Two quick things before we jump into this episode on Joseph DeVine.
I just finished listening to this entire episode.
It is a wild episode.
Imagine building your business based on a handful of clients.
The only thing that your business only is a handful of clients,
but those clients are the wealthiest, some of the wealthiest people in the world.
That is the episode that you're about to hear.
Before we jump into that, two quick things.
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So that's it. Let's jump into this episode.
I just finished listening to it.
I loved it. I hope you do too.
Joseph DeVine noticed that Europe had plenty of art and America had plenty of money.
And his entire astonishing career was the product of that one simple observation.
The first thing I wanted to mention was the fact that he was a very famous American
person.
Beginning in 1886 when he was 17, he was professionally journeying between Europe
where he stocked up on merchandise and America where he sold that merchandise.
There was almost nothing DeVine wouldn't do for his important clients.
These immensely rich Americans were shy and suspicious of casual contacts
DeVine provided them with an entrance to the great country homes of the European
nobility.
It was just a coincidence, a fabricated coincidence, which you and I will talk about a few times
today that DeVine always did.
There's nothing as you'll see as we go through this.
There's nothing in this guy's life and career that was a coincidence.
So he'd provide rich Americans entrance into these country homes of European nobility.
These homes were staff were full of ancestral portraits that were for sale.
DeVine also wrangled hotel accommodations and passage on sold out ships for his clients.
He got his clients' houses and he provided architects to build them houses.
And then he saw to it that the architects planned the interiors of these houses
with wall space that demanded plenty of pictures.
He even selected brydes for some of his clients.
These selections of potential brydes had to meet the same refined standard that governed his choice
of houses for his clients, which meant a bry that was receptive to collecting expensive art.
DeVine was not a patient man.
He had caloric imperialism and he felt that the world must stop while he got what he wanted.
He had a convulsive drive, a boundless and explosive fervor, and a reckless contempt for works of art
handled by rival dealers.
That's a funny way to say that he was extremely, extremely competitive.
One time in New York, a millionaire collector who was so undisciplined that he was thinking of buying
a 16th century Italian painting from another art dealer asked DeVine to come to his mansion on Fifth Avenue
to take a look at it.
The prospective buyer watched DeVine's face closely and he saw his nostrils quiver.
I sniff fresh paint said DeVine.
DeVine's remarks about other people's pictures sometimes resulted in lawsuits that lasted for years,
cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars and brought him into courts in New York and London and Paris.
In his business, DeVine had to bear that the temperaments of the men that he dealt with were
the direct opposite of his own. The great American millionaires of the DeVine error were slow speaking
and slow thinking and cautious and secretive and deliberate. They were the emperors of oil and steel,
of department stores and railroads and newspapers, of stocks and bonds, of utilities and banking,
and these men had trained themselves to talk slowly and pause before each word.
DeVine dealt constantly with cryptic men like JP Morgan and Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon.
That was an excerpt from this long form two-part New Yorker profile that I'm going to talk to you about
today. It's called The Days of DeVine, a legendary art dealer and his clients and is written by
SN Burnham all the way back in 1951. And before I jump back into the profile, I want to tell you how
this came on my radar a few months ago when I was researching and reading about Larry Gagosian,
which is the billionaire art dealer, that was episode 325. I mentioned this theme that seems to
appear over and over again that there's always a blueprint. And so there's somebody doing something
now and they were heavily influenced or got the idea from somebody that lived a long time before
them. And so Larry Gagosian's alive and operating to this day, but almost a hundred years ago,
Joseph DeVine built a career that Larry used as a blueprint. In fact, in that piece, I'm reading from
episode 325, this is Gagosian, isn't the first to pull this off. He's a big reader and one of his
favorite subjects is the life of Joseph DeVine, the great art dealer who helped assemble the collections
of Andrew Mellon, JP Morgan and other gilded age titans. There are several biographies of DeVine
and Gagosian informed me that he has read them all. And so shortly after that episode came out,
Will England, who's the CEO of Wall-I Capital texted me and he says, hey, just so you know,
Robert, the author Robert Green mentions Joseph DeVine in a bunch of his books like the 48 laws
of power and the 33 strategy for. And so in addition to this two-part New Yorker profile,
there's several highlights from Robert Green talking about how DeVine,
especially that DeVine used to build his business. And by the way, just in case you haven't
listened to it yet, one of my favorite episodes from last year was on Invest Like the Best. It's
Invest Like the Best Number 342. It's actually Will England. The title is a primer on multi-strategy
hedge funds and it just happened to be lucky enough to be there that day that they recorded it.
So I got to spend a few hours with Will and he has two of my favorite traits, intelligence combined
with intensity. And so I want to jump right back into DeVine. The main thing that you and I are
going to talk about today is the fact that with everything is calculated with him, with DeVine,
nothing is accidental. In many cases, he goes out of his way to disguise his cleverness. So I want
to review just a couple of ideas that I found fascinating from that introduction was the fact that,
hey, he built his career really on a combination of two ideas. Right? It's like this guy just noticed,
hey, Europe has plenty of art at the time he's living this late 1800s, early 1900s, right?
When he's building his business, Europe has plenty of art, no money. America has plenty of money.
And I love that line where it's like his entire astonishing career was a product of that simple
observation. So something I thought about as I read that was it's a combination of two of my
favorite ideas. One came from Charlie Munger that I've thought about for years and it's really
what I'm trying to do with Founders Podcasts is hey, find a simple idea and take that idea
seriously. I found that idea when I read Port Charlie's Dominic many, many years ago for the first
time because in that book, Charlie says there's an old two-part rule that often works wonders in
business and science and elsewhere. It is take a simple basic idea and take it very seriously.
And then the second idea that came to mind actually came from the Larry Gagosi in profile and I
have thought about this idea every week and since I've first discovered it and Larry Gagosi
and Prof. Anisekshubin on my mind and influencing my decisions constantly and is that genius has
the fewest moving parts. Joseph D'Vene becomes fabulously wealthy, builds an incredible life and
business off of that simple idea. His business had very few moving parts. It's like hey, I'm going to
buy all this hard to find art in Europe and I'm going to connect that. I'm going to then take it
across the Atlantic Ocean and sell it to the rich robber barons in America. That's his entire
business and everything he does because genius has a fewest moving parts. It allows him to think
about it in ways where if you spread yourself thin or you're working on a million different things,
you're not going to come up with the ideas that he does. So one example of this is that he was a
big believer in practice and so what would happen is first of all, he built his entire freaking business
off of just a handful of clients which obviously if you're if your clients are the richest people in
the world, you don't need that many of them, right? But what would he do is he would study them
intently. He gets to know like their their tastes, their traits, their personality, what's important to him.
And then he would build like these little models of how this person acts or things and he would
explain that to his secretary. And so the day before the he's got let's say he's got an appointment
tomorrow with Andrew Melon or Henry Clay Frick or you know a ton of these people that you and I
have studied have done episodes on all these people. It's really cool. How many people that are
mentioned in this article in this profile that I've done multiple episodes on. But let's say he's
going to meet with them tomorrow, right? The day before he will have literally act out how that
interview is likely to go how that sales process likes to go. He will map out all the strategic
possibilities. He will rehearse it. And then by the time he's in person with the client, it almost
seems like second nature like, oh, this is just for the moment when it's no everything with this guy
is extremely extremely methodical. Another thing that I noticed, which is very fascinating. And so
something I believe wholeheartedly that the enthusiasm that you have for your product is transferable
to other people. And everybody talks to me. He's like, he's he's he's they talk over and over again
about his enthusiasm. The fact that he was fun to be around the fact that he was super excited
about what he was doing. And so it says there was another there was never any doubts in his own mind.
Each picture. So remember, this is written back in 1951. They use the word picture. I think today
you and I would use the word painting. So says there were never any doubts in his mind. Each painting
he had to sell each piece of sculpture was the greatest since the last one and until the next one.
And the reason he was the most successful art dealer all time until Larry Gagosian. I think now
obviously Larry goes and has surpassed him. Obviously, you know, standing on the Gagosian is standing
on the shoulders of giants. One of those giants being Duvine was the fact that he was obsessed.
Duvine was obsessed with scarcity and controlling supply. And so what he would say is he would tell
his clients they could replace the money that they have many times over, but they were acquiring the
irreplaceable when they bought a Duvine. And so let me give you a little summary of this. I'm going
to put this down pick up 48 laws of power. This is what is in the book on this idea of the
importance of scarcity and controlling supply to Duvine's business. The art dealer Joseph Duvine
insisted on making the paintings he sold as scarce and as rare as possible. To keep their
prices elevated and their status high, he bought up entire collections and stored them in his
basement. The paintings that he sold became more than just paintings. They were fetish objects.
Their value was increased by their rarity. He was intent over and over again. He wanted to
control supply. He bought entire collections. He'd pay higher prices than anybody else. And then
he would stimulate demand by saying, Hey, there's only one of these, but there's I got 10 clients
just like you. And if you don't buy this, I'm going to pick up the phone. I'm going to walk down
the street and in a self somebody else, making his clients conscious that whereas he had unique access
to great art, his outlets for it were multiple. He watched their doubts about the prices of the art
evolving into more acute doubts about whether he would let them buy it. So remember that idea
of the importance of controlling supply. It's an idea you and I are going to come back to over and
over again. This was very fascinating. He built up this this massive information network. And so
this is going to be repeated throughout his career as well. So it says, Dauvin received daily
reports from his galleries. So he's got galleries in New York and London and Paris telling them
are telling him what customers had come in, what pictures they had looked at and for how long
and what they said about those pictures from other sources. He got reports on any major collections
being offered for sale. He also got reports from his quote unquote runners. These are people that
he deployed all over Europe to hunt out noblemen on the verge of settling for solvency and a bit of
loose change at the sacrifice of some of their family portraits. These reports might include the
gossip coming from servants who had overheard the head of the state saying to an important dealer
that he might consider parting with a lovely piece if the price was right. Now this is another thing
that I think was unique to the way Dauvin built his business. He wanted to control supply. He
wanted to say, Hey, I have literally the best and rarest pieces of art all over the world. They're
not available anywhere else. And so to do that, he would routinely pay the highest prices far
exceeding what anyone had paid before. And in this bizarre world of capitalism that we're at at
the very the highest end, this actually made the fact that he overpaid made his merchandise more
valuable in the eyes of the buyer. So in negotiating with the heads of noble families, Dauvin usually
won hands down over the other dealers. The brashness of his attacks simply bowled over the dukes
and the barons. He didn't waste any time. He talked prices and he talked big prices. He would
say, This is the greatest thing I ever saw. I will pay the biggest price you ever saw. And no
surprise here to this technique, the dukes and the barons responded warmly. And so they sold only
to him. And he would continue this later on. He dies, I think, in the 1930s. So part of his career
has overlaps with the great depression. And it said depression or no depression. It was Dauvin's
principle to pay the highest conceivable prices. Listen to this. A titled English woman had a family
portrait to sell. Dauvin asked her what she wanted for it. And she meekly said 18,000 pounds.
Dauvin was indignant. What? 18,000 pounds for a picture of this quality. That is ridiculous, my
dear lady. Ridiculous. He began to extol the virtues of the picture as if he were selling it.
And indeed in his mind, right? Instead of buying it, he was already selling it. A kind of
haggle in reverse ensued. Finally, the owner asked him what he thought the picture was worth.
And this is a key insight into Dauvin's thinking. Dauvin, who had already decided what he would
charge some American customer. It would be a price that he could not ask for a picture that had
cost him just mere 18,000 pounds. So he shouted reproachily at her. My dear lady, the very least
you should let that picture go for is 25,000 pounds. Swepped off her feet by his enthusiasm,
again, that word enthusiasm is going to be repeated over and over again by people around Dauvin.
Swepped off her feet by his enthusiasm, the lady capitulated. And so this next story is nuts. And it
just goes into this idea that a lot of people view it's part of human nature. We interpret price
as a signal for quality, right? A shortcut for quality. So he's like, hey, I'm not, you know,
you want to sell this to me for 18,000 pounds? Nope. I'm going to give you 25,000 pounds. That
sounds crazy. But this is why Dauvin had enormous respect for the prices he set on the objects he
bought and sold often his clients tried to maneuver him into a position where he might relax his
high standards. But he always managed to keep them. There was an instance of this kind of maneuvering
in 1934. So he is selling three statues, right? Three busts. He wants to sell them all three of them
to Rockefeller's son. So this is John D Rockefeller, Jr. Okay? So he's like, hey, who's a massive
collector and a huge customer of Dauvin. And so he's like, hey, I'll sell you. Dauvin says,
I will sell you these three busts for a million and a half dollars. Rockefeller's, oh,
that price might be too high. So what does Dauvin do when he's presented with that? He does not
negotiate down. He's like, oh, I want a million and a half. Rockefeller's like, I'll give you a
million. Like Dauvin's like, no, I'm going to give you the bust. Put them up in your house. And I
think it gives him a year, right? So it says, it is a year. So he says a loud Rockefeller,
a year's options on the bust, right? So they are going to remain for a year in the Rockefeller
mansion as non-paying guests. That's hilarious. During that time, Dauvin hoped that the attraction
between Rockefeller, Jr. and the bus would ripen into emotion. That was more intense. And so keep
in mind, this is 1934. Look at this like psychological jiu jitsu that Dauvin is going to do on Rockefeller,
Jr. Right? So a few months later, we're, you know, he's got a year, a few months later, Rockefeller
writes some, uh, a letter. He's like, Hey, I have a counter proposal. I'll buy the bus for a million
dollars, right? Because the depression is on. And most people are feeling the effects of it. And
Rockefeller said, Hey, you know, you might, why, because of the depression, you might welcome
a million in cash. Dauvin's response was that I am not in the stock market. And therefore,
I am immune and not the least bit affected by the depression. Isn't that interesting? I always
love the idea of like the order in which you read things can change your interpretation of it.
And so last week, you and I talked about Texas oil billionaires and Monty Monk Reef was very rich
through the depression. A lot of the Texas oil billionaires because they had no money in the stock
market. And so in the Northeast at the time, everybody's getting destroyed. All of Texas's wealth
is in, you know, coming from the ground. And so they were essentially immune to the effects of
the great depression. We see something very similar here. He's like, I'm not in my entire business
is selling pictures, right? I'm taking European art and selling it to you rich Americans.
I'm not worried about the stock market. And so Dauvin actually turns around like, Oh, since,
since you're trying to go show me, you're hard up on money. And so I will come to your assistance.
Dauvin managed to convey this to get a suggestion that if Rockefeller was in temporary financial
difficulty, he Dauvin was ready to come to his assistance. And so what happens? Okay. So they
says, I want, I want to sell these things to you for these three statues for a million half
dollars. You think that's too high? Take them. Let them in your house for a year, right? That's going
to expire on the 30, the option is going to expire in the 31st of December. You can either buy them.
And I've made it very clear. I'm not budging on the price, right? You can either buy them on December
31st or I have to take them back. So that's again, a very advanced understanding, setting a deadline
of human psychology. And so what happens is the day before the option expires, Rockefeller writes
Dauvin informs him that he's buying all three of them for a million and a half dollars.
And it's this fundamental ability to understand and really focus in on his customers. Because he
said she says the eight or 10 clients. So it's at this part of the story they're talking about the
fact that he put a lot of money into building, built like a gallery slash like house. Very similar
to what Gosey did. This is on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. And he hired great architects and he
had to make it beautiful because his point was like, well, I have eight or 10 big clients, right? These
are the ones most of them are in New York. These are the ones that are going to enter into this building,
the handful of men with whom Dauvin did the major part of his business. These eight or 10 clients
would come into this building to look at the garnered possessions of kings and empires.
And so therefore they must be provided with an environment that would tend to make them conscious
of their right to inherit these possessions. So one interesting thing is you don't need many
customers if the few customers that you have are the richest people in the world, right? He built
his entire business around eight to 10 people. And two, he understood that they were very wealthy.
Most of them came from nothing or if not they did their father came from nothing. And I think
John D. Rockefeller's junior's case, right? But what they lacked is they didn't have prestige,
they didn't have titles, they didn't have no ability, all the things that Europe had an abundance,
but no cash. And so it's like, well, if you buy this, right? You were essentially, if you really
think about what what Dauvin is doing, he's teaching his market, he's teaching his customers that
buying art was also buying upper class status. And maybe the the highest class possible because
these are the former possessions of kings and emperors. And so multiple times it's talked about
the fact that this guy, first of all, insane levels of high agency, sane levels of high levels of
disagreeableness, although he was very nice and and liked, but he wouldn't budge on pricing
whatever case is. But he's also highly competitive and it makes perfect sense because he wanted to
not just be the best in the world, but literally the only person that these people would ever even
think about buying art from. And to constantly teach repetition is persuasive. And so the
constantly teach them that that's why he would say, hey, you know, you have plenty of money,
you can replace that money many, many times over, but you're acquiring something that is irreplaceable.
Another way he would describe that later on is that you are trading the infinite, which is money,
right, with the finite, which is there's only one of these in the world. And what is also interesting,
which Devin also shares in common with Gagosian is the fact that he would essentially, he was the
business, right? He would travel all over the world. He'd go rotate between Paris, New York, and
London and his entire business travels with him. And so when he goes to London, he wants to stay
in the same like if he's in Paris, he stays at the Ritz, he if he's in London, he stays at Clareges,
and he sets up his suite there as like miniature art galleries is the way to think about this. This
is very this is funny. So he sets up his suite there, right? All of his accommodations at all points
on any itinerary anywhere in the world, right? It's going to be transformed into a small scale art
gallery. He invites you over. He may be staying there, but it looks like an art gallery. He ranges
the paintings sculptures in the objects so that his clients and friends could visit him in a proper
setting and possibly take home some of his furnishings. I'm telling you, this is the most one of
the most motivating things for me is the fact that there is always a blueprint that I you get to
study. People like, wow, these people are so ruthlessly efficient and brilliant. And then you're like,
wait a minute. He got that idea from this other person that lived 50 years before I can do the same
thing. And so this is literally happening, right? Whereas like inviting people over to his hotel room
in London. Oh, I love this chair. I love this art. Okay, do you want it? In the goose, this is like,
let's see, this is happening. Let's see, 1920s. So let's say 60, 70 years later in New York City,
Cagosian invites Bernard Arno, Arno. Obviously, the founder of LVMH, I'm actually working on,
I'll give you a sneak peek. I'm working on another episode of him on Bernard Arno. I've been
practicing pronouncing his name. But he invites, Gagosian invites Arno over and Arno just happens
to come. He's like, I like these chairs and go see, it's like, this is at his home and fit on
fit. I have anyone pretty sure. And he's like, Bernard, it's like, I like these chairs. And like,
Gagosian's like, do you want to buy them? And I think they wind up doing a deal right there.
But I just love the fact that, you know, this just repeats over and over again. So let's go back
to this idea that you're enthusiasm, your charisma is transferable to other people. All the people
around him, his clients describe DuVine as an exhilarating companion, right? They said his
enthusiasm. How many times? I'm like, was this 20 pages into this thing? How many times we already
heard the word enthusiasm? His enthusiasm was irrepressible. He engaged in a kind of buffoonery that was
irresistible. Most of his friends were older men and they enjoyed his company partly because he
made them feel young. And so Andrew Mellon's much older than him. And he, he, he summarizes the gift
that DuVine's personality was to his business where he told DuVine to his face, the pictures that
you sell me always look better when you are here. Think about how powerful his charisma had to be
that he could take his aura, right? And transfer it to the picture that you bought from him.
And you're like, in his presence, like, this is amazing. This is a reality distortion field.
This is Steve Jobs, right? Same exact idea behind this. And then he leaves. And he's like, wait a minute,
the picture doesn't look as good when DuVine is not here. And this is not, this is the thing. I
think I have notes later on because I kept thinking about, you know, Charlie Munger's
psychology of human misjudgment that he went over and over again. People think this is like some
Willy Fufu stuff. These are, these are some of the most sophisticated entrepreneurs
to ever live. And it works on them. That should tell you that it's deeply embedded in our human
nature, which I'll get to later on. I want to give you an example of one of my favorite
maxims comes from Ted Turner. Actually came from Ted Turner's dad early to bed early to rise work
like hell and advertise. And so what would happen is because DuVine, there was all these unintended
positive externalities that came from DuVine constantly outbiting everybody and, you know,
his hellbent on controlling supplies. One way you have to do that is sometimes you have to pay
more than you think it's worth. And so he was paying crazy prices. They were so crazy that they
were covered. They were newsworthy. So he's got essentially unlimited free advertising because he
buys, let's say he spends, I'm going to give you like three examples to spread throughout the 1920s
that are covered in a Harold Tribune, which essentially they're, they're, they function as free
advertising for him. And so this is like an example. Sir Joseph DuVine, the art dealer, has bought a
ram brand for $410,000, $410,000 in 1926. One of the highest prices ever paid. And then
listen to this next line. I interrupted the sentence for you. Listen to this. So
highest price ever paid. And this, this ram brand had been in the possession of the family for 200
years. High price ever paid and unbelievably scarce. The opportunity to buy this comes up only
once ever 200 years. Do you want to act? And if you act, you have to act now. Another example,
Sir Joseph DuVine, the international art dealer, bought in London yesterday the entire collection.
He does this all the time. Like he did. He'll buy, you know, one off pieces if they're the best
or whatever. He'll buy entire collections and then he'll just throw with them. Again, controlling
supply. The entire collection of 120 Italian of the old masters belonging to this very wealthy European
or noble European, this entire collection will be brought to New York. The purchase price was
$3 million in 1927. And then not only did his, when he bought merchandise and supply, it was covered.
But when he sold, it was also covered. This is again, early to bed, early rise work like hell and
advertise Andrew Mellon. This is the the son of Judge Mellon who is the patriarch of the Mellon
family dynasty. But at this time, now you see very wealthy. He's also the secretary of the treasury
of the United States. And so now you have DuVine's name associated with literally the best people in
the world. Now they're rich. Just in some cases, they held the highest, like some of the highest
government positions. So this is Andrew Mellon, the secretary of treasury of the United States has
purchased from DuVine for $970,000. A painting doesn't even matter what the painting is. Here's
again, the scarcity, the time aspect of it, right? The painting bears, Raphael signature and the date
1508. And so to other people, it felt like he was overpaying. He understood his entire business
only, it only works if he has, if you can control, splining has access to literally the best and the
most desired art of all the world. And so this is an example of what he would do to make sure that he
didn't miss out, right? It's not like, oh, if I don't win this auction, you know, there's a second
thing that's kind of like this. It's like either it's zero sum, one winner, everybody else loses.
The circumstances attending DuVine's purchase of this painting called the Pinky in 1926,
illustrate his tenacity and the fight he made to establish his preeminence among the art dealers
of the world. From the beginning, DuVine felt that his educational mission was twofold. Number one,
to teach millionaire American collectors what the great works of art were and two, to teach them
that they could only get those works of art through him. So number one, I sell the best and I'm the
only one that has them, right? And so he, there's this other rival dealer that's like, hey, I'm going
to bid on pinky too. And so what does DuVine do? DuVine goes to this, this is an art auction that is
being run by Christie's and he goes to the manager of Christie's and he doesn't even show up, he
doesn't have to show up for the bidding. He just tells the guy's like, I have an unlimited bid.
Whatever your highest bid is, I will pay more. So by default, he has to be the winner. And this
is what he said about this. DuVine admitted that the price he had paid was steep, but he repeated
his cardinal dictum. When you pay high for the priceless, you're getting it cheap. Another saying
of his endlessly repeated to his American clients was you can get all the paintings you want at
$50,000 a piece. That is easy. But to get paintings at a quarter of a million dollars a piece,
that takes doing. And then he would go out of his way to stroke and to encourage FOMO, the fear
of missing out. He offers this deal to Andrew Mellon. Andrew's like, oh, I'm not interested.
The next day, he calls up H.E. Huntington. Huntington built a bunch of railroads. He offers
it to him. Huntington buys. And then once it's, in many cases, once they sell or students wants to
like the hunting tins of our ruins buy, they rarely sell. And so even many decades later, when this
piece is being written, it's still hanging that that painting was still hanging in the Huntington
mansion in California. And even that worked in DuVine's favor because Mellon heard that, oh,
the next day somebody else bought what I said I wasn't interested in. What if I had changed my
mind? Now I can't get it. It's stuck. So then the next time that DuVine has something that he thinks
Mellon is interested in, it causes Mellon to act faster. Mellon did not make the same mistake
again. DuVine offers him a painting by Romney. It is the highest price ever paid for Romney.
DuVine offered it to him and Mellon immediately bought it. Multiple times, it talks about the DuVine
was aiming for Monopoly on purpose. There's a great line where it says Monopoly by Peter Tiel and
Zerda one where he says Monopoly businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated
competitors. This is what it sounds like if you have a Monopoly, there had never before been anyone
like DuVine, the exalted middleman and he practically monopolized his field. 95 of the 115 paintings
in the Mellon collection, which gets donated to the public, which I'll talk about why he did this,
was also a genius move in a little bit. Came two Mellon through DuVine. Mellon,
did a good thing about that. At this point Andrew Mellon, one of the largest art collectors in
the United States, he might not be the largest, but he's on the short list. He might be the fifth,
might be the second, might be the tenth. He certainly, sure as hell, is not the hundredth.
So one of the largest art collectors in America at the time, 95 of the 115 paintings in his
collection came from DuVine. That is he aimed for Monopoly and he hit his target. Another fascinating
thing that I've already mentioned, but it's very obvious when you read about and you start
studying just DuVine, it's like, okay, this guy is super clever. What makes me even more clever,
so talks about that. He enjoyed having the stupid side of his character emphasized in public
dinner parties. He'd bring up his mistakes. Most people, they were kind of embarrassed by their
failures and embarrassed by their mistakes. They would like kite it. They're being ashamed of it.
He wouldn't hide his mistakes. He'd bring them up himself. This is the line, why? Since he enjoyed
having the stupid side of his character emphasized, it constituted a disguise for his cleverness.
That's how you know somebody's even more clever. The fact that they understand that it's clever
to conceal your cleverness. And another thing that clever founders do is they're focused. Listen to
this line that comes a couple pages later. He was interested in practically nothing except his
business. If you think about the layers in which this guy goes, it's impossible to arrive at the
conclusions and come up with the ideas that DuVine had. I'm a huge believer that it is not what
you do, but it is how you do it. There is a ton of art dealers that don't make any money. And there's
a handful, one or two or three that became billionaires. It's not what you do. It's how you do it. And
this idea of crazy focus and just thinking about your business longer and harder than anybody else does,
you're going to get so deep down that curve that you're going to come up with ideas that other
people in your same field that remain permanently superficial will never have. Certain men are in
doubt with the faculty of concentrating on their own affairs to the exclusion of what's going on
elsewhere. DuVine was that kind of man. Going back to this idea of how important it was this
information network that he built up slowly over time, right? Compounds and Value becomes one of
his greatest assets later in his life. How valuable it is is that Henry Clay Frick is one of his
biggest clients, right? And one of the richest people on the planet now. And yet, DuVine is the
expert in his field. So he hears about all the great assets before anybody else does. And so he's
having like a launch in a conversation with Henry Clay Frick. And Frick brings up. He's like,
man, I lost that painting. I was on the trail of a very great painting. It's this thing called
St. John James Park or something like that. And Frick's response or DuVine's response to Frick
was excellent. He goes, Oh, my Mr. Frick, I bought that painting. When you want a great painting,
you must come to me because you know I get the first chance at all of them. Remember, he repeats
this open every again. You can only get the best through me. Ignore these competitors. Come
straight to me. You will get the best every time. And the greatest way to condense and clarify that
idea in my opinion is the line monopoly was his method. Monopoly was his method. And I think all
these ideas work together to help him build his monopoly. The fact that he was focused on it,
he was only interested in his business. There's this line about the not a detail that he paid
attention to. And I think there's a great story that illustrate, you know, monopoly was his method,
DuVine displayed that scrupulous attention to detail that has distinguished the careers of other
other celebrated generals. So obviously something you and I have talked about multiple times with
the most recent on the two weeks ago on the episode of Napoleon's strategies and maxims.
And so an example of that, it goes back to this information network, right? He built relationships
and paid people to give him information. And the reason, and I'm going to actually explain,
I'm going to explain the story first and then we'll go into how and like who are the people
that he paid. But this is the reason why. So he would the way that most people are getting back
and forth between Europe and America at this point, right? It's on these transatlantic ships. So
he becomes friends with all the deck hands on the ships. And he pays them a lot of money. In
many cases, hundreds of dollars, like he'll tip them, you know, hundreds of dollars. And it's way
more than they make. And in return, they make sure because they're setting up and they're deciding
where everybody's going to sit on the deck. And they put, they, what they do because DuVine, DuVine
has built relationships with them, finds out they have value of information, pays them for that
information, pays them for their service in, in like an excessive amount more so than anybody else
is paying them, right? In return, he gets seated and set up next to a bunch of American
millionaires that are going, you know, back and forth through Europe. This is another example of
what I meant. He has all these like fabricated fabricated coincidences. And so here's an example
of that. And so it says, among the American millionaires, the DuVine met through the deck hands,
the deck stewards was Alexander Smith Cochran, who was a, like a carpet baron. So they meet on a
boat that's sailing to Europe. And they just are chatting. Cochran happened to mention that he
would like someday to see the Buckingham Palace and all these other European palaces. DuVine said
casually that he would be delighted to take him through both places. When they got to England,
Cochran found himself strolling through the two palaces. They seemed as accessible to DuVine as
the lobby of a hotel. While he was showing Cochran the royal art, DuVine spoke warmly of Queen Mary
and told Cochran what a high regard he had for her and her taste in art. He never mentioned
that he had things he considered as good as hers in his own galleries. In fact, he never mentioned
his galleries at all. When they parted, Cochran felt a certain obligation to DuVine, a healthy
respect for his connections and a sharp curiosity about why a stranger should be so kind. They met
again in New York and DuVine took him to see the wonderful DuVines hanging in the private houses
of some of his clients, but he did not tell them that they were DuVines. Again, he neglected to
mention his great New York gallery. This display of benevolence went on for three years.
Until finally Cochran could not stand it any longer and broke down, Lord DuVine, I would like to see
some of your things. His back to the wall, that's hilarious. His back to the wall, DuVine took
Cochran to his gallery. He could not spare any paintings. They were all on reserve. See what he just
did there? Sorry, they're scarce, they're rare. I have, you know, listen, I'm the only one who has these,
but they're spoken for. You know, there's a line. This is like Enzo Ferrari. We talked about this
multiple times on three episodes that it ends up right. People like Americans who come to Italy,
rich Americans come to Italy, they tore the Ferrari factories like I must have one. And it's just
like, yeah, of course, you know, maybe next year, maybe six, six months from now, whatever the case
is. And then the American would leave. And Enzo Ferrari's employees would come up to him like,
we have a parking lot full of fun. So for us, why did you do that? And he's like, because
for us must never, they must be desired. They must be desired. DuVines doing the exact same thing.
So you're okay. Listen, I can't spare any paintings. They're all on reserve. But you know what,
I do have these other art objects. See, so there's sculptures. You can buy that Cochran spent
$5 million. So from developing this information network, right, playing that long game,
to might have cost them a couple hundred dollars in tips three years later that turns into a $5 million
sale. That is absolutely nuts. So let's go back. Let's go back to what he was building. Because I
jumped ahead in the story. So this is what he does. He says that he had an unusual spirit of
friendliness. And he let it shine by building relationships with some sometimes people are
directly involved in the art world. Sometimes they're very indirectly. So this is like all the people
that are work like all the staff that work for a lot of these art collectors. So he'd build
relationships with critics with museum directors with restorers. He's going to make one guy very
wealthy. You know, you have very old art. You need somebody that's very delicate, very talented.
They restore it. Architects, decorators and servants. He becomes very generous with the staff and
the servants. And in turn, they would give Duvine all the gossip that they hear when people visit
their home. And so in one case, right, there's a butler that is working in the fifth avenue house of
this one of Duvine's most important clients. Over the course of their relationship, Duvine gives him
$100,000. What is the result? Right? He said, not only this butler, but all these other servants,
they developed a feeling that it was only fair to transmit to their generous nobleman. That's Duvine.
Any information that might interest him. And this is not. So not only is he going to lead to more
sales, he has an understanding of a deeper. So he has a deeper understanding of the person. What's
interesting to them? What's going on in their life? Right? It's going to lead to more sales. But again,
Duvine's one of the most competitive people you're ever going to come across. He wants monopoly. So
that means therefore you cannot buy from other people. So he winds up getting winds up knowing when
rival dealers are going to make appointments with some of his people like Henry Clay Freyak or
Malone or anybody else, right? And he just happens to show up. So it says rival deal when rival
when this layers when rival dealers would show up to offer works of art. They found that they could
never see the client alone whenever they dropped in. Duvine was already there. And so here's a
another example of this idea that you and I talked about a few weeks ago on episode 335 on Brad
Jacobs book How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. Overpay for talent because it's nearly impossible
to overpay for talent. And so Duvine had a conviction that anyone who worked for him higher low
should be compensated in a manner, commiserate with the dignity of the association with him. Right?
I am the best of the world. Everybody associated with me has to be the best and they should be paid
like the best. He finds his main restore. So the people that have to take these very old paintings
and you know spruce them up for a lack of a better word. There is this guy named Stephen Pichetto.
Pichetto was Duvine's main restore. Right? He's moving so much product as Duvine's business grows
so does Pichettos. And this is the end result when Pichetto died in 1949 at the age of 61. He was
himself a wealthy man. Such was the trade as Duvine practiced it that even a restore who worked
for Duvine could leave a fortune. Now a large part of this profile is the founding of something that
is still as available actually to us today. It's the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC
which was established in 1937. You can go there to this day and visit it for free.
Over three million people a year do just that. That is an idea from Joseph Duvine. So I'm actually
going to read the summary about the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC that came that is
in the book 48 laws of power because essentially it describes like okay later in his career Duvine
is running into a problem right. He's got to solve a problem. All the problems that come up in
his life he figures like okay this is just an opportunity that will help me so sell more art.
And so if you really analyze the career of Duvine everything he did was an answer to this
question or to this problem like how can I solve this problem so I can sell more art.
And what he did was genius and its decreation of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
The art dealer Joseph Duvine was once confronted with a terrible problem. The millionaires who had
paid so dearly for Duvine's paintings were running out of wall space and with inheritance taxes
getting even higher it seemed unlikely that they would keep buying. The solution was the National
Gallery of Art in Washington DC which Duvine helped create in 1937 by getting Andrew Mellon
to donate his collection to it. The National Gallery was the perfect front for Duvine.
In one gesture his clients avoided taxes cleared wall space for new purchases and reduced the numbers
of paintings on the market maintaining the upward pressure on their prices. All this while the
donors created the appearance of being public benefactors. That happened in 1937. It goes back to this
these prefabricated coincidences that you see throughout because they weren't coincidences right.
They were very intentional and deliberate of how one that Duvine did throughout his entire career.
But also in how he met Andrew Mellon and then Andrew Mellon becomes one of his biggest clients.
That happened 16 years earlier in 1921. Listen to this from the same book. In 1921 Andrew Mellon
was visiting London and staying in a suite at the Clare Chhotel. Duvine had been targeting him for a
while he wanted him as a client. Duvine booked himself into the suite just below Mellons.
He had arranged. Duvine had also arranged for his valet to befriend Mellons.
Valet Mellons. Valet told Duvines. Valet who then told Duvine that Mellon was about to go down
stairs and ring for the lift. So the elevator right. Seconds later Duvine entered the lift and
behold there was Mellon. How do you do Mr. Mellon said Duvine? Remember how he was just striking up
these conversations on the deck of the boat going back and forth between Europe and America. He's
doing the exact same thing here but now he's doing it in an elevator in a very nice hotel in London.
So he says how do you do Mr. Mellon? Duvine said introducing himself. I'm on my way to the
national gallery to look at some pictures to look some paintings right. How on candy that was
precisely where Mellon was headed and Duvine knew it. And so Duvine was able to accompany him.
He knew Mellon's tastes inside it out because he studies everybody and while the two men
wandered through the museum he dazzled Mellon with his knowledge. Once again quite uncanally they
seemed to have remarkably similar tastes. Mellon was pleasantly surprised. Duvine was charming and
agreeable and clearly had a squizzet taste. That is the beginning of their relationship right. Last
for 20 years until Duvine's death contributes untold revenue to Duvine's business and then also
culminates with the opening and the founding of the national gallery of art in Washington DC.
Absolutely incredible. This guy was absolutely incredible. I want to go back to this idea which
I mentioned earlier in and I found my note. So human nature is constant studying histories like
watching game tape on human nature. These examples are why Charlie Munger spent so much time
speaking about and teaching about the psychology of human misjudgment. And so why did I write that
to myself? I get to this is what I meant earlier. Like these guys, it's not like these these
tendencies in human nature only work on dollars. These are some of the most smartest and most
sophisticated people on the planet. Much smarter and more sophisticated than me by far and yet it
works on them. So that's why I want to know about them. And what am I talking about? So there is
this one of the richest people in America at the time. This guy named S.H. Cress. So he
owned a chain. It builds a giant retail fortune. So retail department stores, you know,
century before Sam Walton. Think about him like that. Okay. And there's another guy that you and
I've talked about in the past, which is Henry Goldman of Goldman Sachs, right? And so he's Henry
Goldman actually loses a site and becomes partially or maybe completely blind. And he decides to sell
off his entire collection of art. And so he goes and offers it first to his contemporaries. I don't
know if they're friends, but you know, Pierre or something like that colleague, Cress. But Goldman
loves to move fast. And so he offers his to Cress and the guy brokering the deal between them says,
Hey, if Cress wants to tell him that he's got to do it in a hurry, it's got to be decided this
afternoon. And Cress is like, Oh, it has to be done today. Like it's he having liquidity problems
as he broke what's going on. And he's like, no, he just wants to get has nothing to do with
insolvency. He just wants to sell this. He wants to do this fast. He's wanting to waste any time.
And so he tells him hold Goldman off. Like, I'm going to think about it. Hold him off. He keeps repeating
hold him off. Hold him off. But as you already know, by now, DuVene does not wait around for anything.
And so once he hears about this, he's like, forget that. I'm not waiting. And he buys the entire
collection immediately. And then this is where what I meant about the psychology of human misjudgment.
Right? So he got Cress gets the offer says, no, wait, wait, let me think about it. DuVene doesn't. He
acts buys it. Now it's the exact same collection. It's the exact same collection. But a collection
that belongs to DeVene was not a collection that belonged to Goldman. Even when it's the same
collection. So you think about this is just the same thing happened with Goseon. Same thing happens
you know, every day, you and I are influenced by brands. Brand is like magic. DuVene is a brand
and therefore can increase the price. It's the same exact thing. I could be offered the same
product. It could be the exact same product. One of them's, you know, random brand name. The other
one say like an apple or something like that. And we it's proven over again. We will pay more for
the brand even it's the exact same thing. And that's exactly what happens here because DuVene buys
the same collection. Doesn't change anything about it. He actually changes like the way it's
presented. Then Gose and shows it to Cress. And he goes around. Remember what Mel and said. These
pictures look better when you're here. He's enthusiastic. He's saying, this is the best this. And this
is the greatest that and look what this is. It's so rare. And something DuVene knew. He says once a
collector had his heart set on a picture, it irritates him to have other people discourage him from
buying it because Cress has a professional advisor saying, you know, this is the exact same thing.
Like this is how crazy these psychological tendencies are. Right. These are like very smart
accomplished people. They have people saying you're not you're acting irrationally. Then instead of
them saying you're right, they get mad at the person that's telling him the actor rationally. And so
what he does. Cress brought the picture and all the others had he brought the pictures directly from
Goldman. He would have saved millions of dollars. That's insane. He would have saved millions of dollars.
But he wouldn't have had the warm feelings of owning a lot of DuVene's. DuVene was a brand. The
exact same collection and Goldman's hands transferred to DuVene. That same exact collection is now
worth millions of millions of dollars more. Where you have one of the most advanced entrepreneurs
of that time willing to pay millions of millions of dollars more because it's now no longer the
Goldman collection. It is a DuVene collection. And this happened over and over again in DuVene's
business. And it still happens today. How did it come about that the great money men of this error
gradually came to accept DuVene's simple, unwirly view that art was more important than money.
DuVene had taught them the idea that art was priceless. And when you pay for the infinite with
the finite, you are indeed getting a bargain. His clients felt better when they paid a lot.
That's something that Munger repeats over and over again in Port Charlie's. I'm an act. In fact,
the price is a signal. High price is signal for high quality. They felt better. They felt better
when they paid a lot. It gave them the assurance of acquiring rarity. A rival dealer of DuVene. So a
lesser dealer had bought a bust for $22,000. The dealer needed money and offered it for $25,000,
thinking that it would tempt his customer into a quick purchase. The customer was turned off.
The modernness of the price was fatal. The modernness of the price was fatal. Find me a better one
he said. DuVene would have asked a quarter of a million dollars and got it. The same thing happened
when another dealer offered a room, so an entire room, all the furniture, all the bus, all the
paintings, right? A dealer offered a room to William Randolph Hearst for $50,000. Hearst
spurned it. DuVene offered it to him later. DuVene offered it to Hearst later for $200,000
and Hearst bought it with gratitude. A dealer tried to sell him a rug for $15,000. He was used to
paying $60,000 for a clock and $100,000 for necklaces and was suspicious of anything that you could
get for a mere $15,000. Get me something better was his response. And DuVene didn't just get his
client something better. He got them the best. DuVene built his entire business around the best.
And that is where I'll leave it. Highly recommend reading both pieces and I'll also link to the 48
laws of power. You'll find all those links down below and they're all available at FoundersPotGas.com.
That is $339 books down 1,000 ago and I'll talk to you again soon. If you think about it, the
episode that you just heard is a great illustration of this quote that is in this book on Charlie
Munger, Port Charlie's Omnack, where it says that there's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book
because just like Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett talk about in that book actually, how much they
read biography so much time they spend reading history and using history, learning from history as
a formal leverage, you know, Larry Gagosian who starts his career, you know, 40 years after Joseph
DuVene dies by his own admission, reads every single biography that he could get his hands on
about Joseph DuVene and essentially patterns his career. They are remarkably similar when you
read about both of them and Gagosian's privately held company is rumored to be doing over a billion
dollars a year in revenue. And so a few weeks ago, when Napoleon told you and I that it is profitable,
this study, the campaigns of the great masters, I think Gagosian would agree, obviously Charlie
Munger and Warren Buffett would agree and most of the people that you and I talk about in the
podcast, they talk over and over again. I've given you a thousand examples like that, but I really
liked what Napoleon said that he thought it was important to read over and over and over again,
not just read once, not just listen to one podcast episode, but read over and over again
the campaigns of the greats. And so what I'm trying to build with Founder's Notes is really an echo
of this idea that Napoleon talked about, that that history must be critically analyzed to discover
why successes were obtained and why defeats were inflicted and that the teaching of strategies built
around history. So I'm going to something that, well first of all, the entire idea from Founder's
Notes came from making Founder's podcasts, right? For years. Since 2018, I've been putting every single
highlight of the books that I read and every single note on the highlights into this app called
Readwise. I've been obsessed with it, I talked about over again, I use it to make the podcasts.
I've said before I couldn't make the podcast without it, that's not true. I could make the
podcast without it. The podcast would be half as good. I don't know, three quarters as good as
it is because of this constant repetition of these ideas. When you hear me in this, in all these
episodes, like, oh, that is like this. And this person thought like this, and oh, this is very
similar to episode 127 or whatever that is. That comes from this constant rereading what Napoleon said,
read over and over again the campaigns of the great masters. And so the very idea to even build a
product around this came because so many people for years were saying, hey, I would love to have
access to your notes and highlights to one access to your notes and highlights how can we do that?
How can I do that? And I didn't know and for years said no, no, no, no, finally reach out to the
Founders for Readwise, the both fans of the podcast. And I was like, hey, I want to build a product where
people can see exactly what I see. So if you sign up at FoundersNotes.com, you will see my entire
notebook. I really do truly believe with every bone of my body is the most valuable notebook in the
world for founders because I don't think anyone else has been as psychopathically obsessed with this
idea of been sitting in a room essentially by myself for eight years, you know, reading hundreds
of thousands of pages and trying to document everything I learn, take that personal curriculum
and externalize it to the world. And that is Founders Podcast. And what I consider Founders Podcast
is Founders Podcast is essentially a free trial, right? For Founders Notes. Founders Notes takes
everything that you and I are learning in the podcast and just takes it to another level.
And so as I'm still in the early days of developing this, I've only been developing for a few months,
I've purposely kept the price lower if you really think about it because it's built only for people
that are already running successful companies. You know, I say it's over and over again, do not
invest in subscription unless you're already running a successful company. The price should be
immaterial to you as far as the value that you get, the price is missing a couple zeros.
Now as I continue to build out different features, obviously the price will go up in the future.
But for now, and obviously if you sign up now, you're locked in the price days the same
you essentially get all the future. You get all the future features. There we go. Future features
for free. I am also doing something for the first time ever, which I mentioned at the beginning,
because I have just a big believer like Michael Jordan said that successful people listen,
those that don't listen don't last long. And I have a bunch of people saying, hey, I would love
a one-time option. So for a limited time, I'm going to test this out. My plan is to make heavy,
heavy investments. I think founders knows can be this giant platform. The way I view it over time,
I think it'll be an ever-increasing giant, valuable curriculum that condenses and clarifies the
collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. I think it's the platform and the business that
will continue to allow me to make and distribute the podcast for free for the rest of my life.
And so I'm not just stopping where it is now, you know, even though I will continue to add my
notes and highlights to it forever because it's embedded in my workflow. Like if you already have
a subscription to founders notes and you already know this, you've had all my notes and highlights
on this, on the episode I just did, way before the episode comes up because I have to use it to
make the episode. It is embedded in my workflow. So that will never stop as long as I'm doing the
podcast, right? And so the ability to read all of my notes, all of my highlights, to search by keyword,
to go to the actual books. You can read it. Some people are doing this every day. I'm getting a bunch
of messages where they're almost like reading it like that morning newspaper. They'll go and pick
a different book every day. They'll read the notes and highlights. Some cases they they wind up buying
the book because they want more context. They go back and relisten to the episode. It's really
fascinating what how people are using it so far. Because again, the way to think about it is just
an ever increasing giant valuable curriculum that condenses and clarifies the collective knowledge of
history's greatest founders. The podcast tries to do that and the magic of the podcast is it does
that when your eyes are busy, right? When you're driving, when you're commuting, when you're working
out, when you're walking, whatever the case is, founders notes this for when your eyes are not busy.
It's this continuation of this again, ever increasing giant valuable curriculum that condenses and
clarifies the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. And so I've already been building
out other features. So what I want to try to do is because I want to maintain, I want to keep investing
more and more time and money into this thing. I'm going to test out something that was requested by a
lot of people, right? So for a limited time, a one time payment option, then I'm going to use that
money that comes in and then reinvest into more features because so right now I have two screens up.
I know you can't see this, but I have two screens. So I have founders notes as is right now, right?
Where you can search your highlights. When you sign up, you have this big box at the top. It's
search highlights. Anything that you can think of a name, an idea, a keyword that goes in there.
Highlight Feed, which is this Morgan Howell'sel of this friend of mine and also the author of
Psychology of Money calls the smart Twitter feed. Actually, he heard me say that and then he started
using it and he said, that is what it is. So the highlight feed essentially like a smart Twitter
feed because it gives you a random, it presents highlights and notes from all of everything that I have
in the database, but in a random order. So I just hit, I just pressed on it and it shows me the
first thing is a highlight note from the autobiography of Christian Jew or the next one is the
autobiography of Sam Zell. Then you have Ed Cappell's autobiography, the founder of Pixar.
Then you have the book I did on Christopher Nolan. Then you have Mark Twain, James Cameron,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Walt Disney, the Dynisee book, the fortunes and misfortunes of the world's
greatest families I did a few months ago. Tiger Woods, James Dyson, Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren
again. This is Warren Buffett, that's Munger. This is a guy that sold his company to Buffett.
This is Van Eaver Bush. It goes on and on. I think you get the idea.
So what that does is I feel the highlight feed is like a prompt for your own thinking.
It's like, okay, there's nothing I really want to search today. I don't really want to, there's
not a specific book I have in mind. Let me see if I can just prompt my own thinking and just scroll
through there and see what comes of mind. You can also do the books. You click on books. That's
pretty obvious. I think it's self-explanatory. It's going to have all the books by the title.
Some of them have, you know, handful of highlights. Some have a bunch. You can usually take five,
10 minutes at the most to read all my notes and highlights on a specific book. Now, the other
screen I have up is like I just said, I'm not stopping there. And so the other screen I have up
is a feature that I've been testing for a while where it's a chat interface. So instead of
searching by keywords, you just say like today what I was searching, it's like, because I've been
testing it now. So tell me about Edmund Land. Why was he important? What did he do? And the
connections that it makes, it pulled 50 different highlights. Oh, I forgot to mention that the transcripts
for every single episode. It's also, you can search through that as well, which is incredible. But it
pulled 50 different highlights, right? To answer this question, then it gives me like 10, 9 to 10
bullet points. And then so I'm using it to, as I do research for the podcast, constantly testing it.
But I'm also like asking questions like, hey, I'm having trouble deciding if I should sell my
company or not. What advice do you have that'll help me make this decision? Then it gives you,
it pull, gives you a bunch of interesting ideas. And then I said, hey, have any of history's greatest
founders or credit selling their company? And then it continues on pulling and then synthesizing
dozens of highlights and gives you an idea of the different perspectives. So in this case, it
gives me an idea from Michael Bloomberg, from Ted Turner, from the founder of Trader Joe's,
from Henry Singleton, from Jack Maugh, from Warren Buffett, all that from Me just asking, hey,
have any of history's greatest founders or credit selling their company? And if you used any of
these new AI platforms, you know, it's like an idiot savant, you know, maybe half the time it's
an idiot and the other half the time it's a savant. But this is only going to get better and
better and even right right now and its current incarnations. It's already making connections that
I even missed. So I'm testing this every day. It'll be out to every single person has a subscription
for two founders notes relatively soon, you know, maybe a few weeks, something like that. But I'm
not stopping there. I really want to organize around this idea that this is an ever-increasing,
giant, valuable curriculum that condenses and clarifies the collective knowledge of history's
greatest founders. And so I'm already building out resources where maybe you don't want to search
at all. This is something I want. So everything I'm describing is something I want. So I was like, hey,
I want a collection of ideas organized by theme across every book and episode. So instead of
learning by person, right, or me searching for something or even having a chat interface,
give me one page, two pages, three pages of how all of history's greatest founders thought
about topics like marketing, recruiting, distribution, management. How did they hire? How did they
fire? This is going to take an unbelievably long time to do. It's going to require a lot of
investment. I'm obviously going to hire several people to help me with this. But I wanted to give you
a little sneak peek because again, I always think about one, I've already demonstrated over and
over again, like the collective intelligence that is in for like the audience of the people
listening to founders is incredible. And so that advantage that I have of being able to tap into
that becomes your advantage because then it's just like positive feedback. I get great ideas and
then I apply them to founders notes and you benefit as well. So hopefully that made sense. I swear.
I was like, I'm going to sit down, instead of talking about this for like 30 minutes or whatever,
I don't even know how long I've been talking. I know sometimes I at the end of episodes, I go,
you know, I kind of go off the rails a little bit. I swear, I was like, I'm going to sit down and
you know, two minutes just tell them, hey, you have a lifetime option now or one time option now.
If you want this, you know, here's how to get it really simple. And then I wind up going, I just,
I'm fascinated by this stuff. I'm just fascinating. I was kind of like a skeptic a little bit. And
then I started the like an AI skeptic. And then I realized, oh, no, like the connections that the
benefit that I have, I have this weird thing where, you know, where it's like because I'm so
meshed in all of this and I read and reread every day and I have for almost eight years,
these connections just come tumbling out of my mouth. You hear it. If I go on other people's
podcasts, you hear it on this podcast, you hear it. If you've ever spoken to being person. And it's
like, oh, everybody's going to have this. And it makes me excited because it only makes my
ability to make the podcast better. And again, it just organizes like, hey, I want to be really easy
to interface with. If you follow me on social media, by the way, please, if you don't already,
David send her a LinkedIn at Founders Podcast everywhere else. Everything like, I'm going to be
easy to interface with. It's like, you're going to follow these accounts. So you're going to listen
to this podcast because you want to learn from his greatest entrepreneurs. That's it. And you know,
I don't have to belabor that point. You're smart enough to understand why that's that's so important to do.
And all I can think about is like, this is going to be a giant platform. Right now Founders and
co-founders and some executives and a bunch of investors are using it. I think entire companies
are going to use this. And so if that mission sounds interesting to you and you want to help,
a really easy way to help sign up either for an annual subscription or one time. And you can do
that at FoundersNotes.com that is Founders with an S FoundersNotes.com. Obviously everything I
have to talk about is at FoundersParkas.com too. So you can go through there. But FoundersNotes.com.
Thank you very much. I've been talking too much. I'll talk to you very soon.
