Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· David Senra, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah, now that you say that, I haven't had any, like, Eye of Sauron moments with you in quite a while. You've kind of fixed that. I heard Ari Emanuel on your podcast say something that I thought was, like, actually really smart, where he's like... His idea of, especially when he's trying to do a deal, he, like, overcommunicates. And I think a lot of that is, like, the problems... Like, I didn't understand that about you because I had never worked with you before, and then I was like, "I don't get it." Like, "What's going on here?" And then other people that knew you explained that, and then I'm like, "Oh, like, I'm having an issue..." And we've never even had an argument or a fight. I mean, one thing that I love about it is, like, we worked together for years, and we never had paper anything. We never had a contract. We just said, "Hey, this is what the agreement is." We shook hands, and like, we did what we were supposed to do up until the very... It was just, like, exactly how I want to... [00:00:00] S0: Yeah.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: I don't want to have to deal with people where there's, like, a bunch of contracts. I want to know it's like, you gave me your word, I gave you mine, and then this is what we're going to do, and we'll figure it out. But I think what was happening there is just, like, there's all this, like, unsaid stuff that you think we are looking at in the same way. And yet if we just said, "Oh wait, this is how I'm thinking about this thing, and this is how I'm thinking about that thing." And essentially just overcommunicate as much as possible with the people that are important to you, because then you're not going to have...there’s no unspoken assumption, you know? And then if you let it sit there too long, then you have another unspoken assumption on top of that one. Then things can get, like, really, really weird.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: I think a lot about leadership because ultimately, my main job is to back people with LP dollars, lots of them, that have been entrusted to me as a fiduciary, into companies led by these people that we're backing, that are usually pretty early in their company-building journey. So, mostly, you're largely backing the person and the team versus the mature business story. And pretty important that that person's a good leader. And I think one of the things I underestimated about great leaders that... Ravi Gupta is another person that I would list, and people that have really impacted me. At one point, I called everyone I knew. I was like, "Define good leader. I'm going to do a survey." And Ravi gave my favorite answer. He was like, "It's not hard. Like, a great leader is someone that other people want to follow." That's it. And everyone else had given much more ornate definitions, and Ravi's was my favorite. And what I've learned about what is shared in common amongst people that others want to follow, one of the big ones is that they are hyper-communicative with those people. And they're consistent, and they lead from the front. They take risk, they take arrows for the team, they communicate like crazy with the team. If something's changing, they overcommunicate it, you know? They're honest. Like, all these things add up to someone that people want to follow. And I think I was quite bad on that dimension for a long time, not because I was trying to be bad, just because I was so excitable. I am so excitable. Like, when I find something new and interesting, I just cannot get enough. But very often that means I'm billy-goating up ahead of the pack and forgetting that, oh wait, there are all these people that I want to do this with. I don't want to just do this alone. So, that's been a big lesson for me that has taken a while to learn, but yet another thing to credit Sam with.
· David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Some of the best leaders, like when you see in company buildings, like history's greatest entrepreneurs, really think of them as, like, they're teachers, and then they understand the need to repeat, repeat, repeat. I always say repetition is persuasive. You gave me that great Catholic saying where it's like, "Repetition doesn't spoil the prayer." So, I think of, like, Jim Sinegal, founder of Costco. He has this great line in the book, this biography of his mentor, this guy named Sol Price, who basically influenced... He's, like, the most influential retailer of all time. Jim Sinegal was mentored by him, Sam Walton took more ideas from him than anybody, Bernie Marcus got the idea for doing Home Depot from Sol Price, Jeff Bezos took ideas from Sol Price. Like, it's just incredible how influential this guy was, and most people don't know who he is. And in that book, he says that if you're not spending 90% of your time teaching, you're not doing your job as the leader of the company. And what it is, is like, it means teaching what our philosophy is, what is our purpose, what we do, how we do it, why we're doing it, and you just repeat it over and over again. I just did this episode called "How Elon Works," which is, I think, the most downloaded episode of Founders ever. Like, it's just nuts. And what I was shocked by, you don't think of Elon as a... he's definitely a singular character. There's nobody else like him that I've found, living or dead. There's usually some kind of historical equivalent of anybody. I haven't found a historical equivalent of him. And you would think, "Oh, he's working on, like, seven different companies at a time, he can't possibly be like this." And he was mentioning, like, that algorithm, that four-part algorithm he had that he uses in all his companies. He's like, "I say it so much, I repeat it so much, that you'll be in a meeting, and my executives will be mouthing the words along with me. They know what I'm about to say." And I think that has to do with, like, overcommunication. It's like, "We are going to be on the same page. I'm not worried that you hear this for the 10th time, I'm worried that you're not understanding where we're going, or how we're going to do it." And so I think about that a ton. Like, repeat, repeat, repeat.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah, the joy of that sort of thing and that sort of leader, my favorite... you have all these great maxims. My favorite maxim, pretty much the only one we use in my business with my team, is "The reward for great work is more work." And I find that saying that maxim to the right person, like the kind of person I want to spend time with, their eyes go wide and they understand it immediately, that the reward for great work is not money, power, fame. It is the privilege to get to do more of this thing that I love doing. The problem with coming up with good terms for this stuff, we use this term "life's work," is that immediately everyone else just starts saying it, and it ceases to have any meaning, because, like, now every goddamn meeting I'm in is like, "I'm doing my life's work." And my experience is that almost nobody is doing their life's work. Even a lot of great founders, I would say, it's not their life's work. I love the fact that Thomas Jefferson, on his tombstone, has three things that describe his life, but one of them is not that he was the President of the United States. It was, you know, author of the Declaration of Independence, founder of the University of Virginia, not President. And I think that's so interesting. And so I think a lot about like, is this thing this person is doing going to be on their tombstone? And usually the answer is no. And the reason I like this concept of life's work so much, which I would define as a lifelong quest to build something for others that expresses who you are. All three parts are really important...
· David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Say that one more time?