#228 Michael Bloomberg

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. Periodically, while surrounded by the fruits of our success, the profits, the power, the notoriety, I get frustrated and I dream of starting again, but something stops me. Perhaps I'm too old. Perhaps I'm afraid it was all luck, or maybe deep down inside, I really do like the trappings that have accumulated.
Nevertheless, when I find that we just have to clear it with legal or had a meeting to keep others in the loop, or we are justifying staff versus producers, I wanna scream.
We used to have the Nike motto attitude. We just did it. Now there's a why we can't lurking in the background.
Keeping it from coming out while we grow is our number one management focus today.
What started simple with time has become complex.
A single straightforward policy has picked up exception after exception over time. Products have grown to overlap.
No one's got an excuse, but everyone's got a reason. Maddening.
Why not just quit them? Chuck it all. Sell the business. Take the money and run. Play it conservatively. Relax a little.
Real entrepreneurs never do though, and I haven't either.
Generally, real builders are so focused, one-dimensional and dedicated, they'd have a nervous breakdown after two weeks of sitting around.
Their challenge, even their reason for living, would be gone.
Why would I swap fun, influence, challenge, and more money than you could ever spend for only a multiple of more money than you could ever spend?
I can't think of anything better than my current situation.
Should I take the company public and have to answer to more partners, stockholders, and security analysts? Why would we want to do that? We're going in the other direction. We've already bought back Merrill's 30% investment in our company. The first 10% we bought back for $200 million in 1996 And the second 20%, we bought back for $4.5 billion in 2008 Not a bad return on their original investment of $39 million. Sell?
No thanks. Answering to no one is the ultimate situation.
So, back on the treadmill I go. Ratchet up the risk, enter a new medium, start another project, improve, develop, expand, go for it.
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Michael Bloomberg's autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. And that is also an example of why this book moved up the queue.
He is unapologetically extreme, and he sets the tone from the very, very beginning. This book had been recommended to me over the years, and I wanted to push it up to the front because of something I saw somebody wrote.
So there is this writer who does... He studies history's great investors. Like I said, history's great founders. But he does it in writing. He's got this email newsletter. It's called NECKR, which is N-E-C-K-A-R. I'll link to... He wrote a Twitter thread, a better Twitter thread than I could ever write, and it's on the lessons that are in Michael Bloomberg's autobiography. And so I'll link to that Twitter thread if you want to read it. It gives a great overview of the book, and his unapologetically extremeness jumps out in that thread. I was like, okay, I love studying people like that.
I want to read his biography, his autobiography. And so this is a short book. I got a lot of highlights. I'm going to jump into them before. I have to tell you how I came into this. I knew Bloomberg's name. I know he's got a really successful company. I just haven't really paid attention to him. I don't know that much about him other than his name recognition. I knew he was the mayor of New York, and I knew he was unbelievably wealthy. I just assumed, okay, if you have a net worth of $50 billion, and you did it in a very short amount of time, relatively speaking, I mean, I guess it's not a short amount of time, but I have the updated version of this autobiography, and he's been working for 50 years, so there's a lot of information in here that's going to be useful to you and I.