#345 George Lucas

**David Senra** (0:00)
I don't think you have to listen to the Quentin Tarantino episode, or the Steven Spielberg episode, before you listen to this episode on George Lucas. But if you haven't listened to them, I will listen to them after you listen to this episode, because you're going to see so much similarities in how they approach their work. I talked about last week how Spielberg would watch and rewatch movies that he loved. Decades later, entire scenes from those movies would appear in his own movies. Tarantino did the exact same thing. George Lucas talks about doing this. You're going to hear him being addicted to reading biographies, studying history, reading science fiction. A lot of the stuff that he was learning as a young person, he would use a decade later. And the influences that he used to build Star Wars, which is obviously the cornerstone of his multi-billion dollar empire, have been well documented. And you see the exact same thing with company builders. This is just like Edwin Land's ideas that show up in Steve Jobs' companies and products. It's just like Sam Walton's ideas showing up in Jeff Bezos' companies and products. It's just like Henry Singleton's ideas showing up in how Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger built Berkshire Hathaway. Charlie Munger said Henry Singleton was the smartest person that he ever met. Warren Buffett said it was a crime that business schools didn't study him. And so I go back and start reading about Henry Singleton, you realize, oh wow, these ideas that I was attributing to Munger and Buffett actually originated with Singleton. And that is a main theme that reappears over and over again for anybody that gets to the top of their profession. Anybody who becomes great at what they do is seeped. They are all seeped in the history of their industry. They talk about these ideas over and over again. They don't just read a book one time. They don't just watch a movie one time. They don't just have one conversation. They do it over and over and over again. That is why if you haven't done so already, I highly recommend that you subscribe to Founders Notes. For six years, I've been cataloging all of my notes, all of my highlights for every single book that I've read for the podcast. And it blew my mind because that's exactly what Quentin Tarantino did. He would keep scrapbooks, make notes, and he actually kept files on index cards of every single movie and what he wanted to remember about the movie for every single movie he's ever watched. And then because he cataloged all those ideas, he was able to use them in future movies. And so now you're able to read now by signing up for Founders Notes. When you get a subscription, you get access to all my notes, all my highlights, transcripts for every single episode. You can search by keyword, by person, by subject. It's this giant database of the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs. You can also read all of my notes and highlights by book. You can have all of my notes and highlights presented to you in a random order on the highlights feed. I've been searching by keyword, I've been rereading my highlights by book, and I've been rereading my highlights in random order on the highlight feed for years. I built this tool for me, for I had this for half a decade before anybody else had access to it. I literally could not make the podcast without this tool. And now I've had a new feature that I'm super excited about that may have made it a thousand times more valuable. It's actually called Sage. It is the Founders Notes AI. And the name actually came because there's a bunch of existing Founder Notes subscribers that were beta testing this feature for me. And one of them emailed me because he heard some of the names. It's like, this feature is incredible, but I can't figure out what to name it. And he said that none of the names were good enough because they don't actually describe what the feature does. And he said you should call it Sage. And he sent me the definition of Sage. Sage is a profoundly wise person that is often looked to for guidance and advice. And that's exactly what Sage does. It's like search on steroids. You can ask it a question and it'll search every single note, every single highlight, every single transcript, meaning every single word I've ever uttered on this podcast. And it'll start making connections. It's been making connections that I've even missed. And so I mentioned last week, after I re-listened to the Steven Spielberg episode, I was asking Sage, I was like, give me what are the most important ideas to learn from Steven Spielberg? And within 20 to 30 seconds, it gives me this outline of the top nine, what it feels is the top nine most important lessons from Steven Spielberg. Now the interesting part is, if you press on expand, it actually tells you what it searched to come up with the answer. So you could just read the outline, or if you choose to, you can go deeper and see what it actually fetched and what it searched to come up with the answer. And of course it's gonna search the Steven Spielberg episode, because I'd done the episode a few years ago. But what is fascinating is also included ideas when I mentioned Steven Spielberg on a Steve Jobs episode, when I mentioned Spielberg on the Christopher Nolan and the James Cameron episode. It pulled an idea from Spielberg that I mentioned in an episode on Pixar. Its memory far exceeds mine. And so I really do believe a subscription to Founders Notes is the perfect companion. If you're going to invest tens of hours, dozens of hours, I have hundreds of, there's people who have listened to hundreds of hours listening to this podcast. Founders Notes and Sage in particular is the tool that I hope you condense and clarify the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. So then you can use their ideas in your work, just like Bezos used Walton's ideas, just like Jobs used Land's ideas, just like Spielberg and Tarantino and Lucas used past filmmakers and everything they read, all the ideas they derive from that in their work. I highly recommend getting a subscription and you can do that by going to foundersnotes.com. That is Founders with an S, just like the podcast foundersnotes.com. I'll also leave a link down below in the show notes. I appreciate the support and I hope you enjoy this episode on George Lucas.