In this solo episode of the Uncommon Moments podcast, Liam Applegate walks listeners through a curated set of quotes and notes he has saved from David Sinra’s Founders podcast and other sources. He uses each quotation as a springboard to explore broader principles that shape successful entrepreneurship and personal growth. The episode opens with Michael Jordan’s reminder that “successful people listen,” then moves to the persistence mantra “stay in the game long enough to get lucky,” illustrated with James Dyson’s 14‑year struggle. Applegate highlights the power of concrete action over stated intent, citing J.D. Rockefeller’s “action expresses priority” and Dan Carlin’s “life is a verb.” He discusses the value of accumulated experience for developing taste, referencing the 10,000‑hour mastery idea and MrBeast’s relentless output. The conversation shifts to intensity as the price of excellence (Isidore Sharp) and the discipline of reduction to essence (Henry Ford, Rick Rubin). Goal‑setting is framed through Chris Williamson’s advice to list everything you want from life, while a Seneca‑inspired prompt—“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do?”—serves as a litmus test for passion. Throughout, Applegate ties these insights back to his own podcasting practice, emphasizing the extra effort required to edit down content to its purest form. The episode ends with a brief personal note about his upcoming trip and a promise to continue the series.
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All right, this is my 7th uncommon moment, and in this episode I'm going to go through a couple more Founders episodes. So Founders Podcast is a podcast from David Sinra where he basically studies history's greatest entrepreneurs, founders of companies, and it doesn't even need to be a founder. It could be a filmmaker, it could be someone that did something extraordinary. And what I want to do is I have an app called Readwise where I put a lot of notes and quotes in here. And when I find something really, really profound, I put that from his podcast into here. And so what I want to do is basically read these couple of quotes and notes. And this is actually kind of a continuation from the first part back a couple weeks ago, probably 3 or 4 weeks ago. And what I want to do is just keep going through these notes. And these are just Great notes. So Michael Jordan says, successful people listen. Those who don't listen don't survive long. This is Founders episode 213. Let me, let me read that again. Successful people listen. Those who don't listen don't survive long. I think Michael Jordan has this great quote and note where it's like, if you want to be successful, you got to listen. You got to ask questions. You got to, you know, You gotta hone your skill and craft of speaking and talking. It's the idea, like all these successful entrepreneurs and people, they always talk less than everyone else. They always don't really talk a huge game. Like there is some confidence and maybe ego component to it, but there's not this like oversharing of information. And that's something that we see a lot in culture now. It's like overshare everything, but these really successful people, Billionaires, trillionaires. I guess there's only one trillionaire, Elon Musk, previously trillionaire. But you have all these billionaires, people that have founded huge companies, right? These are people that they know what they're talking about and they write books and then they tell you this. It's like you keep it within your family, you keep it within your business. You don't overshare information that doesn't need to be overshared. And I think that's just a great quote from Michael Jordan. Now, this is one of my favorite quotes from David Sinra. It's stay in the game long enough to get lucky. I think about that with podcasting. It's like I do my podcast for myself. I do it because I find enjoyment in it and it's something that I can be consistent with. And so what I really find interesting is like, if you have a podcast, if you just started social media, if you just started anything, Right? Stay in the game long enough to get lucky. I think of James Dyson, who had his vacuum company for 14 years before he was ever really successful. And he had nights where he would cry himself to sleep. So to say like, stay in the game long enough to get lucky, it's like, that's not to say you're not going to have hard nights or hard days, right? You're going to have times where you want to quit, but to not quit, to not Capitulate into that, right? That's the key. That's the key. And if I were to offer myself any encouragement, it's like stay in the game long enough to get lucky. Follow that quote. If you keep improving on your product too, if you keep making it better, I'm trying like editing-wise. Like I'm spending, I spent five hours on the Netflix episode that the part one episode. I spent like five plus hours on that episode editing, recording. Like I spent a ton of time and. That doesn't mean that's going to be a breakout to test. It's like if I keep doing that over and over again, where I'm editing ruthlessly, where I'm like every second is valuable to the listener, and I'm continuously getting better in my speaking, and I'm continuously progressing, right? I'm not going to be where I'm like right now. It's like it's all about putting the reps in. If I'm 100 episodes from now, I will be a lot better than I was now. And it's like if you can If you keep on improving, if you keep on going, you will get lucky at some point, right? You just got to put in the hard work. It will come. Action expresses priority. This is Founders episode number 83. Action expresses priority. I believe this was a Rockefeller one. You know, Chris Williamson had this quote today on X where he said, it's like, don't show me your priorities, show me your calendar. Or like, don't tell me what you're going to do, like do it essentially. And that's what J.D. Rockefeller, I believe, if this is his quote, it's like action is showing what you're doing. It's like, don't tell me about all the books you're reading or the podcasts you're doing or like you're learning, or don't tell me, like show me, like show me, right? If you act, that's a lot better. And actually this segues really, really Good, really, really well into Dan Carlin's quote of Joe Rogan's episode 1041. So 1041, episode 1041. That episode was incredible. Now there's some language and some not great parts, but like that episode was probably one of the best podcast episodes I've ever listened to. He says life is a verb and you have to actually act. That's insane. Life is a verb. It's not a noun. It's not whatever. Life is a verb. You have to act, and that's the same thing that Rockefeller is saying. And I find that really interesting because Dan Carlin is the founder of Hardcore History. Hardcore History is this like crazy podcast. I haven't listened to it yet, but it's like four-hour-long podcast episodes, and they're like really deep dives. And he releases one like every six months. I think it's been more recent, but it's like. He just focuses on this one part, and that's actually that was David Sinner's inspiration for Founders, but more in a business niche. And I actually I'm really interested to listen to that. I really want to listen to that. So he says life is a verb, and you have to actually act. I I think that's crazy. And this is another thing that kind of goes with the whole podcasting and with the whole thing that we're talking about in Founders episode two eighty one. It says in order to achieve great taste, you need years of experience. Think about that. You need to have years of experience. You need to put in the reps, put in the time. There's this idea of like 10,000 hours for mastery, and like you can really master something if you get 10,000 hours. But most people, they don't quantify their hours. Like someone like Jimmy Donaldson or MrBeast, he's probably put hundreds of thousands of hours of his life into his YouTube channel and into all of his companies that he's working on. So it's like in order to achieve better taste, in in order to achieve better results, it's like you got to have years of experience. Founders episode 281, same episode. Intensity is the price of excellence. Intensity is the price of excellence. There's a there's another quote from Isidore Sharp, who is the founder of Four Seasons, and he says excellence is the capacity to take pain. And I found that that was incredible. And one of my favorite books, actually, someone asked me, what is the book that has most inspired you and kind of transformed just the way you think or just stayed with you over a long period of time? And I would have to say it's the founder of Four Seasons book, Isidore Sharp. You should just look up Isidore Sharp, Four Seasons, and it'll pop up. But that's an incredible book. Absolutely incredible. Now, Henry Ford has this great quote in Founders episode 266. The most beautiful things in the world are the things from which all excess weight has been eliminated. That's the idea that we talked about a couple of weeks ago in the other Founders episode about delete, delete, delete. You want to get to the essence of a product. Rick Rubin has this great quote alongside this where it's like he, he classifies himself as a reducer, not a producer. So he produces things, but he calls himself a reducer because he reduces the sound to the essence. And Rick Rubin is this guy who's a legendary music producer. So he's produced like music with Adele and Pharrell and all these major artists. And so this guy has years of experience. He created the hip-hop industry. Crazy. But this guy is really smart. But he says, you know, Normally people want to like jazz it up. They want to add more, but you want to actually make like a core product and kind of take it down to that. You want to reduce down to that product, but normally it takes more to do less. It takes more to do less. Like, that's a crazy quote. I find that really interesting. And here's a, here's an applicable scenario. I do my podcast episode. Let's say I record An hour, hour podcast episode and I get it down to like 40 minutes, I could just leave the hour by itself and you could listen to that without any, like any editing. But for me to put out the best product I can do at this time, I, it takes more for me to put out less. Like for me to edit my podcast episode, it takes more time for me to do that. But then I'm giving to you less of what I originally have, but it's better. It's like a refined piece of gold. You don't want to just like a dirty piece of gold. You want a beautiful piece of gold. And so that's a big key with a lot of this. And I find that it's a beautiful quote from Henry Ford. This is, this is the last quote I'll do for this episode, but this was in David Sinra's Chris Williamson. Chris Williamson is the host of Modern Wisdom. And so he had this podcast episode with David Sinra. I believe this is from him. And he says, Make a list of everything you want out of life and then pursue those goals. I find that really interesting. Make a list of everything you want out of life. It's like have goals, set goals, and then go achieve those goals. And actually, I'll add another quote. If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm about to go do today? Let me, let me read that again. If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm about to go do today? So they were talking about passion and like really feeling passionate about what you're doing, and I find that really interesting. It's like, if you hate your job, if you hate what you're doing, it's like, if this were the last day of your life, why would you still be doing it? Why would you still be doing that? Do you have a reason? Do you have something where you can hold on to? Like, maybe you're wanting a higher position or something of like you're just waiting for this certain time. It's like, that's great, but it's like if today were your last day and you're not living like that, time is so short. Actually, in my Seneca episode that came out a couple weeks ago, it's like, that is crazy. That is— time is so short. You have to listen to that episode. It's, it's truly one of the best short books I've ever listened to in my Actually, I read it, so I didn't listen to it, but one of the best short books I've ever read in my entire life. Seneca has this kind of rephrasing. It's like, it's not that we have a short space of time, like we could have 500 years, but it's that we waste a lot of it. Like, and he was saying this back in, you know, the time that he was around, like 3,000 years ago, or maybe, maybe it was 2,000 years ago, but it's like we have our phones, we have something to distract us. Like, you can be the most knowledgeable, but you can also be the most distracted. So it's like, to find your passion, to find what you love to do, find— like, actually go pursue something in that field, like something you can get paid in, something you can do in that field to where you just absorb it. And then maybe someday you start your own business in that field, whatever it is. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find your field and to find your passion, but If you can find that and do that sooner than later and pursue it now, that's a lot better than never finding it at all. So thank you guys for listening to this episode. I will get back on to it with the Netflix series. I will probably finish it out when I come back from my trip. I'm on it. I'm on a trip right now, but I'm recording ahead. So thank you guys for listening to this episode, and I will talk to you guys again soon.
