#269 Sam Zell

**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. One of my favorite things about making this podcast is that I get to talk to so many founders. A lot of those founders are dead, so I have one-sided conversations in the form of reading their autobiographies or their biographies. But in addition to that, because so many different entrepreneurs and founders listen to the podcast, I get to meet and talk to founders still building companies today. And a reoccurring theme on these conversations, a lot of these conversations I have with founders, is that a large part of your life is actually searching for your life's work. A lot of them are looking for something that is uniquely them, that they can do forever. And in almost every single case, that means starting more than one company. And this is so common that today's sponsor, Tiny, has built an entire business around buying other businesses.
And Tiny is doing something that's really smart. They know there's a ton of entrepreneurs and founders that listen to this podcast, that are building businesses, some of which have a business they want to sell today, some of which will have a business that they want to sell in the future. And what I like about them is the way they differentiate their offering compared to other people that buy businesses. And that's just, they're no bullshit. In fact, the introduction of the book that I'm about to go over with you, that's literally the title of the first chapter. And so when a founder goes to tiny.com and says, hey, I want to sell my business, they get a response within 48 hours, there's an offer made within seven days, and they close within a month. The founder gets a bag full of cash upfront. Make sure you stick around to the end of this episode because I'm going to quote from a letter that Warren Buffett wrote in 1991 about his approach to buying businesses from founders that I think is very similar to the process that tiny does. And this is a note I wrote to myself when I read this Warren Buffett shareholder letter for the first time. I said, this is an absolute masterclass in how to differentiate your product. That letter is absolutely amazing. So make sure you stick around and I'll cover that at the very end of the episode. And in the meantime, if you're a founder that wants to sell their business now or in the future, go to tiny.com.
This episode is also brought to you by Tegus. You gotta go back and listen to the ad reads I've done on the last two episodes of Founders. I'm not going to ever, when I do ads, I'm not gonna ever just read from like a script. I'm always interested in how the founders of the companies think. And if there's ideas that you and I can use behind like, why are they doing what they're doing? And so the last two episodes, I thought they were actually more educational than advertising. And it talks about what happens when you have a product that is working and why it is so smart to make your company name, your product, your brand ubiquitous.
What I wanna do now is actually read some highlights from this quick post that Patrick from Invest Like the Best wrote about Tegus. So in addition to Patrick having a really popular and influential podcast, he also has a fund called Positive Sum. And Positive Sum just made a $20 million investment into Tegus. And so when I read this post this morning, I'm like, oh, Patrick does exactly what I do, where you're gonna see as he goes through, he's laying out, it's like, what do I like about Tegus, what I like about the founders, but he talks about things that he learned from his podcast and how it influences his thinking of running Positive Sum. And so the headline is, Partnering to Scale the World's Leading Research Platform for Institutional Investors. And he says, a great investor recently told me that he's always searching for maniacs on a mission. Maniacs on a mission is a great way to think about the entrepreneurs that you and I study on this podcast. Either not going to, think about how good at your job you have to be for somebody to write a book about your life.