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#142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan Aug 30, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield.

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[0:17] Morgan was the most influential of these businessmen. He wasn’t the richest but that didn’t matter; he was commanding in a way none could match.

[0:38] Morgan had an aristocrat’s disdain for public sentiment and the conviction that his actions were to the country’s advantage, no explanations necessary.

[0:50] Roosevelt thought big business was not only inevitable but essential. He also believed it had to be accountable to the public, and Roosevelt considered himself the public.

[1:04] Each [Morgan and Roosevelt] presumed he could use his authority to determine the nation’s course. Each expected deference from the other along the way.

[2:18] “I’m afraid of Mr. Roosevelt because I don’t know what he’ll do,” Morgan said. “He’s afraid of me because he does know what I’ll do,” Roosevelt replied.

[5:24] Morgan had trusted his father to set him on the right path and steer his career, even when his father was overbearing, Morgan never mounted a challenge. The creator of the biggest companies the world had ever known was very much the creation of paternal influence.

[9:58] Morgan said he could do a year’s work in nine months, but not twelve. His impatience could be withering.

[10:17] Roosevelt adopted his father’s motto, “Get action.”

[10:35] Roosevelt never sat when he could stand. When provoked, he would thrust, and when he hit, he hit hard.

[11:11] Theodore loved to row in the hottest sun, over the roughest water, in the smallest boat.

[12:09] When they attacked Roosevelt, he would fire back with all the venom imaginable. “He was the most indiscreet guy I ever met.”

[16:36] When one of the gentlemen complained later about Morgan’s interference in their roads, Morgan snapped: “Your roads? Your roads belong to my clients.”

[19:26] John D. Rockefeller said his company was efficient. Critics said it was untouchable.

[23:04] James J. Hill had built the Great Northern with deliberate thrift and brutal efficiency. His railroad would become among the most profitable in the Northwest. He didn’t need Morgan the way other railroad executives did.

[25:52] “A soft, easy life is not worth living, it impairs the fiber of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great.”, Roosevelt said.

[29:18] Harriman secretly bought up shares in Northern Pacific. This was revenge. Hill and Morgan had effective control over the Northern Pacific, but they didn’t own a majority of the shares. Morgan had never found it necessary to own a company outright in order to exert influence.
[35:02] The president had asked his attorney general to prosecute Northern Securities for violating the Sherman Act. Roosevelt should have warned him, Morgan grumbled. They could have worked out a deal in private. Presidents didn’t keep secrets from the captains of industry, and the House of Morgan had never before been surprised by the White House.

[37:29] After Morgan left, Roosevelt marveled at the financier’s imprudence. “That is the most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator, who either intended to ruin all his interests or else could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none.”

[39:06] Roosevelt understood how panic could outrun reality.

[47:00] People will love Roosevelt for the enemies he has made.

[50:21] Morgan repeated the advice he had received from his father long ago: “There may be times when things are dark and cloudy in America, when uncertainty will cause some to distrust and others to think there is too much production, too much building of railroads, and too much development in other enterprises. In such times, and at all times, remember that the growth of that vast country will take care of all.”

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“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

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#141 Arnold Schwarzenegger (My Unbelievably True Life Story) Aug 23, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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I decided that the best course for independence was to mind my own business and make my own money.
I never felt that I was good enough, strong enough, smart enough. He let me know that there was always room for improvement. A lot of sons would have been crippled by his demands, but instead, the discipline rubbed off on me. I turned it into drive.
I became absolutely convinced that I was special and meant for bigger things. I knew I would be the best at something - although I didn’t know what - and that it would make me famous.
I never went to a competition to compete. I went to win. Even though I didn’t win every time, that was my mindset. I became a total animal. If you tuned into my thoughts before a competition, you would hear something like: “I deserve that pedestal, I own it, and the sea ought to part for me. Just get out of the fucking way, I’m on a mission. So just step aside and gimme the trophy.” I pictured myself high up on the pedestal, trophy in hand. Everyone else would be standing below. And I would look down.
When you grow up in that kind of harsh environment, you never forget how to withstand physical punishment, even long after the hard times end.
I find joy in the gym because every rep and every set is getting me one step closer to my goal.
It gave Reg Park’s whole life story, from growing up poor in Leeds, England, to becoming Mr. Universe, getting invited to America as a champion bodybuilder, getting sent to Rome to star as Hercules, and marrying a beauty from South Africa. This story crystallized a new vision for me. I could become another Reg Park. All my dreams suddenly came together and made sense. I refined this vision until it was very specific. I was going to go for the Mr. Universe title; I was going to break records in powerlifting; I was going to Hollywood; I was going to be like Reg Park. The vision became so clear in my mind that I felt like it had to happen. There was no alternative; it was this or nothing.
Lucille Ball gave me advice about Hollywood. “Just remember, when they say, ‘No,’ you hear ‘Yes,’ and act accordingly. Someone says to you, ‘We can’t do this movie,’ you hug him and say, ‘Thank you for believing in me.’
There was nothing normal about me. My drive was not normal. My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like Kryptonite to me.
It was the fact that I had failed—not my body, but my vision and my drive. I hadn’t done everything in my power to prepare. Thinking this made me furious. “You are still a fucking amateur,” I told myself. I decided I wouldn’t be an amateur ever again.
That night, despair came crashing in. I was in a foreign country, away from my family, away from my friends, surrounded by strange people in a place where I didn’t speak the language. I ended up crying quietly in the dark for hours.
I always wrote down my goals. I had to make it very specific so that all those fine intentions were not just floating around. It might seem like I was handcuffing myself by setting such specific goals, but it was the opposite: I found it liberating. Knowing exactly where I wanted to end up freed me totally to improvise how to get there.
I came away fascinated that a man could be both smart and powerful.
Going to school, training five hours a day at the gym, working in the construction and mail-order businesses, making appearances, and going to exhibitions—all of it was happening at the same time. Some days stretched from six in the morning until midnight.
Nothing was going to distract me from my goal. No offer, no relationship, nothing.
People were always talking about how few performers there are at the top of the ladder, but I was convinced there was room for one more. I felt that, because there was so little room, people got intimidated and felt more comfortable staying on the bottom of the ladder. But, in fact, the more people that think that, the more crowded the bottom of the ladder becomes! Don’t go where it’s crowded. Go where it’s empty. Even though it’s harder to get there, that’s where you belong and where there’s less competition.
Very few actors like to sell. I’d seen the same thing with authors in the book business. The typical attitude seemed to be, “I don’t want to be a whore. I create; I don’t want to shill.” It was a real change when I showed up saying, “Let’s go everywhere because this is good not only for me financially but also good for the public; they get to see a good movie!”
Whenever I finished filming a movie, I felt my job was only half done. Every film had to be nurtured in the marketplace. You can have the greatest movie in the world, but if you don’t get it out there, if people don’t know about it, you have nothing. It’s the same with poetry, with painting, with writing, with inventions. It always blew my mind that some of the greatest artists, from Michelangelo to van Gogh, never sold much because they didn’t know-how. They had to rely on some schmuck - some agent or manager or gallery owner - to do it for them.That wasn’t going to happen to my movies. Same with bodybuilding, same with politics - no matter what I did in life, I was aware that you had to sell it.
They couldn’t handle working every day. Lazy bastards. I wanted to be rich very quickly.
No matter what you do in life, it’s either reps or mileage. If you want to be good at skiing, you have to get out on the slopes all the time. If you play chess, you have to play tens of thousands of games. On the movie set, the only way to act together is to do the reps. If you’ve done the reps, you don’t have to worry.

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#140 Bill Gates (the Making of the Microsoft Empire) Aug 16, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson.

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Microsoft had become the first software company to sell more than a billion dollars worth of software in a single year.
Gates was the undisputed mastermind of that success, a brilliant technocrat, ruthless salesman, and manipulative businessman.
Gates had slammed his fist into his palm and vowed to put several of his major software competitors out of business. By 1991, many of those competitors were in full retreat.
I can do anything I put my mind to.
Aggressive and stimulated by conflict; prone to change mood quickly; a dominating personality with outstanding powers of leadership.
Mary Gates, in describing her son, has said that he has pretty much done what he wanted since the age of eight.
Even as a child Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best.
Everything Bill did, he did to the max.
Everything he did, he did competitively and not simply to relax. He was a very driven individual.
Gates was immediately hooked. He found he had to compete for time on the computer with a handful of others who were similarly drawn to the room as if by a powerful gravitational force. Among them was Paul Allen.
Gates devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went.
Gates and a couple of other boys broke into the PDP-10 security system and obtained access to the company’s accounting files. They found their personal accounts and substantially reduced the amount of time the computer showed they had used.
“It was when we got that free time that we really got into computers,” Gates said. “Then I became hardcore. It was day and night.” Gates was 13 years old.
Although he was only in the ninth grade, he already seemed obsessed with the computer, ignoring everything else, staying out all night.
He consumed biographies to understand how the great figures in history thought.
If you had asked anybody at Lakeside, ‘Who is the real genius among geniuses?’ everyone would have said ‘Bill Gates.’
He was obnoxious, he was sure of himself, he was aggressively, intimidatingly smart.
He had a hard-nosed, confrontational style. His intensity at times boiled over into raw, unthrottled emotion.
To those who knew him best Gates was hardly the social outcast he may have appeared to be from a distance. He had a sense of humor and adventure.

He was a risk taker, a guy who liked to have fun and who was fun to be with.

He had an immense range of knowledge and interests and could talk at length on any number of subjects.
Although Gates may not have known what he was going to do with his life, he seemed confident that whatever he did would make him a lot of money. He made such a prediction about his future on several occasions.
He and Paul Allen began to talk about forming their own software company. They shared the same vision that one day the computer would be as commonplace in the home as a television set and that these computers would need software—their software.
Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was and left disappointed.
That Gates would fall asleep in class was not surprising. He was living on the edge. It was not unusual for him to go as long as three days without sleep.
His habit was to do 36 hours or more at a stretch, collapse for ten hours, then go out, get a pizza, and go back at it. And if that meant he was starting again at three o’clock in the morning, so be it.
Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane.
They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it.
Gates spent many hours sitting in his room “being a philosophical depressed guy, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.”
Bill had a monomanical quality. He would really focus on something and stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy and to hell with what anyone else thought.
Gates eventually gave up any thought of becomming a mathematician. If he couldn’t be the best in his field, why risk failure?
Gates knew Allen was right. It was time. The personal computer miracle was going to happen.
The personal computer revolution had begun. Its prophets were two young men not yet old enough to drink, whose software would soon bring executives in suits from around the country to a highway desert town to make million-dollar deals with kids in blue jeans and t-shirts.
You’ve got to remember that in those days, the idea that you could own a computer, your own computer, was about as wild as the idea today of owning your own nuclear submarine. It was beyond comprehension.
His parents and grandparents had taught him to be financially conservative, and that was the way he intended to run his company. There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits with Microsoft.
Bill always had the vision that Microsoft’s mission was to provide all the software for microcomputers.
They became known as the Microkids—high-IQ insomniacs who wanted to join the personal computer crusade, kids with a passion for computers who would drive themselves to the limits of their ability and endurance.
Gates’ tireless salesmanship, browbeating, and haggling had resulted in agreements to license BASIC to a number of computer companies.
He took one look at the long-haired, scraggly, 21-year-old and decided the legal battle against Microsoft was going to be easy. Roberts had warned Pertec that it would have its hands full with Gates, but no one listened to him. “Pertec kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy,” Roberts said. “It was a little like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin.”
What sustained the company was not Gates’ ability to write programs. Gates sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship.
For several years, he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers, convincing them to buy Microsoft’s services and products.
When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, and took the phone calls.
I’ll tell you or anybody else, that by the time you were with Bill for fifteen minutes, you no longer thought about how old he was or what he looked like. He had the most brilliant mind that I had ever dealt with.
Microsoft did not need venture capital; Gates was essentially hiring the firm’s expertise.
Gates wanted to eliminate his opponents from the playing field. Bill learned early on that killing the competition is the name of the game. There just aren’t as many people later to take you on. In game theory, you improve the probability you are going to win if you have fewer competitors.
If you talk to Bill about any software company there’s a very high probability that he will be able to tell you who the CEO is, what their revenues were last year, what they are currently working on, what the problems are with their products. He’s very knowledgeable and prides himself on knowing what’s going on in the industry.
Hanson suggested a different product naming strategy. It was important for a product to be identified by its brand name. Microsoft had to get its name associated with its products.
The brand is the hero. People start to associate certain images with the brand, and that becomes more important than any single product. What the consumer goods companies realized years ago was that products come and go. But if you can create a halo around a brand name, when you introduce new products under that brand halo it becomes much easier to create momentum.
With few exceptions, they’ve never shipped a good product in its first version. But they never give up and eventually get it right. It was all part of Gates’ master plan. As General George S. Patton liked to say, a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.
He was a very clear thinker. But he would get emotional. He would browbeat people. Just imposing your intellectual prowess on somebody doesn’t win the battle, and he didn’t know that. He was very rich and very immature. He had never matured emotionally.
For the year that ended June 30, 1985, Microsoft had revenues of $140 million. Its profits had totaled $31.2 million.
All I’m thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock.
The combination of ambition and wanting to win every single day is what Gates referred to as “being hardcore.”

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#139 J.P. Morgan Aug 09, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow.

[0:01] This book is about the rise, fall, and resurrection of an American banking empire—the House of Morgan.

[1:56] What gave the House of Morgan its tantalizing mystery was its government links. Much like the Rothschilds it seemed insinuated into the power structure of many countries, especially the United States.

[2:46] They practiced a brand of banking that has little resemblance to standard retail banking.

[3:43] They have weathered wars and depressions, scandals and hearings, bomb blasts and attempted assassinations.

[4:44] Contrary to the usual law of perspective, the Morgans seem to grow larger as they recede in time.

[5:41] I was struck that the old Wall Street—elite, clubby, and dominated by small, mysterious partnerships—bore scant resemblance to the universe of faceless conglomerates springing up across the globe.

[6:49] Only one firm, one family, one name rather gloriously spanned the entire century and a half that I wanted to cover: J.P. Morgan.

[8:13] I am a firm believer that most people who do great things are doing them for the first time. —Marc Andreessen

[12:22] He carried the scars of early poverty. Like many who have overcome early hardship by brute force, he was always at war with the world and counting his injuries.

[14:22] My capital is ample but I have passed too many money panics unscathed, not to have seen how often large fortunes are swept away, and that even with my own I must use caution.

[14:48] His annual savings were staggering. He spent only $3,000 of a total annual income of $300,000.

[18:05] J.P’s dad’s advice: You are commencing upon your business career at an eventful time. Let what you now witness make an impression not to be eradicated. Slow and sure should be the motto of every young man.

[18:40] Junius Morgan reminds me of Tywin Lannister.

[21:19] Perhaps the contrast between his own steady nature and Pierpont’s unruly temper made Junius fret unduly about his boy. With granite will, he began to mold Pierpont.

[23:03] The Rothschilds are mentioned 30 times in this book. They had an influence on how Junius wanted to set up the Morgan family.

[25:08] Junius lectured Pierpont: Never, under any circumstances, do an action which could be called in question if known to the world.

[25:55] The railroads were the Internet of their day: More than just isolated businesses, railroads were the scaffolding on which new worlds would be built.

[27:41] Not for the last time, Pierpont contemplated retirement. He would assume tremendous responsibility, then feel oppressed. He never seemed to take great pleasure in his accomplishments. He craved a restful but elusive peace.

[29:50] He made over $1 million, boasting to Junius: I don’t believe there is another concern in the country that can begin to show such a result.

[31:19] He believed that he knew how the economy should be ordered and how people should behave.

[32:24] He had trouble delegating authority and low regard for the intelligence of other people. “The longer I live the more apparent becomes the absence of brains.”

[33:48] Under his stern facade, Junius adored Pierpont; the obsessive grooming was a tacit acknowledgement of his son’s gifts.

[35:36] Pierpont was, by nature, a laconic man. He had no gift for sustained analysis; his genius was in the brief, sudden brainstorm.

[38:40] Pierpont found Jack soft and rather passive, lacking the sort of gumption he had as a young man.

[40:40] Pierpont was extremely attentive to details and took pride in the knowledge that he could perform any job in the bank. “I can sit down at any clerk’s desk, take up his work here he left it and go on with it. I don’t like being at any man’s mercy.” He never renounced the founder’s itch to know the most minute details of the business.

[41:31] The years change, but the point always remains the same: Morgan benefits from financial crises.

[42:14] Virtually every bankrupt railroad east of the Mississippi eventually passed through such reorganization, or morganization, as it was called. The companies’ combined revenues approached an amount equal to half of the U.S. government’s annual receipts.

[45:22] He has the driving power of a locomotive. He suggested something brutish and uncontrollable, but also something of superhuman strength.

[47:04] Carnegie celebrated too quickly. He later admitted to Morgan that he had sold out too cheap, by $100 million. Morgan replied, “Very likely, Andrew.”

[52:15] McKinley’s assassination would be a turning point in Pierpont’s life, for it installed in the presidency Theodore Roosevelt. Book: The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism

[53:05] The 1907 panic was Pierpont’s last hurray. He suddenly functioned as America’s central bank. He saved several trust companies and a leading brokerage house, bailed out New York City, and rescued the Stock Exchange.

[54:33] Contemporaries saw Morgan as the incarnation of pure will.

[1:02:39] This was Pierpont in a nutshell: He represented bondholders and expressed their wrath against irresponsible management.

[1:07:37] Andrew Carnegie after J. P. Morgan died: And to think he was not a rich man.

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#138 Alexander Graham Bell Aug 02, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell by Charlotte Gray.

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[0:01] I have my periods of restlessness when my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips when I am excited and cannot stop for anybody. Let me alone, let me work as I like even if I have to sit up all night all night or even for two nights. When you see me flagging, getting tired, discouraged put your hands over my eyes so that I go to sleep and let me sleep as long as I like until I wake. Then I may hand around, read novels and be stupid without an idea in my head until I get rested and ready for another period of work. But oh, do not do as you often do, stop me in the midst of my work, my excitement with “Alex, Alex, aren’t you coming to bed? It’s one o’clock, do come.” Then I have to come feeling cross and ugly. Then you put your hands on my eyes and after a while I go to sleep, but the ideas are gone, the work is never done.

[1:20] Books are the original links: So many times Edwin Land referenced what he learned from studying the life of Alexander Graham Bell—from being motivated as Bell persevered through struggles to how to market a brand new product.

[3:06] Alexander Graham Bell had a lifelong passion for helping and teaching the deaf.

[4:13] Alex asserted his independence early. Exasperated by being the third Alexander Bell in a row, he decided to add Graham to his own name.

[4:32] He often retreated into solitude, particularly when he was preoccupied with a project.

[5:27] Alex’s school record was unimpressive. Chronically untidy and late for class, Alex often skipped school altogether. Outside the classroom he demonstrated the ingenuity and single-mindedness that would shape his later career.

[8:03] He complained of headaches, depression, and sleeplessness. Perhaps this wasn’t surprising considering the undisciplined intensity of his work habits. In a pattern that would last a lifetime, he would sit up all night reading or working obsessively on sound experiments.

[9:54] A note he left himself: A man’s own judgement should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself. Many men do this or that because someone else thought it right.

[11:42] The problem Alexander was trying to solve that led to the invention of the telephone: Could they solve a puzzle with which amateur engineers all over the United States were grappling? Nearly thirty years after its first commercial application, the telegraph system was still limited to sending one message at a time. The race was on to increase its capacity. Alex was determined to join this race.

[12:39] Samuel Morse is mentioned over and over again in this book just like Alexander Graham Bell is mentioned over and over again in books on Edwin Land and just like Edwin Land is mentioned over and over again in books on Steve Jobs. This speaks to this instinctual nature that we have to want to learn from the life stories of other people— to collect that knowledge and push it down the generations.

[17:42] Other inventors were on the same track as he was. A professional electrician and inventor named Elisha Gray had successfully transmitted music over telegraph wires. Thomas Edison was already bragging that he was close to introducing the quadruplex telegraph.

[23:43] Inventor and Yankee entrepreneur had found one another. Alex was unaware that Gardiner Hubbard was on the hunt for a multiple telegraph device; Gardiner Hubbard had no idea that his daughter’s teacher [Alex] spent his nights crouched over a table covered with electromagnets and length of wire. Alex had the ideas Hubbard needed; Hubbard had the access to capital to finance them.

[25:06] It is a neck and neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician—but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is—so that I have an advantage here. The very opposition seems to nerve me to work and I feel with the facilities I have now I may succeed. I shall be seriously ill should I fail in this now I am so thoroughly wrought up.

[27:02] Thomas Watson on what it was like working with Alexander Graham Bell: His head seemed to be a teeming beehive out of which he would often let loose one of his favorite bees for my inspection. A dozen young and energetic workmen would have been needed to mechanize all his buzzing ideas.

[27:41] Alex meets with an older, wider inventor named Dr. Joseph Henry: He told the eager young inventor that his idea was the germ of a great invention. Since he lacked the necessary electrical knowledge he asked Dr. Henry should he allow others to work out the commercial application. Dr. Henry didn’t pause for a minute. If this young Scotsman was going to get the commercial payoff from his invention, he simply had to acquire an understanding of electricity. “GET IT!” he barked at the twenty-eight-year-old.

[31:42] Drawing inspiration from the life of Samuel Morse: He was frustrated by his lack of technical knowledge that “Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don’t intend to give in either till all is completed.”

[35:09] Alexander Graham Bell’s personality: He put tremendous demands on himself. His tendency to work around the clock, and to alternate between states of fierce focus on one goal and an inability to concentrate on anything, suggest a lack of balance in his temperament. He was erratic in his habits and intellectually obsessive, but it was his unconventional mind that made him a genius. He refused to be hemmed in by rules. He allowed his intuition to flourish. He relied on leaps of imagination, backed by a fascination with physical sciences, to solve the challenges he set himself.

Comparing and contrasting Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell: Unlike Thomas Edison, the ruthless self-promoter who saw science as a Darwinian competition and who always announced his inventions before he had even got them working, Alex hated revealing anything until he was confident of its success. Edison was an ambitious self-made American; Alex was a cautious Scot more interested in scientific progress than commercial success. [I forgot to put this part in the podcast]

[40:22] Struggle: When will this thing be finished? I am sick and tired of the nature of my work and the little profit that arises from it. Other men work their five or six hours a day, and have their thousands a year, while I slave from morning to night and night to morning and accomplish nothing but to wear myself out. I expect that the money will come in just in time for me to leave it to you in my will! I am sad at heart, and keep my feelings bottled up like wine in a wine cellar.

[45:20] More struggle. Alex almost giving up again: Of one thing I am determined and that is to waste no more time and money on the telephone. Let others endure the worry, the anxiety and expense. I will have none of it. A feverish anxious life like that I have been leading will soon change my whole nature. I feel myself growing irritable, feverish, and disgusted with life.

[49:37] What’s most important to Alex: “Yes, I hold it is one of the highest of all things, the increase of knowledge making us more like God.” He had bought a set of the new Encyclopedia Britannica and had announced he was going read it from start to finish. Nothing would dampen his irrepressible urge to explore, discover, and improve.

[50:36] Alexander Graham Bell on parenting: He believed that play is Nature’s method of educating a child and that a parent’s duty is to aid Nature in the development of her plan.

[54:30] He never liked for anyone to knock on his door before entering the room. If he was following a train of thought and there was a tap on his door, his attention being diverted to the noise, he very often lost the thread and for days would not be able to pick it up again. Alex once said, “Thoughts are like the precious moments that fly past; once gone they can never be caught again.”

[55:20] Any disturbance was such anathema to Bell that he never had a telephone installed in his own study.

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#137 P.T. Barnum Jul 26, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson.

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[1:23] He is known today primarily for his connection to the circus, but that came only in the last quarter of his long life. Less well known is that he was also a best-selling author, an inspirational lecturer on temperance and on success in business, a real-estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, and the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

[1:54] In all endeavors he was a promoter and self-promotor without peer, a relentless advertiser and an unfailingly imaginative concoctor of events to draw the interest of potential patrons.

[3:16] Through hard work, a lot of brass, and a genius for exploiting new technologies related to communication and transportation, he became world famous and wealthy beyond his dreams.

[3:54] He led a rich, event-filled, exhilarating life, one indeed characterized by both struggles and triumphs. His life is well worth knowing.

[5:36] Barnum’s was 16 when his father died, leaving his family with debts: Barnum remembered the family returning from the cemetery “to our desolate home, feeling that we were forsaken by the world, and that but little hope existed for us this side of the grave.”

[6:22] He knew even then that he would only be happy working for himself.

[7:56] Like most persons who engage in a business which they do not understand, we were unsuccessful in the enterprise.

[8:16] He is running a lottery and learns something he will use later in his career: He began to develop his insight into the complicated nature of his customers, a realization that outwardly respectable people might have interests that were not entirely respectable.

[11:06] The day he became a showman. He starts a newspaper, gets sued for libel, goes to jail, and organizes a parade on the day he is released: His ability to marshal not just his own paper but also the goodwill of others was a harbinger of things to come. It was the first example of his flair for drawing attention to his beliefs, his enterprises, and himself.

[13:48] Seemingly small but consequential details would never elude him.

[14:15] His lottery business is outlawed by the state legislature. He is broke: He blamed himself for his situation, writing that “the old proverb, ‘Easy come, easy go,’ was too true in my case.” Still, he was confident in his ability to make money.

[17:03] I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.

[18:42] Up and Down, Down and Up: He struggled to find further success in the years that followed. Barnum would spend much of the five years after on the road with various acts. “I was thoroughly disgusted with the life of an itinerant showman.”

[20:03] Broke again at 31: Barnum later wrote, “I began to realize, seriously, that I was at the very bottom of fortune’s ladder, and that I had now arrived at an age when it was necessary to make one grand effort to raise myself above want.”

[22:00] The clever way he is able to get the money to buy the American Museum: He decided to seek out the retired merchant who owned the building in which the museum was housed, with the quixotic goal of persuading him to buy the collection for him on credit, arguing that he would be a more reliable tenant than the struggling Scudder family (the current owners of the museum). This, against all odds, Barnum was able to do.

[23:52] The customers he wanted and how he positioned his product: Barnum wanted to attract this rising middle class. They had more money and were more likely to spend it on wholesome activities, and with their higher rates of literacy, they were more susceptible to newspaper advertising.

[28:05] How Barnum planned and publicized his show. The details and machinations are amazing.

[35:47] He doesn’t rest on his laurels. After becoming successful in America he decides to expand to Europe: The challenge was the new place itself, a place that had no notion of who P.T. Barnum was. Whether or not he would succeed in the land of his forebears would be a test for Barnum of his own worth, of how far he had come and how far he might yet go.

[38:05] Barnum told him that a person must “make thirty hours out of twenty-four or he would never get ahead.”

[40:40] His drinking became a problem, so he quit: Making a resolution not to drink and then keeping it took both discipline and self-awareness and constituted another serious effort to turn his marriage and himself around.

[42:54] We are all promoters. Estee Lauder was a promoter of beauty, Larry Ellison was a promoter of the efficiency gains of software and of winning, Henry Ford was a promoter of service, Claude Shannon was a promoter of following your own curiosity. Promoting is just sharing what you love.

[43:55] Barnum promoted wholesome, good, family fun and entertainment. He built a wonderful life for himself just off that very simple idea, that I am going to promote various forms of entertainment so people can enjoy their time. I think that is a very simple idea and if you take it to extremes like Barnum did you can build a life around that.

[44:29] Barnum is never focused on the obvious. He is always focused on 2nd order effects.

[47:49] Barnum’s house: Iranistan

[48:23] Barnum goes bankrupt at 50!: When his projects relied on his instincts and experience as a showman, they tended to be successful. But when he was tempted by schemes in areas where he was less familiar, the results were uneven. I think this is a reminder of what Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett told us: Stay within your circle of competence.

[50:26] Down and depressed: He added that he was “once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder.” He wrote that his “own constitution through the excitements of the last few months, has most seriously failed.” He was understandably if uncharacteristically, “in the depths.”

[52:02] I did it before. I’ll do it again: “I feel competent to earn an honest livelihood for myself and family.” He was, and had every right to be, proud of the things he had accomplished largely on his own, and that pride and the self-confidence that went with it were not likely to evaporate even in this moment of distress.

[54:34] To give you an idea of how world famous Barnum was in his day: His autobiography sold over a million copies. That’s insane!

[56:55] Mark Twain began an after dinner habit of reading from Barnum’s autobiography. The book made an impression on Twain, encouraging him in the years ahead as he promoted himself as a public lecturer and writer.

[59:27] Barnum competes with Bailey and his impressed: Barnum was impressed by how well the three younger men had turned the tables on him, using his own methods. “Foes worthy of my steel,” he called them. The aging showman realized he had finally met his match, and he concluded it would be wiser to join them than to compete with them.

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#136 Estée Lauder Jul 18, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading A Success Story by Estee Lauder.

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You can probably reach out with comparative ease and touch a life of serenity and peace. You can wait for things to happen and not get too sad when they don’t. That’s fine for some but not for me. Serenity is pleasant, but it lacks the ecstasy of achievement. [0:10]

I’ve always believed that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. I kept my eye on the target. I never allowed my eye to leave the target. I always believed that success comes from not letting your eyes stray from that target. [1:10]

Beauty is an ancient industry: Women have always enhanced their looks. It has always been so. It will always be so. [4:18]

Lessons from here mother: The secret is to imagine yourself as the most important person in the room. Imagine it vividly enough and you will become that person. [6:01]

You could make a thing wonderful by enhancing its outward appearance. Little did I know I’d be doing the same thing, multiplied by a billionfold. [8:45]

Everything has to be sold aggressively. [9:05]

I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and sell it hard. [9:39]

My drive and persistence were always there, and those are the qualities for building a successful business. [10:38]

The moment she realizes she could make beauty her life’s work: This is the story of bewitchment. Uncle John [a skin specialist] had worlds to teach me. Do you know what it means for a young girl to suddenly have someone take her dreams seriously? Teach her secrets? I could think of nothing else. [12:09]

The humble beginning of the Estee Lauder empire: This was my first chance at a real business. I would have a small counter in a beauty salon. Whatever I sold would be mine to keep. No partners. I would risk the rent, but if it worked, I would start the business I always dreamed about. Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances. [15:30]

Sales technique of the century: Now the big secret. I would give the woman a sample of whatever she did not buy as a gift. I just knew, even though I had not yet named the technique, that gift with a purchase was very appealing. The idea was to convince a woman to try a product. She would be faithful forever. [16:30]

I didn’t need bread to eat but I worked as though I did, for the pure love of the venture. For me, teaching about beauty was an emotional experience. [18:52]

I was single-minded in the pursuit of my dream. [21:01]

Despite all the nay sayers, there was never a single moment when I considered giving up. That was simply not a viable alternative. [22:12]

Word of mouth was what built the foundation of her business: Women were telling women. They were selling my cream before they even go to the salon. Tell-a-Woman was the word-of-mouth campaign that launched Estee Lauder Cosmetics. [22:41]

Great packaging does not copy or study. It invents. [24:50]

Sak’s Fifth Avenue placed an $800 order. This was her response: Breaking that first barrier was perhaps the single most exciting moment I have ever known. [26:16]

“Missionaries make better products.” — Jeff Bezos: I was a woman on a mission. I had to show as many women as I could reach how to stay beautiful. [28:07]

The free sample sales technique she pioneered in the beauty industry: The gift to the customer —the free something that would sell everything else. You give people a product to try. If they like the quality, they buy it. They haven’t been lured in by an advertisement but convinced by the product itself. [29:10]

We took the money we planned to use on advertising and invested it instead in enough material to give away large quantities of our products. [30:00]

A great story about how Estee Lauder convinced more women to buy perfume. [32:59]

A great story about how Estee Lauder expanded into Europe. [36:31]

Be determined and sell!: It’s not enough to have the most wonderful product in the world. You must be able to sell it. One woman with definite ideas, pride in her product, and a hands-on approach could lay the foundation for a strong business. [40:57]

Our unique style has come from years of trial and error. Truths have emerged that have worked for us. Let me share them with you. [41:24]

Keep an eye on the competition. This doesn’t mean copying them, as I’ve made clear. Being interested in other people’s ideas for the purpose of saying, “We can do it better,” is not copying. Innovation doesn’t mean inventing the wheel each time; innovation can mean a whole new way of looking at old things. [42:10]

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#135 Joseph Pulitzer (Politics & Media) Jul 12, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris.

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[0:20] Joseph Pulitzer was the midwife to the birth of the modern mass media. Pulitzer’s lasting achievement was to transform American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and immense influence.

[3:04] He was the pioneer of the modern media industry.

[5:06] Teddy Roosevelt tried to have Joseph Pulitzer put in jail.

[7:11] How one of Pulitzer’s adult sons viewed him: One of the strange differences between us two is the fact that you have never come near learning how to enjoy life.

[9:42] Joseph favored reading works of history and biography.

[10:12] Joseph understood fully the extent of the calamity [his father’s death]. He had been 9 years old when his older brother died, 10 when his younger brother and sister died, 11 when his father died, and 13 at the death of his last sister.

[11:50] At 17 years old Joseph escapes to America. A group of wealthy Boston businessmen recruit thousands of young Europeans to fight for the Union in the American Civil War. This scheme became Pulitzer’s escape route.

[13:18] Describing how he came to the United States: He was friendless, homeless, tongueless, and guideless.

[14:05] One of the places he slept when he was homeless was in the lobby of a hotel. They kept kicking him out. Later in life he buys the hotel.

[14:44] What he said about his job of tending mules: Never in my life did I have a more trying task. The man who has not cared for 16 mules does not know what work and trouble are.

[15:18] Pulitzer was a voracious reader. When he was not working he spent every free minute improving his mind.

[17:12] Edwin Land said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess". Joseph Pulitzer would have agreed with that.

[19:15]He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work. Pulitzer was unwilling to put forward anything but his best effort.

[25:10] In only 5 years he had grown from a bounty hunting Hungarian teenager to an American lawmaker.

[28:54] There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they have never happened before.

[38:10] He is 30 years old and depressed. In the best of circumstances the loss of one’s only surviving parent inspires self-reflection, for Joseph with no specific profession or even a home, such introspection was demoralizing.

[40:45] It is hard to understand how much money newspapers made, especially at this time. William Randolph Hearst’s net worth would be the equivalent of $30 billion today.

[48:34] One did not work with Pulitzer. For him, surely. Against him, often. But not with him.

[51:44] Pulitzer was extremely ambitious. He was not satisfied to be the 500th best newspaper. He wanted to be number 1.

[1:06:20] When we think that, a hundred years hence, not one of us now living will be alive to care or to know, to enjoy or to suffer, what does it all amount to? To a puff of smoke which makes a few rings and then disappears into nothingness and yet we make tragedies of our lives, most of us not even making them serious comedies.

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#134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak) Jul 01, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein.

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[0:21] He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in U.S. history. His honorary doctorate degrees, too numerous to list, come from the most distinguished academic institutions, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He received virtually every distinction the scientific community has to offer, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and membership in the prestigious Royal Society of London. Land was included on Life’s list of the 100 most important Americans of the twentieth century.

[1:35] In so many ways, on so many occasions, Land’s life was a manifestation of the indefatigable can-do attitude he embraced and encouraged others to follow.

[2:15] Land has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company.

[2:34] Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve, pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs, pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution, and where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration—involve all the members of the organization in the sense of adventure and accomplishment, so that a large part of life’s rewards would come from this involvement.

[3:30] Steve Jobs was one of Land’s most dedicated fans: “Not only was [Land] one of the great inventors of our time,” said Jobs in a 1985 interview, “but, more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. . . . The man is a national treasure, I don’t understand why people like that can’t be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a football player—but this.”

[5:22] Land’s relative anonymity can perhaps best be explained by his inscrutable personality, his simple shyness, and his blinders-on mentality when it came to his life’s work.

[6:19] He sees himself as determined, iron-willed and hard driving, a man who will not rest until he has conquered whatever problem is at hand.

[6:31] The formula for accomplishment he practiced throughout his life—creative wonderment and intellectual curiosity followed by inexhaustible effort—remains a model that should inform and inspire us all, no matter the particular field of our endeavor.

[8:56] He strongly believed that concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others. Late in his career, Land recalled that his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.”

[16:24] A way to describe Edwin Land: “a state of mind that includes curiosity, an idealism which is dissatisfied with the restrictions and imperfections of the present, a great inward urge for discovery and an ability to translate this dissatisfaction and inward urge into constructive achievement.”

[21:43] How to do something difficult: You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.

[24:34] Land had an extraordinary curiosity about everything and the discipline to satisfy it.

[28:14] Eisenhower wanted to know what the Russians were up to. Land told Eisenhower, “Well, why don’t we take a look and find out.”

[31:53] One of Land’s tenets: “If you can state a problem, then you can solve it. From then on it’s just hard work.”

[45:13] Land on why he had to sue Kodak: This would be our obligation even if one-step photography were but one component of our business. Where it is our whole field and where we have dedicated our whole scientific and industrial career to bringing this previously non-existent field to full technological and commercial fruition, our manifest duty to our shareholders is vigorously to assert our patents.

[53:26] Kodak underestimated somebody you should never underestimate.

[59:47] A summary of Land’s philosophy on building a technology company: Creation of a new technology requires that a single individual have in mind the objective to be reached. This master plan must be supported by the efforts of many others but the single dominant individual must constantly assure himself that the individual efforts complement one another and create support for an integrated system.

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#133 Edwin Land (Polaroid and The Man Who Invented It) Jun 25, 2020

Show notes

What I learned from reading Land’s Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg.

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[1:14] He was revered to an extraordinary extent by most of the people who worked for him.

[1:36] Land did not earn a college degree, yet he has received more medals and scientific honors than most living Americans.

[3:36] Land's life seemed to be primarily a life of the mind. His great dramas were largely self created, played on the stage of Polaroid, which he constructed for himself.

[4:14] All of the people that you and I are studying on this podcast created their own world within the world.

[5:55] The end this book made me think of this quote by Steve Jobs: Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

[7:38] Peter [the author] worked with Edwin Land for 20 years. As a result this book —more than any other— has a lot of direct quotes from Land.

[7:50] “Nature doesn’t care.” By that he meant nothing in nature would help or hinder their progress to a solution except their own ingenuity. Nature offered no bar to the elegant solution over the awkward compromise if they had the imagination to seek it and the wit to discover it. Nature had no concern for the affairs of men.

[9:42] At 37 years old he had achieved everything to which he aspired except success.

[10:55] This product, this innovation, this creation— of one of the most important products ever made— came at a time when the company was almost out of business.

[12:42] Land said running his company felt like he was a physics professor leading his students on a grand experiment.

[12:53] I really do believe that Edwin Land is one of the most important entrepreneurs that ever existed. The way his mind works is extremely unique.

[17:08] Land on his motivations in life: I find an urge to make a significant intellectual contribution that can be tangibly embodied in a product or process.

[19:45] Edwin Land at 18: A secretive young man who was well-dressed but usually disheveled, often highly agitated, prone to long periods of intense activity, rarely volunteering any explanation of what he was trying to accomplish, eating haphazardly, his sleeves rolled up, his shock of dark hair falling in his face as he worked.

[20:31] Edwin Land on how to work: If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.

[24:52] An example of Land’s obsessiveness: They start at 8:30 and they work until 4:30. Then everything shuts down and they all go home. They don't work on Saturdays or Sundays.They keep telling me I should work for them. How could I get anything done?

[29:15]At this point we are 14 years into the story: Nothing told land that he had built a business that could survive, let alone grow.

[30:47] A Landian question took nothing for granted, accepted no common knowledge, tested the cliche, and treated conventional wisdom as an oxymoron.

[35:56] Why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with, it’s run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn’t believe anything until he’s discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you and I do. He has no small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning with everything. That’s why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away.

[39:15] Land hated to stop working. Once begun on a course of action, he wanted to experiment until the hypothesis was proved. He worked liked a predator, stalking a solution, with perpetual patience and energy. His intuitive leaps had landed him on the neck of his prey too often for him not to believe that he could do it the next time and the time after that.

[50:50] Land ran his company longer than any of America's great business leaders, longer than Thomas Edison, longer than Henry Ford, longer than George Eastman. Giving it up had been the hardest thing he had done in his life.

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