Podcast Notes Playlist: Latest Episodes

• “Uncertainty is the only certainty.” – John Paulos 
• People use terms like millions, billions, and trillions as if they are the same thing; when in reality, these are vastly different amounts! 
• “We live in a probabilistic world, and yet we remain deterministic thinkers.” – Jim O’Shaughnessy 
• The Law of Large Numbers is a fundamental principle in probability and statistics that states that as the size of a sample increases, the average of the sample becomes closer to the expected value
• Apophenia: The phenomenon of seeing patterns where none exist as a form of cognitive bias or psychological tendency
• Humans are excellent pattern-recognition machines; but sometimes, we wrongly attribute patterns to random data that can lead us astray 
• The human operating system is more driven by the emotional centers of the brain than the rational centers of the brain 
• There is a tension between objective likelihood (probability) and subjective belief or reasonableness (plausibility)
• The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a scenario in game theory where two individuals acting in their self-interest end up with a worse outcome than if they had cooperated
• Cognitive foibles such as confirmation bias, the anchoring effect, and negativity bias should be taught in mathematical courses 
• Dunning-Kruger Effect: The phenomenon where people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability, while those with high ability underestimate their competence
• The concept of “nudging” involves subtly influencing people’s decisions by altering the presentation of choices without restricting options or significantly changing incentives
• It is wise to develop a particular skepticism and wariness about the uncertainties of life 

Professor, Mathematician and Writer John A. Paulos joins the show to discuss math education, the power of puzzles, cognitive biases, and MUCH more!

Important Links:

• John’s Website
• John’s Twitter

Show Notes:

• Why Do People Hate Math?
• The Power of Posing Problems with Counterintuitive or Shocking Results
• Using Everyday Examples to Understand Math Concepts
• Systems Designed to Take Advantage of Innumeracy
• People’s Ignorance of Randomness and Random Samples
• The Strange Power of Anchoring Bias
• Tradeoffs between Probability and Plausibility
• The Prisoner’s Dilemma & Math Anxiety
• Improving the Monty Hall Problem
• Designing an Ideal Intro Math Course
• The Big Brother Aspect of Nudging
• John as Emperor of the World
• MORE!

Books Mentioned:

• Innumeracy - Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences; by J.A. Paulos
• A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market; by J.A. Paulos
• A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper; by J.A. Paulos
• Statistics; by D.A. Freedman, R. Pisani, and R.A. Purves
• Thinking Fast and Slow; by Daniel Kahneman

• Leaders must “work up” through osmosis; do not assume that your messages are distributed throughout the company without intention and effort  
• Most organizations tell the leadership team what they want to hear; this can prevent the executive team from actually understanding what is happening within their own company 
• The most effective ways to communicate are through stories, celebration, and recognition 
• Great leaders are high energy and are willing to tolerate disagreement
• As a leader, people want a piece of you; you must think about how you show them that you are invested in their success 
• Leaders must be open to understanding what they do not know 
• Every employee should understand what their CEO wants from them 
• “To be a successful leader, you got to allocate capital right and allocate human resources right. If you do those two things right, everything else will fall into place. If you do them wrong – you can do everything else right, you can have great culture, all the rest – it’s not going to matter.” – Frank Blake
• Vision is powerful, but execution is even more so powerful 

My guest today is Frank Blake. Frank is the former chairman and CEO of Home Depot. I recently interviewed Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone and became fascinated by the business’s impressive lineup of leaders through the decades. Frank led the company from 2007 to 2014 and shares how he carried on the legacy of Ken and the others, upholding their culture of an inverted hierarchy and producing seven consecutive years of growth for the largest home improvement retailer in America. We discuss his hyper focus on solving their customer’s problems before their own, investing time into the employee experience, and his intentionality with how he is perceived as a leader. Please enjoy this discussion with Frank Blake.

Listen to Founders Podcast

We talk a lot on this show about how to organize and execute your work, but not enough about where to do it. In this episode, Cal explores the theory and practice of “adventure working,” in which you escape to novel and inspiring locations to tackle your most demanding and interesting cognitive efforts. He then answers reader questions about habits and rituals, before ending with a critical look at a famous football club’s distressing embrace of pseudo-productivity.

Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo

Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia

Deep Dive: Re-Enchanting Work [5:39]

- What are Cal’s health habits? [31:12]
- What’s the difference between discipline and rituals? [34:08]
- How does Cal read so much? [37:37]
- What are Cal’s writing-related rituals? [40:44]
- Should I go slow in my job hunting? [45:05]
- CALL: Working at a natural pace as a teacher [49:47]
- CALL:  How to navigate the “pull system” [54:31]

CASE STUDY: Organizing files in a household [1:00:57]

CAL REACTS: Manchester’s United’s Pseudo-Productivity [1:11:13] 

Links:

• Buy Cal’s latest book, “Slow Productivity” at calnewport.com/slow
• Get a signed copy of Cal’s “Slow Productivity” at peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/
• calnewport.com/adventure-studying-an-unconventional-new-approach-to-exam-preperation/
• calnewport.com/bonus-post-an-adventure-studying-case-study/
• instagram.com/p/B1y5dV3HSC9/?igshid=1r2acwbmfztew
• apcc.org/pond-stories-mary-olivers-blackwater-pond-provincetown/
• scottishfield.co.uk/scotland-travel/the-black-heart-of-scots-crime-writer-ian-rankin/
• calnewport.com/the-power-of-the-outdoor-office/
• calnewport.com/deep-habits-my-office-in-the-woods/
• theguardian.com/football/article/2024/may/08/sir-jim-ratcliffe-manchester-united-remote-work-ban-email-traffic
• theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/hybrid-work-attention-productivity/677598/

 

Thanks to our Sponsors: 

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Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for slow productivity music, and Mark Miles for mastering.

• Check out the episode page

My guest today is Adam Sandow. Adam is the chairman and CEO of SANDOW Companies and the executive chairman and founder of Material Bank. He has built an entire ecosystem of businesses and brands that have brought him into the game of media, materials, and beyond. From creating the beauty product subscription model to getting magazines in the hands of billionaires to transforming the design industry with overnight access to samples, when Adam starts a business he writes his own rulebook. We discuss the founding stories of his most interesting companies, his obsession with targeting pain points, and his philosophies for when to go all in and betting on himself. Please enjoy this great discussion with Adam Sandow.

Listen to Founders Podcast

• Check out the episode page

What I learned from reading about Hans Wilsdorf and the founding of Rolex.

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Build relationships at the Founders Conference on July 29th-July 31st in Scotts Valley, California

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"Learning from history is a form of leverage." — Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand.

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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(0:01) At the age of twelve I was an orphan.

(1:00) My uncles made me become self-reliant very early in life. Looking back, I believe that it is to this, that much of my success is due.

(9:00) The idea of wearing a watch on one's wrist was thought to be contrary to the conception of masculinity.

(10:00) Prior to World War 1 wristwatches for men did not exist.

(11:00) Business is problems. The best companies are just effective problem solving machines.

(12:00) My personal opinion is that pocket watches will almost completely disappear and that wrist watches will replace them definitively! I am not mistaken in this opinion and you will see that I am right." —Hans Wilsdorf, 1914

(14:00) The highest order bit is belief: I had very early realized the manifold possibilities of the wristlet watch and, feeling sure that they would materialize in time, I resolutely went on my way. Rolex was thus able to get several years ahead of other watch manufacturers who persisted in clinging to the pocket watch as their chief product.

(16:00) Clearly, the companies for whom the economics of twenty-four-hour news would have made the most sense were the Big Three broadcasters. They already had most of what was needed— studios, bureaus, reporters, anchors almost everything but a belief in cable.   —  Ted Turner's Autobiography (Founders #327)

(20:00) Business Breakdowns #65 Rolex: Timeless Excellence

(27:00)   Rolex was effectively the first watch brand to have real marketing dollars put behind a watch. Rolex did this in a concentrated way and they've continued to do it in a way that is simply just unmatched by others in their industry.

(28:00) It's tempting during recession to cut back on consumer advertising. At the start of each of the last three recessions, the growth of spending on such advertising had slowed by an average of 27 percent. But consumer studies of those recessions had showed that companies that didn't cut their ads had, in the recovery, captured the most market share. So we didn't cut our ad budget. In fact, we raised it to gain brand recognition, which continued advertising sustains. — Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184)

(32:00) Social proof is a form of leverage. — Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(34:00) What really matters is Hans understood the opportunity better than anybody else, and invested heavily in developing the technology to bring his ideas to fruition.

(35:00) On keeping the main thing the main thing for decades: In developing and extending my business, I have always had certain aims in mind, a course from which I never deviated.

(41:00) Rolex wanted to only be associated with the best. They ran an ad with the headline: Men who guide the destinies of the world, where Rolex watches.

(43:00) Opportunity creates more opportunites. The Oyster unlocked the opportunity for the Perpetual.

(44:00) The easier you make something for the customer, the larger the market gets: “My vision was to create the first fully packaged computer. We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers, who knew how to buy transformers and keyboards. For every one of them there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run.” — Steve Jobs

(48:00) More sources:

Rolex Jubilee: Vade Mecum by Hans Wilsdorf

Rolex Magazine: The Hans Wilsdorf Years

Hodinkee: Inside the Manufacture. Going Where Few Have Gone Before -- Inside All Four Rolex Manufacturing Facilities 

Vintage Watchstraps Blog: Hans Wilsdorf and Rolex

Business Breakdowns #65 Rolex: Timeless Excellence

Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands by Jean Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien 

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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

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

• Check out the episode page

Robert Downey Jr. is an actor and producer whose critically acclaimed performance as Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer earned him an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA Award. His newest project, The Sympathizer, an HBO miniseries based on the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, has Downey Jr. taking on multiple roles simultaneously.

Born into a family of filmmakers, Downey Jr. began acting as a child actor in his father's independent films, then entered mainstream Hollywood in the 1980s. His portrayal of the legendary Charlie Chaplin in the 1992 biopic Chaplin earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. After a period of personal struggles with substance abuse, Downey conquered his addiction, dedicated himself to sobriety, and made a remarkable professional resurgence. His starring roles as Tony Stark/Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in the action-adventure Sherlock Holmes, and in the action comedy Tropic Thunder catapulted him to global stardom. To date, Downey has appeared in over 70 movies, which have grossed over $14 billion, making Downey one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. 

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Lucy

The skills it takes to get rich are drastically different from the skills it takes to stay rich. Few understand this phenomenon more than Morgan Housel. He's identified unique lessons about wealth, happiness, and money by studying the world's richest families and learning what they did to build their wealth and just how quickly they squandered it all.
In this conversation, Shane and Housel discuss various aspects of risk-taking, wealth accumulation, and financial independence. Morgan explains the importance of understanding personal financial goals and the dangers of social comparison, lets everyone in on his personal financial “mistake” that instantly made him sleep better at night, and why the poorest people in the world disproportionately play the lottery—and why it makes sense that they do. They also touch on the influence of upbringing on financial behaviors, the difference between being rich and wealthy, and the critical role of compounding in financial success. Of course, we can’t have a writer as good as Morgan Housel on the podcast and not ask him about his process, so Housel concludes with insights into storytelling, his writing processes, and the importance of leading by example in teaching financial values to children.
Morgan Housel is a partner at Collaborative Fund. Previously, he was an analyst at The Motley Fool. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and was selected by the Columbia Journalism Review for the Best Business Writing anthology. He's the author of two books: The Psychology of Money and Same as Ever.
Watch the episode on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/theknowledgeproject/videos⁠

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(00:00) Intro

(04:46) Risk and income

(07:40) On luck and skill

(10:10) Buffett's secret strategy

(12:28) The one trait you need to build wealth

(16:20) Housel's capital allocation strategy

(16:48) Index funds, explained

(20:59) Expectations and moving goalposts

(22:17) Your house: asset or liability?

(27:39) Money lies we believe

(32:12) How to avoid status games

(35:04) Money rules from parents

(40:15) Rich vs. wealthy

(41:46) Housel's influential role models

(42:48) Why are rich people miserable?

(45:59) How success sows the seeds of average performance

(49:50) On risk

(50:59) Making money, spending money, saving money

(52:50) How the Vanderbilt's squandered their wealth

(1:04:11) How to manage your expectations

(01:06:26) How to talk to kids about money

(01:09:52) The biggest risk to capitalism

(01:13:56) The magic of compounding

(01:16:18) How Morgan reads

(01:22:42) How to tell the best story

(01:24:42) How Morgan writes

(01:35:42) Parting wisdom and thoughts on success

• Business is sales; you are always selling
• A person can have the greatest idea in the world, but if that person cannot convince enough other people about it, then it doesn’t matter 
• Sell the improvement that your products make and sell the better future that your customers will receive if they use your product 
• Advertising must promise a benefit to the customer 
• Repetition is persuasive
• Entrepreneurs must learn how to tell a story about their business because that is how money works; money flows as a function of the story
• Start your presentation with the problem; do not start with the product 
• Most business communicators lose sight of the fact that their audiences want to be informed and entertained 
• Identify what you are most passionate about, and then share that belief with your audience   

What I learned from reading The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo 

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Come build relationships at the Founders Conference on July 29th-July 31st in Scotts Valley, California

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Learning from history is a form of leverage. —Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the super power to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand.

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders

You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. 

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

 A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: 

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) 

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here. 

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If you want me to speak at your company go here. 

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(1:00) You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology—not the other way around.  —Steve Jobs in 1997

(6:00) Why should I care = What does this do for me?

(6:00) The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy.  (Founders #348)

(7:00) Easy to understand, easy to spread.

(8:00) An American Saga: Juan Trippe and His Pan Am Empire by Robert Daley 

(8:00) The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

(9:00)  love how crystal clear this value proposition is. Instead of 3 days driving on dangerous road, it’s 1.5 hours by air. That’s a 48x improvement in time savings. This allows the company to work so much faster. The best B2B companies save businesses time.

(10:00) Great Advertising Founders Episodes:

Albert Lasker (Founders #206)

Claude Hopkins (Founders #170 and #207)

David Ogilvy (Founders #82, 89, 169, 189, 306, 343) 

(12:00) Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatever. (That is the most important sentence in this book. Read it again.) — Ogilvy on Advertising

(13:00) Repeat, repeat, repeat. Human nature has a flaw. We forget that we forget.

(19:00) Start with the problem. Do not start talking about your product before you describe the problem your product solves.

(23:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)

(27:00) Being so well known has advantages of scale—what you might call an informational advantage.

Psychologists use the term social proof. We are all influenced-subconsciously and, to some extent, consciously-by what we see others do and approve.

Therefore, if everybody's buying something, we think it's better.

We don't like to be the one guy who's out of step.

The social proof phenomenon, which comes right out of psychology, gives huge advantages to scale.

—  the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger (Founders #329)

(29:00) Marketing is theatre.

(32:00) Belief is irresistible. — Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.  (Founders #186)

(35:00) I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.

And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

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If you want me to speak at your company go here. 

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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

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

• Bitcoin is a technology for human empowerment; it enables better living through technology  
• You can have 100 opinions about everything that is wrong with the world, or you can focus on one thing and try to improve it; doing the latter may actually have an impact on upgrading the world 
• The solution to entrenched, systemic problems is the introduction of a new idea that goes viral 
• You change the world with elegant, diplomatic innovation, and not with hostile, full-frontal attacks 
• There is serious dysfunction all over the world: the answer is not to side with one party or politician against the other; the solution is to spread the Orange Wave
• “Satoshi created a way. Satoshi gave it away. Satoshi went away.” – Michael Saylor   
• The more you know about economics and ethics, the more conservative and considerate you become about making changes to the protocol 
• You must consider the second-order effects and unintended consequences of implementing change 
• The focus should be on getting every powerful entity on earth to adopt bitcoin and converting potential enemies into friends
• There is an explosion in global consensus that Bitcoin is an idea whose time has come 
• “Bitcoin is the most successful monetary protocol in the history of the world. It has gone from zero to $1.4 trillion in fifteen years. It looks like it’s on the path to go to $14 trillion, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t go to $140 trillion.” – Michael Saylor 

“I’m quite the optimist, I actually think that Bitcoin is going to succeed, it is succeeding, it’s succeeding as fast as it could reasonably succeed, and we ought to try to avoid the tendency to F with it.”
— Michael Saylor

Michael Saylor is the CEO of MicroStrategy. In this interview, we discuss ossification, user rights, sovereignty, funding Bitcoin development, the political war over digital asset regulation, and the sly roundabout revolution.

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WBD817 - Show Notes

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George Washington is one of the most celebrated and beloved leaders of all time. What was it about Washington that made him such an effective leader? On this episode, we explore the making of George Washington: How he rose from relatively mundane origins to become the head of the American revolution.