Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: I also think you're providing people with a sort of set of ingredients, maybe, through these episodes and conversations, but that it's important that people then go make their own recipe. You shouldn't just want to live like person XYZ. A lot of people you cover have the same pitfalls in their lives, and one might be tempted to think those pitfalls are just inevitable byproducts of success, but I hate that kind of thinking. I think, screw base rates. I never care what the base rate is. The most interesting stuff is outliers, by definition. So, I don't care what happened to everybody else. I don't care if there's common pitfalls. I think it's important that people make their own recipe from the ingredients that you've offered them from all these amazing and interesting lives that you've studied. And you're just doing that for yourself. Like, that's been the search.
· David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: I think it is for myself. You are interested in other people, frankly, in a way that I am not. And I've seen, it's very real, and it happens every time we're with other people together. I'm like, "Oh, he actually wants to know," whereas I am on this search of like, "How the hell do I not have a terrible life?" This is why I think the skillset that gets you to where you are, like, so many people plateau, and I'm not interested in plateauing. I'm not interested in mailing it in. I'm interested in... I want to get to an end in my life. I don't want to tap dance on a giant reservoir of potential. I want, like, "There was nothing more that I could've possibly done with my skillset and everything else." I want to figure out how to get the most out of that. And there's something you just said about, like, there's a line in this Bruce Springsteen autobiography where he's like, "People don't come to rock shows, or to concerts rather, to learn. They come to remind them, for you to remind them of stuff they already know is true." And I think, yeah, you're going to learn, like, there's obviously creative ideas on how to build a company in a 400-page biography of somebody. But what you're going to realize is just that there's a lot of stuff that you already know and you know is true and either you haven't applied it, or you forgot it, or you did it for a little bit and you need a reminder. This is why me and you always describe Founders like it's church. It's church for entrepreneurs.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: Well, in that church, I think the animating interesting question is… you read these stories, all of which go back to my idea of originality, hardship, transformation, you know, best story wins. That originality is you're inspiring people to wonder, "What's my thing?" Everyone's got something. I guarantee it. It's my favorite thing to search for in conversation, especially if someone's not yet doing it, which is kind of the same, the same search for unrealized potential or something. Everyone has a thing that, for whatever set of reasons, their life experiences, how they're wired, their naturally endowed gifts. And searching for that thing is really interesting and really hard. And I think that's what Founders continues to do for me, is show me examples of people that went to the trouble to find their thing and then, once they found it, fostered it the rest of their life. And again, once you find your thing, the second thing is hardship. It's not supposed to be easy. Nothing meaningful is easy, and that's fine. And then once you learn that, I think that's when it gets really fun. I always have this feeling that the second something just feels easy, and I'm kind of going through the motions, I get really uncomfortable and want to try to push myself in in some new way. But I think that's what Founders does so well, is it shows... it's what, back to the very beginning of our relationship and why I sent that tweet out, and why we talked to each other for an hour the first time we talked. It's because it was so unique, and so different, and inspiring. So, I think it's a powerful thing to do for people.
· David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: I think when I say, "What is my organizing principle?" It's like, I want to understand things, or I want to understand about things. I want to understand people, and to understand people, you have to go deep and, like… where were you born? What was going on? What was this experience like? You have to just spend a lot of time asking them questions and having these long, deep conversations. And I don't think... I mean, there's a handful of people that I feel I truly know. It takes a long time. It takes at least 100 hours of conversation on the low end.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: You mentioned, you said, "organizing principle," which I think that's correct. Just to push, because this can now be something we talk about for the next couple of years, which is probably how long it'll take to articulate. That's different than, "What is your principle for invention?" So back to the idea of inventing on principle. The principle should be something that when you see it violated, it is your obligation to go correct it, and that that correction is an act of service for other people, not for yourself. It's not about you. And that's what makes the idea so powerful. I agree that that's your organizing principle. That's the thing behind why you're doing what you're doing. It will be fun to try to pin down what the principle is for invention because that's what you're doing. You're making new things, which is the most fun and rewarding experience of a lifetime. And I remember the opening quote in this compilation of his life's writing by Joseph Campbell that was done by his niece or something. The little opening quote in the book is, "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are," and the people that make things that are the most interesting, those things are a reflection of themselves. That's the most sustainable form of creation. If you can sort of spill yourself onto the thing you're making, which benefits others, the thing being of service to other people in some way, I think that's the thing that we're... actually, I think that's what we're all after. I think what we all want is to participate in the act of creation in a small way, that reflects the act of creation going on at a grand scale. And to have that experience of, in so doing, by pouring oneself out into the thing, and then having the thing be of service to others, that's an amazing feeling. And it's hard to get going, but once you do… I don't know anybody, I've never met anybody had that experience and gone back. Not one. And it's because I think it's the thing that we're all after, and that's what you're doing too with this show.
· David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: I think one of the biggest things I want to avoid is finding the thing, doing the thing, being great at the thing, and then something you do causes that to stop. Where like, I'm kind of obsessed with the sustained success. I don't want to have this huge spike, I don't want to flame out. I'd rather just do the slow build decade after decade, get better, and keep doing it. This is why essentially I read fiction and I read biography. That's basically what I read, and the biography part is just like, "Okay. What happens after they got what they wanted?" And the conversations I've been having, a lot of these I've been having on camera, but after, off camera – I'm always asking because most of these people are older and more experienced and obviously more successful, smarter, and everything else, I’m just like, "What do I have to worry about? What am I not seeing that could cause me to stop? I like what I'm doing. I love it. What am I doing that would cause it to, for me to not be able to do that?" And there's interesting human questions about this.