#28 The Wright Brothers

**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. Orville's first teacher in grade school would remember him at his desk, tinkering with bits of wood. Asked what he was up to, he told her he was making a machine of a kind that he and his brother were going to fly someday.
I'm David Senra, and you're listening to Founders, my podcast about the biographies of founders. I got the idea for this podcast from listening to another podcast years ago. Elon Musk was being interviewed and said something that stuck with me. He was asked, when starting a company, who did you look to for advice?
Elon said he looked for feedback in a historical context. Books, basically.
He continued, I didn't read many general business books. I liked biographies and autobiographies. I think those are pretty helpful. So that made me think if Elon found biographies useful, why not start reading them all the time? Then I decided to share what I learned from reading these books and create this podcast. So with that said, I'm going to tell you some of the ideas I learned from reading The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. Before we begin, this episode is brought to you by Audible. Audible is offering listeners of this podcast a free audiobook just for trying Audible. You get 30 days of membership free, plus an audiobook to get you started. And after that, you get one credit a month, good for any book, regardless of price, Audible's ad free premium audio that you can listen to offline. There's no interruptions and you own your amazing library. Keep the books even if you cancel. They also offer 30% off of exclusive memory only savings, easy exchanges. If you don't like a book, they'll swap it out for free at any time. So to claim your free audiobook, go to audibletrial.com forward slash founders. That's audibletrial.com forward slash founders. You can log in with your Amazon account. It only takes a few seconds. And if you're looking for an audiobook to listen to, I'd recommend listening to Shoe Dog by the founder of Nike, Phil Knight. It's a great story. I've also did a podcast on that a few episodes ago that you could listen to as well. So once again, audibletrial.com forward slash founders and get your free audiobook today. All right, so let's get right into some ideas that I found valuable in this book.
Before I read this excerpt, this is the note I left myself was, entrepreneurship is action. And let's go right to the book. It says, to judge by the expressions on their faces, they had little if any sense of humor, which was hardly the case. Neither like to have his picture taken. Truth to tell, one reporter wrote, the camera is no friend either to the brothers. But what is most uncharacteristic about the pose is that they are sitting and doing nothing, something they almost never succumb to. The brothers had tremendous energy and working hard every day but Sunday was a way of life. And if not on the job, then at home on improvements. Hard work was a conviction, and they were at their best and happiest working together on their own projects at some waist-high bench. What the two had in common above all was unity of purpose and unyielding determination. They had set themselves on a mission. So that term right there, after reading the book, now this is my second time reading through it, unyielding determination, I think that's the best two word description of The Wright Brothers.