A conversation on focus and finding your life's work

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to post this conversation that I just had with my friend, Patrick, on his podcast, The Best Like the Best, and I want to tell you why. So a few weeks ago, he called me after listening to the episode, it was episode 383, the one I did on Todd Graves, it's called Todd Graves and his $10 billion Chicken Figure Dream. And Patrick asked me to come to New York and record an episode with him on the topic of focus. And if I had to simplify and distill what I've learned from this entire project, eight years, maybe nine years, close to nine years, almost 400 biographies of History's Greatest Entrepreneurs Read to one word, that is definitely the word that I would choose, which is focus. It is, I believe, it is the single most prominent attribute that the people that I study on the podcast have, that I think the rest of the world lacks. In fact, I just flew to San Francisco to meet and have a conversation with my friend Daniel Eck, who is the founder of Spotify. We've probably talked close to four hours, and there's probably not another living entrepreneur that I've learned more from than Daniel, and he actually gave me really great advice. And I think he did this inadvertently. I don't even think he meant to. And the advice was related to focus. He had told me how more and more people ask for your time, and this happens to all of us. Like if you don't guard your time, he had a great line that he said about this. He said, if you don't guard your time, greatness will disappear.
Another way to think about that is like, if you lose your focus, greatness will disappear. That literally gives me chills. That is terrifying to me. And another thing that me and Daniel talked about is the fact that he has this really great idea that you really should be optimizing for impact, a positive impact on other people. And I believe that what I'm trying to do with Founders has a positive impact on the world, and I should be very, very, very careful to not lose the focus on that. Because really what I believe is like, the people I read about, the people that you and I study on this podcast, they were brilliant. They made incredible things. They built incredible lives. Even though they didn't know each other, they lived at different points in history, lived in different parts of the world, worked in different industries. They arrived at very similar conclusions on how to build a great business. And I think the idea is very simple. I got this idea from Charlie Munger where he says, find a simple idea and take it seriously. And the simple idea I have that I'm trying to take very, very seriously and focus on is like, hey, somebody should read all these old books, mine these timeless ideas, and then just spread them to current and future generations. And this applies to everything, including who I picked to partner with on the podcast. One of the most important, I'll give you an example of this. One of the most important ideas that is repeated over and over and over again, is the fact that all of history's greatest entrepreneurs constantly emphasize the importance of controlling expenses and controlling your costs. This idea goes back hundreds of years. You can go back and read Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie would repeat a mantra over and over again. He said, profits and prices are cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces on the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled. And in Andrew Carnegie's view, any savings achieved in cost were permanent. That is why I picked Ramp as the presenting sponsor of this podcast. I know all the founders of Ramp, they're friends of mine. We've spent a ton of time together. Before they were the presenting sponsor of this podcast, they all listened to the podcast. And they picked up on the fact that the main theme from the podcast is also the reason that Ramp exists. And that's the fact that the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend and how doing so can give you a massive competitive advantage. And one thing I would add to that, that I think is related to the conversation you're about to hear, doing that is also a demonstration of focus. The reason that Ramp exists is to give you everything you need to control your spend. Ramp gives you everything you need to control your costs. Ramp gives you easy to use corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting and cost control. I use it for my business, Patrick uses it for his business. I've gotten hundreds of emails, text messages, DMs about people that listen to the podcast that are now using Ramp for their business. There is a line in Andrew Carnegie's biography where it said cost control became nearly an obsession. Keep in mind, when Carnegie sells his business to JP Morgan, Carnegie had the largest liquid fortune in the world. Knowing your business from A to Z and your cost down to the penny makes you very, very hard to compete with. In fact, I think Sam Walton in his autobiography really beautifully summarized this point, and really the competitive advantage of doing so. And he wrote, our money was made by controlling expenses. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation, or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient. Ramp helps you run an efficient organization. Ramp gives you everything you need to control your spend and optimize all your financial operations on a single platform. I believe that if Andrew Carnegie and Sam Walton were alive today, they'd be running their business on Ramp. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business today. That is ramp.com. I hope you enjoy this conversation. I'm very passionate about these ideas, and I really appreciate Patrick for giving me an opportunity to convey some of these ideas that I think are very, very important. As always, thank you for listening.