's solving everything. If there's a problem coming at you, just get it done. Just focus on it, figure it out, get it done, solve it. No excuses. Action solves everything. It's a great quote. Elon Musk has this other quote. Delete, delete, delete. He would say this in reference to the parts that they would put in the spaceships, where if you can save money and delete, delete, delete and get things down, whether it's on the Tesla factory floor or it's on the spaceship line or wherever it is, his whole mentality was delete, delete, delete. He almost wanted to delete so much That you would have to add things back in. That's what he said. I would rather have you delete things so much that you would add things back in. That's a key moment. Now we're saving money. Now we're making a better rocket ship. And now he has like arms grabbing rocket ships coming down from space. It's incredible. And they've built— they just IPO'd, and I think the company is worth like $1.3 trillion, $1.4. And Elon Musk is officially worth $1 trillion. Now I want to move into endurance and staying the course. Rockefeller says, stay in the game long enough to get lucky, right? Whatever you're doing, stay in the game long enough, whether it's podcasting, music, everything, but you have to put work into it. That's the key. You have to stay in the game long enough. It's not quantity necessarily, but quality, but you also got to make sure you're consistent. You gotta stay in the game long enough to get lucky. If it takes 10 years to make something successful, stay in the game. That's what happened with James Dyson. You know, James Dyson built this vacuum company, the Dyson vacuum company, and he had to stay in the game long enough and he wasn't profitable. I don't even know how long, but they started really, really making money. I want to say 5 to 10 years in, and it's been decades now and it's 100% privately owned, and it's worth like $20-something billion or $10 billion. It's truly incredible what he built. Rockefeller goes on, only when you can endure what others cannot, then can you do what others cannot do. The note here is build a high tolerance for pain. That's the key, right? You need to be able to endure. And James Dyson goes into this perseverance is not cheap. You know, you're going to have pain if you start a company, if you're going to be a music artist, if you're going to be a podcaster, whatever it is, you're going to have things that are inconvenient and it's going to be painful. You can either choose to sit back, not do it, or you can go and persevere through that pain. Perseverance is not cheap. You can stay in the game long enough to get lucky, endure what others cannot, and then you can do what others cannot do. Now, Rockefeller also said the outcome of things is often proportional to our enthusiasm. If we're really enthusiastic, we really love what we're doing. We love, we have a passion for the thing that we're researching or learning about or working or getting our hands on or talking about. That is normally going to be proportional to the outcome of things. Rockefeller goes on, enthusiasm can make something 100 to 1,000 times better. It's crazy when you look at people that are not enthusiastic. You don't want to buy their product. You don't want to learn from them. You don't want to— there's some icky feeling that you have about them. But when someone's super enthusiastic, it can make something 100 to 1,000 times better. Now, on building and innovation, the value of a company is the sum of all problems solved. This is from Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify. I remember Charlie Munger said that problems are just opportunities dressed up in work clothes. So if you have a problem, it's actually an opportunity. So if Spotify solves a map, like a whole number of problems. So let's say Spotify 20 years ago or 25 years ago, whenever they came out, they solved the problem of people listening They moved from Walkmans to now online. They can listen to anywhere, anything, anywhere, anytime. You solved that. Now you solved where do podcasts go? Now you solved where other things go, right? People's profiles, people's, their experience with the platform, exclusive events, tickets. Now people can probably buy tickets through there. People can buy merch through Spotify. They're solving a lot of problems and they keep innovating and growing. The value of a company is the sum of all problems solved. This whole section is from Daniel Ek because I found so many good quotes from David Senra's episode with Daniel Ek and also just episodes that David has done on Daniel Ek. I think there might've been one or two really, really good episodes, but then there's been an interview with him and Daniel Ek, the first episode of The David Senra Show. And I think I pulled a lot of these quotes from there. So Daniel X says, we build on other people's ideas, and innovation is actually taking 2 or more things that were already well known and putting them together in a new way. So there's, there's this common thread between founders where Steve Jobs built on Edwin Land, right? Edwin Land was the founder of Polaroid or Kodak, one of those companies, and Steve Jobs built on that company and made the iPhone. Right? He took those principles and made it into that. Elon Musk pulled from Kevin Kelly. You have different people in history, and Elon Musk pulled from Napoleon, how to run people. All right. How to build spaceships. All right. That's from Kevin Kelly, or how to do certain things. And that's the crazy thing, right? You need to build on other people's ideas. Okay. If there's AI now, how can we marry AI with this other thing to To build a better product. Now Daniel Ek goes on to the whole problems solved idea. Which problems am I passionate about solving? Which problems can I spend the next decade of my life fixing? Because if I'm not interested enough in it to spend a decade fixing it, it's probably not worth pursuing. So Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, is saying, what problems am I passionate about solving over the next decade of my life? You need to be able to spend a decade of your life fixing a certain problem. Only get into something if you're really passionate about it, and if you're really—if you really want to solve a problem for people. He goes on to say a lot of entrepreneurs seem to be obsessed about time. I'm more obsessed about energy management because if you have time but you have no energy, you're not going to accomplish anything anyway. A lot of entrepreneurs are obsessed about time. They're obsessed about time is money, and all they. these things. But really, it's like, work on your health, work on getting things to where you have a lot of energy to accomplish that. I think that's why he spends so much time on his health. He has certain things that he does, which is really cool and really important. And he's a founder that you should definitely look into and just really research because their Spotify story is really amazing. Now on product and improvement, this is from James Dyson. Always have permanent dissatisfaction with your product. The goal here is always be constantly improving your product, even if it's selling well, right? You might have something— let's take MrBeast's videos, for example. He always has this thing where he has a format for like a year. It's incredible format, gets hundreds of millions of views, and then he switches it up, even though that format is still getting a lot of views. Or even though James Dyson has this certain thing where his product is selling a lot and he's making a lot of money. You need to be able to switch it up and always improve, always make it better, even if it's selling well, right? You need to always make it better. Now he goes on to say, have the confidence and stupidity to start doing things differently. Things are going to suck at first, but you need to keep pushing until the product gets better. So there's some wisdom from James Dyson, Daniel Ek, Kevin Kelly, Elon Musk, a lot of people, and I really hope you enjoy this episode. I am working on other episodes right now. A lot of books I'm reading: Michael Ovitz books, Steven Spielberg. I'm really looking forward to those, and I'm reading more books right now. I'm excited to hit my goal of 50 books in the year. Last year I read 38 books. This year I've read 30 so far, and thank you guys for listening, and I will talk to you guys again soon.