Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: It’s a beautiful one. [00:00:00] S1: I go back to that one all the time and the notes that he says in there. And one of the things that I think about all the time – which again, I'm not an investor, but I want, like, access, and I want deep relationships with people, very high-quality people, and it's just like, he's like, "People are power law, and the best ones change everything." And so once you actually see that, you are very, almost, like, ruthless with who you let have access to you. And I think I've gotten very ruthless and continue to be ruthless because of, like, what I'm kind of chasing after. But I had no followers on Twitter at all, and just like tweeting into the oblivion. Like, no one gave a shit what I'm doing, and one day... this is why it's one of the first things that I think speaks volumes about you and how you actually live your life, and, like, I think you've now leaned into this more over the last four years that we've been talking, and I see a bunch of notifications on Twitter. I'm like, "I don't get notifications on Twitter." Like, "What is this?" The only time, there used to be a same guy that had my name, and he was a Brazilian MMA fighter, so when he would fight... [00:00:00] S0: Oh, that's funny.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: Oh, that's funny. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. It's like-- So, but all the tweets were in Portuguese, so I don't know what they're talking about. It's just not about my podcast. And I almost remember verbatim, I should go and find, see how much I get the text inside the tweet correct, but you were like, "I never find new podcasts to listen to," and, you know, Invest Like the Best. For people who don't know, it's just like, insanely, one of the most insanely valuable audiences in the world. If you could sketch out the average net worth of listeners to this, it's just, like, mind-boggling, and we're about to see that in action with this story. And you're like, "I never find new podcasts to listen to. I think David Senra's Founders Podcast is excellent. You should listen to it." And you linked to an episode on Estee Lauder, which is one of my favorite ones. [00:00:00] S0: I loved that episode, yeah. [00:00:00] S1: And you send me a link, and so at the time, it was a paywalled podcast because I couldn't figure out the business model because I had no listeners. And, you know, back then, I would get an email every time you had a new subscriber. There was not many emails coming in every day. I could count them on two hands, you know? And I was like, first thing I did, well, one, the next day, I log into my email, and it's just… [00:00:00] S0: A wall.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: A wall. [00:00:00] S1: Whoosh, all the way down. Just like, new, new, new, new, new, new. But that is such an unusual instinct. If I'm being honest, like, I don't think I would have done that. What the hell was going on there? You didn't see it as a competition. What was happening?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: The first thing that flashes through my head is, you know, in my show, I always ask people the same question at the end of, "What's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you?" Some person on Twitter or something went and compiled every answer, there's 500 answers or whatever, and categorized them and, like, made a pie chart of what people say. And something like two-thirds of the answer to this question were the same, which was the kindest thing was some person made a bet on me, the person answering the question, before I deserved it. Or, like, they saw something in me that maybe I didn't even see in myself. They bet on me before others would. And that was the answer to the kindest thing. And when I was 26, I became very interested in all of the... I studied philosophy early in life and I've always been interested in that stuff. But I became really interested in the religious texts, like all the world's religious texts. And I was kind of in a weird spot in life. I kind of hadn't found anything to do yet. I wasn't that good at anything and I was searching. I was always searching for, like, "What the hell should I do? What the hell is the point of all this?" And I found this passage in the Upanishads, which, as a book, is probably the most important book to me. And the Upanishads is this collection of stories from many of thousands of years ago that were passed down orally through generations and then eventually written down. And I remember getting stuck on this one passage that literally felt like someone hit me in the face with a hammer. And there's a line in this passage that basically says something like, "Those who feed the hungry protect me. Those who don't are consumed by me." And it just felt like there was a moment of understanding that happened in my head. But up until that point, from, you know, middle of teenage, I was this nice, sweet boy, and then I got kind of hardened and went through a period of life that was tough. And it woke me up that the whole point of this is to help other people. That's it. That's the entire point of this existence. And from that point forward, that's been my worldview. And so I think it's interesting, like, that's probably the thing that most informed my worldview.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
And then the answer to this question that I love to ask is predominantly, "Someone bet on me." And like I told you before, the thing I love more than anything is, like, seeing the potential in somebody before everyone else and then helping the world see what I see. Like, if I can do one thing over and over and over again the rest of my life, it would be audition people to see if there's something that I see that no one else sees and then help foster that and show everyone else what I think I see in a way that can be impactful in that person's life, which is what you described with our experience together. [00:00:00] S1: I think in the probably hundreds, I don't know, thousand conversations we've had, I don't think you've ever described it in such an easy-to-understand, impactful way like you just did, where it's just like, the whole point of this whole thing is just to help other people. [00:00:00] S0: You said before you were chasing something, right? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· David Senra, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: I'm not chasing anything. I think it might be an interesting conversation today to talk about... or, you know, how we view what we're doing in slightly different ways. But I have no goals. I'm not a goals person. I've written essays about not having goals. The most read thing I ever wrote, back when I used to do a lot of writing, was about... it was called The Growth Without Goals. And so, I'm not chasing any particular thing. I don't have a big, hairy, audacious goal or something like this. I don't want to put someone on Mars like Elon might. And not to say that that's a bad thing. I think some people are goal-oriented and that's awesome. But that's not me. And I guess I've realized that if I have a goal in the abstract sense, it's just this thing, over and over and over again. There's this amazing talk that I recommend everyone watch called Inventing on Principle. Have you seen this? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.