#318 Alistair Urquhart (Listen to this when you’re stressed)

**David Senra** (0:00)
This is an episode, unlike any other episode that I've done before. Before I jump into it, I just want to tell you a few things. First thing, I'm doing a live show in New York City on October 19th with Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Invest Like the Best. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders on his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for mine. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite stories, and then doing a live Q&A. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer to grab tickets. This will be a very, very unique conversation. But I've also heard from a bunch of people that are flying in for the show. So I think it's a great excuse to visit New York City as well. I will leave a link down below so you can get your tickets and you can also find them at founderspodcast.com. Second thing, I wanna encourage you to become a member of the private founders AMA feed. You can email me questions directly. You actually get a private email address in the confirmation email that I read myself. I read every single one of the emails that come in myself. The questions that I get from those emails I answer in the short AMA episodes. And with your question, you actually leave your name and a link to your website so you can actually promote your company to other members. And I already heard from people that got new customers that discovered their business through an AMA question. I've made 37 of these episodes so far. You can listen to them immediately when you become a member. The link to do so is down below in the show notes and available at founderspodcast.com. And the last thing that I wanna tell you about before we jump into this episode is Vesto. Vesto makes it easy for you to invest your businesses in idle cash. I know the founder of Vesto, Ben. I've spent a bunch of time with him. He actually listens to this podcast. And he meets one on one with every new customer of Vesto. They can help businesses of all sizes with their treasury management. What that means is you can actually earn interest on your cash while it sits there. When you own US treasury bills, the US government has guaranteed your cash. I have a few founder friends that use Vesto. One of them raised a bunch of VC money. And so now that money is earning a higher rate of return than if he was just sitting at a bank account. This enables him to extend his runway. And I also have another founder friend who bootstrapped his business has got a bunch of cash and he uses Vesto to get a better return on that idle cash than he would just sitting at a bank. If this is something you're interested in, I highly recommend you go to getvesto.com, schedule a demo with the founder, Ben, and make sure you tell him that David from founders sent you.
I know that I'm a lucky man. I was lucky to survive capture in Singapore. And to come out of the jungle alive after 750 days as a slave.
I was lucky to survive my ordeal in the Japanese hell ship. And after we were torpedoed, I was lucky to survive five days adrift alone in the South China Sea. I was lucky to survive my close shave with the atomic bomb when I was struck by the blast at Nagasaki.
For over 60 years, I've remained silent about my sufferings, about the unsettling tales of unimaginable torments.
I am breaking my silence to bear witness to the systematic torture and murder of tens of thousands of allied prisoners.
We were a forgotten force in Singapore that vanished overnight into the jungles to become a ghost army of starved slave laborers.
We were starved and beaten, tortured and massacred in the most sadistic fashion. In the early years after the war, my nightmares became so bad that I had to sleep in a chair for fear of harming my wife as I lashed out in my sleep.
My nose had been broken so often during the beatings that I could not breathe through it.
The tropical diseases that racked my body gave me pain for many years.
I have never been able to eat properly since being starved and then the lining of my stomach stripped away by dysentery.
I developed an aggressive cancer linked to my exposure to radiation and Nagasaki. This skin cancer I am currently battling is unquestionably the result of slaving virtually naked for months on end in the tropical sun.