The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:00:00 · S0, Scott Galloway, David Senra
Ad[00:00:00] S0: This holiday, switch to the Simplicity plan from Verizon. It's one plan, one price. Just $30 a line per month for you or the whole family and on their best five g network. Switching to Verizon and shopping their best deals makes the holidays simple. Head to verizon.com or your nearest Verizon store today. [00:00:26] S1: Welcome to Prof G on Entrepreneurship, a special three part series about starting a business, building wealth, and what it takes to succeed on your own. Today, we're joined by David Senra, historian and host of the Founders Podcast. Together, we'll answer your questions about what drives the best entrepreneurs, how to compete with established players, when to take risks or cash out. David, thanks for joining us. [00:00:48] S2: Thanks for inviting me. [00:00:50] S1: You're very welcome. Alright. Let's jump right into it. Question number one comes from Gen Z Advice on Bluesky. They ask, what motivates the best entrepreneurs? Ego, legacy, family, strictly money, who tends to last and who tends to crumble? David, thoughts?
00:00:50 · Scott Galloway, David Senra
[00:00:50] S1: You're very welcome. Alright. Let's jump right into it. Question number one comes from Gen Z Advice on Bluesky. They ask, what motivates the best entrepreneurs? Ego, legacy, family, strictly money, who tends to last and who tends to crumble? David, thoughts? [00:01:07] S2: Well, I would say that like if your goal is to build like a durable business and you're looking for like your life's work, so some of the... My favorite entrepreneurs on this, like Steve Jobs, I would say Elon's into this, like John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford. Usually, it's... A lot of people think people get into entrepreneurship for money, and obviously, it is a good path to wealth creation, But they're on some kind of, like, mission or they have some other primary goals. So, like, on my desk is like a organizing principle to myself. I have three words that Steve Jobs would repeat when he was 20 and repeat decade after decade. He would would repeat these three words when he was dying, which was insanely great products. And so for him, the organizing principle, the reason to start Apple is just the whole point of having a company is just so he can build insanely great products. That was his main goal when he was 20. It was still his goal when he was dying from cancer. So if you're talking about somebody who's going to do something for decade after decade and build something that hopefully outlives them, I think what the the main motivator is they feel what they're doing is really important, and they have a mission that's larger than themselves is how I'd answer that question.
00:02:10 · Scott Galloway
[00:02:10] S1: So I don't have, David has more empirical data. Mine is just anecdotal. Haven't worked for anyone else since the age of 24. When I got out of UCLA, did the tier analyst program at Morgan Stanley. And since then I've started my own companies and done my own thing other than I've been on faculty at NYU for twenty two years, I'm largely kind of a free agent there. So we tend to romanticize entrepreneurship. I would argue that my venture into entrepreneurship was more self awareness and a recognition of the assets and attributes I did not have. To be successful in a corporation you have to be politically savvy, you have to be patient, you have to actually be quite mature. Because the only thing I can guarantee you working for a corporation is a series of small and big injustices. People will get promoted over you that don't deserve to. Projects you're working on will get canceled for you can't even find out why they were canceled. But if you can navigate that and put up with it, The US Corporation is still the best place to get rich slowly, is what I found. There's never been a wealth generator like the US Corporation. I recognized fairly early at Morgan Stanley, I did not have those skills. If people went into a conference room, I would think they were talking about me. I literally did not have the maturity to handle a lack of information. And I recognized that the only way I would be happy would be to have control and start something. And also I wanted to play into my strengths. I'm very risk aggressive. I like to sell. Entrepreneur should be the first synonym for sales. You're always selling. You're selling people to join your company. You're selling capital. You're selling customers. You're selling clients. And you're selling at key employees to stay with you after they get an offer from Salesforce. You're constantly selling and you're willing to take risks, specifically the risk around public failure that most people aren't. So for me it was just an assessment of not only what attributes I had in the opportunity, but quite frankly my deficiencies. The people who tend to crumble are like, how do you handle public failure?
00:04:21 · Scott Galloway
I have a lot of friends who are wildly successful coming out of business school in the 90s, went into the alternative investment space and their fund gets closed down or they start a fund and it doesn't work and they just get stuck. Like they've never known failure. So your ability to mourn and move on, think is really the kind of the attribute. Because if you start several businesses, many or most of them are gonna fail. So many moons have to line up for a business to be successful. And then the key is, what do you do after you fail? Do you get stuck? True entrepreneurs are sort of like, okay, this didn't work, next. So the undergrads at NYU typically make better entrepreneurs because if someone has decided to go to business school, means they're sort of risk averse in taking a more certain path. But yeah, my venture into entrepreneurship was a function of 70% of entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs because they have no choice. If you immigrate here from Korea without the certification of an education, you don't get to work go to work for Google or JP Morgan. You start a small business. So anyways, I think it's honest self awareness around if you're really cut out to be an entrepreneur. Any any thoughts before we move on to two, David?
00:05:36 · David Senra
[00:05:36] S2: Yeah. Think the my favorite quote on this again is comes from Steve Jobs. He just says that like half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the unsuccessful ones are just pure perseverance. It's exactly what you said. It's kind of they're impervious. It's like, yeah. This is a problem. That's okay. I'll just, get back up and try it again, do it over and over again. I'm a big fan of MMA, and I actually think there's lot of analogies from sports that that are helpful in business. And I heard one one of these guys in the UFC said one time was like, his strategy where he has his advantage is like, need to get my competitor on their back. So I need to do a takedown to get to my best position. Right? And my opponent's goal is to stop me from getting there. So they stopped my first takedown. That's fine. He's like, you stop the second one. That's fine. You stop the third one. That's fine. Get ready for four, five, six, seven, and eight. And his whole point is just like, I know what I need to do, and you can play defense on this, but I'm gonna keep doing this until essentially I die trying. And I think a lot of entrepreneurship... Entrepreneurs are like that. And I loved what the the point that you made where it's like, well, a lot of this is out of necessity. You know, if you immigrate here from Korea and you can't get a high paying job, then you might want to start, you know, a a restaurant or a car... Like start washing cars or doing something that anything that you can do on your own without permission, I think is the key there.
00:06:48 · Scott Galloway
[00:06:48] S1: Question number two comes from a listener who emailed us. A lot of founders seem to have given up their health, marriage, or kids for their company. Is it possible to build something big and also have a life outside it? Did?