As head trader at Enron when it filed for bankruptcy, I received many calls from firms I were recruiting. I was busy trying to close out the trading book and wanted to take some time to decide my future, so I didn't take any meetings, but Citadel was by far the most aggressive. Other companies set up a few interviews with Enron's senior people. Citadel interviewed everyone in the trading operation at all functions and all levels. Citadel's team called me twice, but I declined to meet. It was apparent to me that their intent was to reverse engineer their business, and I wasn't going to help them. They knew that people looking for a job, particularly if they didn't have a fiduciary responsibility to a current employer, would be very free with info. Interview everyone, and you get a 360° perspective of the industry, how the business makes money, its competitive edge, who the best employees are, etc. Citadel probably interviewed several hundred Enron employees. Much more importantly, they built the framework for how to enter the energy business, which as Ken has said has been an enormous success. I did eventually talk with Citadel. On their third call to me, they asked if I would talk to Ken directly. I was at that point heading to Aspen for a quick industry event. I didn't know Ken personally, but I had great respect for what he had built. So, I told his rep that he could call me when I got back to Houston the following week. She said, "Great." But then she called back a few minutes later with a question. If Ken flew to Aspen to meet me in person the next day, would I? Out of respect, I said, "Of course." The next day, I had a great meeting with him and later that week, he offered me a job as head gas trader. I wanted to fully run an operation and thought there was more upside if I could have my own fund. So, I declined. I ended up building my own firm starting with traders and hiring deep fundamentals expertise. Citadel started with research as is their DNA and built up a trading operation around it. Both models worked fabulously well. I came away from the experience with an even deeper respect for both Ken and Citadel and remain friends with him to this day. I started with a niche, gas trading, built a niche fund and burnt out after 17 years. Ken started with a niche, Convert ARB, and built one of the most successful financial firms ever and has never tired. That was a tweet written by John Arnold. I came across it a few weeks ago and it further piqued my interest on doing an episode, making an episode about Ken Griffin. There's no biographies. There's no books written about him, but I keep coming across these little clues that he's a very special person. That tweet being one of them. I want to pick up this book that I read many years ago for the first time, probably five or six years ago. It's by this guy named Ed Thorp. Uh the last I've done a few episodes on him, but the one I would recommend listening to is episode 222. Ed Thorp is a legit genius. Uh he was the person that uh he he founded the very first quantitative hedge fund. He built the world's first wearable computer with Claude Shannon. He was the one that came up with the strategy and the process to beat the dealer, the blackjack dealers in Vegas and wrote a book about it that sold like millions of copies in the 1960s. He his autobiography reads like a thriller and he constantly pops up in all these important events in financial history. Let me give you an example. He has dinner with Warren Buffett when Warren Buffett's 38 years old. Ed Dorp, I think, is 35 at the time. He leaves the dinner, gets in the car, tells his wife, "I think that man's going to be the richest person in America one day." There's also a very interesting thing towards the end of the book that I'm going to read to you real quick where a 19-year-old Ken Griffin comes to Ed Thorp's house. So, he had closed down by this time Ed had closed down his hedge fund called Princeton Newport Partners. And so, he says, you know, if I would have kept going, how like how big could have that idea have gotten, right? He's like, there's no really way to know, but there is an interesting anecdote and I have a story for you. and he says, "Amazingly enough, a market neutral hedge fund operation was built on the Princeton Newport model, Citadel. It was started in 1990 in Chicago by former hedge fund manager Frank Meyer when he discovered this young quantitative investment prodigy Ken Griffin, who was then trading options and convertible bonds from his Harvard dorm room. I met with Frank and Ken outlining the workings and profit centers of Princeton Newport Partners as well as turning over cartons of documents outlining in detail the terms and conditions of older outstanding warrants and convertible bonds. These were very valuable because they were no longer available. Citadel grew from a humble start in 1990. And he says, "I became its first limited partner." So that adds to, you know, Ed Thorp's financial lore. It's the first LP in Citadel. He's also starts buying Buffett stock at like $600 a share. And so through my normal reading and research that I do for this podcast, I keep coming across all these like anecdotes and these stories of Ken Griffin. And I just couldn't figure out a way to make an episode on them. So I started I was like, "Okay, if there's no book, I'm going to listen to every single interview or talk that he's given." Most of the talks and the interviews he gives, they're very topical, as you know, like I'm not interested in topical. I'm interested in timeless. And so I was able to find a a talk that Ken Griffin gave at Yale about a year or two ago that I feel has timeless principles. He kind of lays out, you know, a very brief uh overview of his career. And so what I did is I transcribed that interview and then I went through the transcription just like I go through the books. So underlining, notes, highlights, everything that I do this and then I'm going to jump into that right now. But there's another reason that I wanted to cover him. Because of the podcast, I get to meet a lot of wildly successful people and I always ask them the same questions like, "Who's the smartest person you know? What's the best business you know?" And if they're in finance and they're talking about people that are still operating, Ken Griffin's name comes up over and over again. And there's two ways that he's been described to me many, many times. And it's funny that these people don't know each other, but they describe him the same way. They say winner, and they say killer. And one thing that I think is true is if you just listen to the books that people recommend and you read them, you have a kind of a fundamental a deeper fundamental understanding of how they think. And so there is in this talk at Yale, he he recommends a few books. And one of them is this book that I've heard that he makes people at Citadel or strongly recommends people at Citabel read. It's called, it's really hard to find. It's out of print. It's called Hard Ball. Are you playing to play or Playing to Win? And so in addition to listening to every single interview I could find about Ken, reading everything I could find online about him, I also read this book. I may do a bonus episode in a few days on this. I'm not sure if I have enough material to do an episode. If I do, obviously release it on this feed. But I do want to just give you an insight into his his mindset, which he's going to talk about at in this talk through Yale. You I think you got the hint when when you saw his reaction to the Enron bankruptcy that he was just him and Citadel were by far more relentless. Everybody knew there was valuable information up for grads like who went the furthest. This is I'm very interested in these people that play at a different level. It looks like we're all playing the same game and essentially the book is talking about it's like oh from the outside it may seem that we're all playing the same g same but there's certain companies and certain founders that take it to a completely different level. I just want to read one paragraph for you from the book Hardball and then I I promise I'm going to jump into the rest is all being Ken's words, but it says, "This kind of winning through competitive advantage may sound like nothing more than good, serious, and sensible business practice, but hard ball companies are further distinguished by their attitude and behavior. They play with such a total commitment to the game, such a fierceness of execution and such a relentless drive to maximize their strengths that they look very different from other companies that have admirable performance and sound business skills. I think of these few sentences when I when I read that tweet, that anecdote, that story from John Arnold. Hard ball players play to win in every aspect of the game. It's like, "Oh yeah, you know, Ken, I'm a big fan. Call me next week. How about I fly to where you are the next day?" That's a different level. They always seek decisive victory. Sounds like exactly in that story. They don't want to win 2:1. They would prefer a 9 to2 route. Okay, so that is the book Hard Ball. I will leave a link down below if you I think there's a few copies left on Amazon, but it is I I bought a few for friends as well, but it is sometimes difficult to find. Okay, want to go right into Ken's own words. And he starts to talk, keep in mind, he he's being interviewed at Yale. He's talking to a bunch of, you know, college students. And his big thing is like, you need to be seeking risk. Remember last week with Todd Graves? He talked about, you know, that guy owns 90% of a business is worth at least $10 billion and he's growing at 30% a year. So, you know, his net worth is skyrocketing. And his whole point was like he believes that one, entrepreneurs need to have way higher risk tolerance. That his risk tolerance, and you heard it on the podcast, was skyhigh. And uh this is the advice that Ken is giving to these students at Yale. I tell this to everybody. You should be risking at this point in your life. So, keep in mind, Ken Ken started Citadel right out of college. This is a great moment to think about pursuing opportunities that have the maximal personal interest. You should go for it right here and right now because there will come a time where it's going to be harder to take risks right now. You should absolutely be thinking about what the high-risk opportunities that you could pursue are that you'll have the greatest experience with. And so he talks about this a bunch. You know, you're going to take risk. You have no idea. There's no way you could possibly predict if you're going to be successful or not. The important thing is that you're maximizing the the the speed at which you're learning and then you're following something that you're just completely obsessed with. In fact, I'll start with this. There's a a bunch of other um talks that I took notes on that I just, you know, in many cases I spent like hours and hours and I pull out like one or two lines. Uh there is something that's interesting that he says later on. I'll just bring it to the front now. And he says, "This is going to remind you. There's there's this idea that you and I have talked about over and over again that uh I think Jeff Bezos puts it into words better than anybody else that I've come across. And he says that you don't choose your passions, your passions choose you." And this is what Ken says in a different talk. I've always been interested in the stock market for reasons I don't fully understand. In third grade, I wrote a paper that I wanted to learn how the stock market works. and I've been on that journey now for almost 40 years. So he says, "Okay, you need to you need to be taking risks. What's the highest risk opportunity that you're actually that you'll have the greatest experience with that you'll learn the most about, right? And that you're just naturally interested in." He says, "I started Citadel right out of college. I joined a firm in Chicago that gave me capital to manage. We had a very simple understanding. If I did well, I'd raise money from outside investors. I would start a formal firm. if things didn't go so well, I'd go back to graduate school. And I think it that I'm pretty sure I read somewhere I heard somewhere, hopefully I'm right about this, that they seated him with something like a million dollars. So, you know, a very small commitment. And I think he had he he had like 70% returns on that money. And so he says that was the deal. And then he talks about why he went to Chicago. I went to Chicago because the two partners that ran the firm that backed me. He talked about the one thing he's going to talk about a lot is Ken is a believer in the power of mentorship. So he went to Chicago because he thought the two people that were backing him actually cared about what happened to him and they took an interest in his career. In fact, this is something that appears over and over again in the books. It's really, really important. It's really one of the miracles of, you know, founders and entrepreneurs. They may be competing with each other when they're alive, but when they get older, they're always willing. I can't think of another example like where they're they're willing to help the next generation. They're like, "Oh, that I know all the you had to go through." Right? I'm I'm deeper down the path. I want to like reach back and help you as much as possible. In fact, I have a book on my desk. Uh this is really important. Another hard to find book. Um it's called Anatomy of a Merger and it is a book on J Pritsker. Now, why was I interested in that? Because Sam Zel was one of the most fascinating entrepreneurs to me. I did his autobiography. I did an episode on his autobiography. Samzel listened to that episode, loved it, asked to meet me. Then I had a got to have a two-hour lunch with Sam Zel that changed my life. That one conversation really affected and changed my behavior about how I think about things. But Sam talked about it in his book and at lunch that Jay was like 20 years older. Jay Pritzker was like 20 years older than Sam. And in his book, Sam Zel said that Jay was by far the greatest financial mind that he ever came across. And that Jay was so helpful, acted like an older brother and a mentor to him that changed the trajectory of Sam Zel's career. And you know, Sam Sam was a legend. So, we have Ken Griffin saying, "Hey, you know, I was a 19-year-old kid. I moved to Chicago." And I did that because the two partners that back me, I they they had an interest in me. And he says, "One of them uh reminded would remind you of your high school physics teacher. He was plainspokenly brilliant and I felt that he would care about my career. And he goes, I think that's really important. Find people that are going to take a vested interest in how you do. So much of your career will come down to mentorship and apprenticeship. And Ken continues, one of the great parts of American culture is the willingness for people of people intergenerationally to give to those who are younger. So we see this all the time. You and I see this all the time with older founders. They love sharing their knowledge with younger founders. You know, think about the how much we've benefited from, you know, and this usually happens when they're when they're, you know, towards the end of their career, maybe even after their career, towards the end of their life, and they write these autobiographies. Think of Sam Walton. Think of the how influential Sam Walton's autobiography was. He wrote it when he was dying. He knew he was dying. He had cancer, was riddling his body. He was in pain. And yet he took time out, the limited time he had left on his earth to to summarize all the lessons he learned from building one of the greatest companies that the world's ever seen. It's we're so we benefit so much from this. This is so important. He says then he talks about some other mentors before where they were mentors were the traders and salespeople of Wall Street. So again, I just keep going back to that I think that story at the very beginning of the blow up of Enron which he's going to talk about too in this talk. It just gives you an insight. This guy was relentless about seeking information that would be beneficial to his career. So, he was mentored by some traders and salespeople on Wall Street. He goes, "You have no idea how many hours a day I spent on the phone like a sponge learning about finance from those who had 15, 20, 25, 30 years of experience." He even mentions this guy. He goes, "Terry Oconor, Meil Lynch, Boston." And he in the talk, he doesn't have notes in front of him. I I watched this many times. He spits out the guy's phone number. He still remembers the guy's phone number. He goes, "I could go to Maril Lynch's office after school." And I'd go there at the end of my school day and stay till midnight. They would let me use their Bloomberg, read the value lines, and read all of their research. And so then after Ken is describing his own experience, he gives uh advice. Take advantage of all the people in whatever firm you join and in whatever community you're part of to learn from those who simply have more years of experience. make the most of that. So, think about what this founders podcast is exactly this. You know, we're up to what 400 450 hours almost 400 books. What are what are you and I doing every week, right? We're taking advantage and we're learning from those who simply have many more years of experience and we're making the most of that. So, then he continues telling us about his early career. Oh, this was very fascinating and this is something I see all the time as well. So he says, "An acquaintance of mine who has started one of the most successful internet companies of all time said to Ken one day that great entrepreneurs have the right toolkit to solve a problem of that particular moment in time." And so Ken is going to talk about the early days of his career. And this is so he doesn't name who this person is, the the successful internet company founder. You know, great entrepreneurs have the right toolkit to solve a problem of that particular time. You've heard me reference this over and over again on the podcast that this is the right person with the right set of skills at the right time. So he says, "For me, that toolkit was an understanding of software engineering, an understanding of mathematics, a background in economics, and a passion for finance." Remember going back to, hey, I was obsessed with this starting in the third grade. I don't even know why. And a belief that you could use quantitative analytics to have a competitive advantage in the financial markets. This is always fascinating to me. how an insight that no one else has acted on or no one else has mastered yet, which is exactly what he's talking about, right? Eventually will become completely commoditized. It will be obvious to other people. And so that's what he's he's going to talk about here. And believe it or not, in the 1980s, that was still a reasonably novel thought. One of my earliest hires was a Russian rocket scientist. And one of my friends in Wall Street called me up and said, "You're not trying to put a man on the moon. You're trying to make money." And I'm like, "No, no. I believe that this is the future." that those firms that can price derivatives analytically are going to have a real advantage. The guy that called me was a partner at one of the most successful investment banks that no longer exist. And we at Citadel today are one of the largest market makers in the world. So I had the right toolkit in the right moment in time. And I think my friend is really right. So the friend he's talking about is the one that's saying, "Hey, great entrepreneurs have the right toolkit to solve a problem at that particular moment in time." In thinking about this is such great advice. Such great advice. Okay. And I I want to go back actually before I go to the great advice. There is something where this this idea I'm going to tell you what came to mind. This idea where he is trying to he he's applying essentially if you really think about what he's doing, he's investing in technology. He's applying technology in a way to an existing industry that no one was doing before that. There's a line that that part when surprising enough when I got to that part of of this talk and of the transcript, I thought of Andrew Carnegie. If you go back and read Andrew Carneg's autobiography, he was doing the same thing he was doing in the 1800s and he was doing it to the steel industry. He would constantly invest in a ton of money in the latest technology that would help him become more efficient, right? And produce higher quality steel at a lower cost. And these old, he calls them like old heads. The line he says in his autobiography, these older guys in his existing industry did exactly what this guy who called Ken's like, "You're not trying to land on the moon. what are you doing here? They would tell young Andrew Carnegie, this is a waste of money. You shouldn't be doing this. And he knew that the investing in technology was the right way. It was the right move. It made him more efficient. The savings compounded. And then he even says in his autobiography, Carnegie says that in some years that new that that the efficiency he gained from investing technology was the difference between profit and loss. And he was able to make a profit where his old head competitors told him not to do that were making a loss and they eventually go out of business. So I just think it's fascinating that human nature just again history doesn't repeat human nature does. I love this. Now let's go to this great advice. It's think this excellent. It's thinking about what tools that you have that at this moment unlock problems that just simply didn't exist before. What is your natural skill set that you can apply that maximal take? remember take high risks right and you can apply that to opportunities that you are uniquely suited to solve right now and you need to act on it right now because what if he had that idea it's like hey I think I can get a competitive advantage in the financial markets uh you know I can use quantitative analytics and then he waits a decade and a half or a decade or five maybe five years maybe even two years that that edge that he saw that that novel thought he had that edge that he thought he could pursue is competed away. So again he says everything we and he talks about this everything we did in the early 90s is completely commoditized. That's just a profound fact. A huge competitive edge in 1990 is just trivial today. And so this is again when I when I ask people about Ken, another thing that comes up is what exactly what he's going to talk about here that he is just a learning machine and he's constantly seeking out opportunities and you can see that he's learning and he's expanding the ways he makes money. He understands that these edge the the edges he has they may not last forever. He just talked about this. It's ridiculous that everything that he thought he was solving or he did solve and all the difficulty he went through in the late 80s and and the 90s now you could just literally get for free online. So he says now the fertuitous part of the story is that over the last 30 years we've radically improved our business and transformed what we do and how we do things. We continue to build our competitive advantage in the various business in which we choose to compete. That is the essence of running a business. He what's the essence of running a business? How do you build your competitive moat? And so by this time when I'm going back through and doing the transcript to get ready for this episode, I had already read hard ball and I just wrote that's exactly what the book Hard Ball is about. Are you playing to play or you playing to win? It's how do you build your competitive moat? We trade financial assets that involve a research process. We need to understand what moves the prices of assets more thoughtfully and more quickly than our competitors. And then trading is simply how we monetize our research. That is how he thinks about what he does. We are just researchers. The glory is in the research is exactly what he says. He says the glory is in the research. Trading is the monetization of that research. Now he just got done mentioning the fact that his first edge was competed away. And so the advice he's giving he's like you have to this is just the importance of lifelong continuous learning. It's related to the fact that his first competitive edge you know was was commoditized. For all that you've learned so far at Yale the vast majority of what will matter in your career you have yet to learn. If you look at the people who have been extraordinarily extraordinarily successful in finance they are lifetime learners. They are always learning. And so he even talks about the fact that, you know, he was gifted in math at an early age, but eventually he builds a company where he's able to recruit and there's some crazy numbers. Like I think there's like 100,000 people that applied to work for Ken last year. And so he he knows his own skills as he goes from as he continues to build his company. Like he's going to be able to hire people that are better at each individual skill than he is. It's a very simple. Remember this the episode I did a few weeks ago uh with Jensen Wong. I can't I can't stop thinking about what what the way that Jensen looks at his business. So Jensen's point was like, "Hey, we're going to have all these like super brilliant, smarter than us AI agents. They're going to go out and be able to actually complete entire jobs for us. You know, people are scared of this." He's like, "It's ridiculous to be scared of it because it's it's my life now." And so what he's talking about, he's like, "I have 60 direct reports. Every single one of them is smarter at in their respective part of the business than I am. And yet I am able to manage and direct them and essentially direct their activities." He's like, "You're going to be doing exactly that, but instead of doing it through people, you'll be doing it through AI agents." So, when he's talking about the fact like, "Yeah, I used to be good at math and then I can hire people that are great at math." And he has a funny way to talk about the story. He says, "It's funny you speak of me as being mathematically literate. There's a conversation I had inside Citadel that always makes me smile with one of my absolute top guys. We were going through a particular problem and he looks at me and he goes and he says this in front of a room full of people." So he looks at Kenny, he goes, "Hey, if you were good at math, this would be much easier to explain." And so he thought that was obviously humorous. He says, "My mentors now are my colleagues that I work with, that I choose to surround myself with. What I see inside of our four walls is my sharpest young colleagues gravitate towards people who invest their time with them." In fact, this is another thing that he says. I'm going to read uh to you. He's asked in another interview that I found. He says, "How much?" This is going to sound a lot like Steve Jobs. Really, all the great entrepreneurs understand that it's just talent over everything. He goes, "Uh, how much time do you spend on recruitment?" I am talking to candidates all the time. Nothing is more important than the talent that we're bringing into our four walls. And so he goes back and continues some more advice. You need to find yourself in relationships where somebody takes an interest in you. Now, an interest in you won't always be. He says, "Let's be clear, that doesn't necessarily mean it's like this big smiling festival, right? Some of the best people that you will work for, you will find to be just incredibly painful to work for." An interest in you does not necessarily mean like, "Wow, everything you do is great." Sometimes the best advice you get is here are four things that you need to do better. You want to find somebody who's going to push you. Some people push you in more in a more kind way than others, but you want to find people who are going to push you. So, I would say way before I had ever had people, you know, because I had absolutely no network at all, you know, before I started the podcast, I I would say, and I think that's true for most people, right? The vast majority are not surrounded. I always talk to some of my friends, it's like, you understand? We're in a bubble inside of a bubble inside of a bubble. If you just look at like the vast majority of humanity, they don't have access to these networks. they maybe they can access them online but they definitely can't access them in person but biographies can do that in the very beginning like when I started reading biographies where he says hey you want to find people that push you I feel that every time I read a biography like every single person in my opinion every single person I've studied on founders practice so far is smarter and more productive than I am and they're constantly stretching what I believe is possible they're they're constantly pushing me and realizing like even that story think about that you want you want to win right everybody wants to win like how bad do you actually want it and and Ken will tell you how bad like actions express priority. Ken actions expressed priority. How bad did Ken want the information that was inside of Enron's trading department. Very like to the point where he's like, "Hey, I will come wherever you are and I will get on the plane right now." And he's going to talk about chartering a jet, all this crazy that he did to get this information. Then he winds up making like $30 billion, you know, off that information over the the from then till now. So like how bad do you want? So again, I do think like yeah, you can have people around you that push you and I definitely now have have a network that does that and friends that do that, but even before that these biographies just like, dude, I could be doing so much more. You know what you thought was possible. There's a great line like uh it's mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. The way that Ken goes around running his life, his business, it's full of passion. He's showing you how far you can go. So, uh, more advice. If you're in an environment where you've been somewhere for 6 months and you haven't learned much, do not make it 6 months in a day. The most valuable equity that you'll create in your lifetime is your career equity that you own. You really think about your education, your skills. It doesn't go up and down with the market. You own that equity and you want to think about how to maximize your career equity because that toolkit that you develop over your career, that's your ultimate job security. That's your ultimate ticket to success. Another piece of advice that Ken has here really. I'm going to read this Warren Buffett quote that came to mind first because this is exactly what he's talking about. So Warren Buffett says, "A rising tide floats all boats. Only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked." Ken will reference multiple times the fact that Citadel almost went out of business completely during the great financial crisis from, you know, 08 to 07 to08. He says, "When you're when you're in a firm in difficult moments, you actually see in well-managed firms, you see what real leadership looks like, what real leadership teams are actually made of. It's much like when that the rising tide lifts all boats, poorly firms and greatun firms, it's sometimes hard to distinguish between the two. But when times are tough is when you really see the character of the firm." Again, this is why I always say that time is the only filter that I trust. There's another great adi piece of advice that Warren Buffett gives. You know, he's like, "Listen, I don't really believe in formulas, but I tell all the managers of our our wholly owned businesses. It's like a three three-step uh formula. It's like make every decision as if you own 100% of your company as if it's the only asset that your family owns or will ever own and then you can't sell it for 100 years." And if you run your decision-making process through that rubric, you've you're optimizing for long-term survival, right? time is the only filter that I trust. So what's interesting is the number of people that I know that started their careers during the 070809 and they started in finance who have this just incredible perspective. So he is talking about the fact that adversity is an asset and that's something that also Ken has in common with a lot of history's greatest entrepreneurs. So he's like okay well if you started your career then right you you're going through hell at the very beginning. And he says later on, you know, now we're 13 years later, 15 years later, whatever the time is, the people that had to go and had to survive that adversity, you know, decade, decade and a half later, they are remarkably wise and well-grounded and able to navigate moments of adversity as if it's a walk in the park because they've been through a difficult time. First thing that popped to my mind when I got to that part, it's like, oh, this is like Rockefeller. Rockefeller praised the benefits of diversity all of his life. Uh in fact he said what a school the school of adversity and stress to train a boy in. He's talking about himself. Another great line Dehawk the founder of Visa has this great maxim. He says the wise make great use of adversity. The foolish whine about it. And so Ken's going to keep talking about that. And he says I say at Citadel we forge talent. That implies a concept of pressure. The world also forges talent. And those difficult moments give people almost extraordinary opportunities to make decisions in the most difficult of times and to have a very fast rate of development and growth. And then he talks about the opposite. When times are good, what happens? It makes you soft. And so he's talking about it on a country level. And again, so many I think the benefit of of watching the interview then obviously transcribing and reading it at the same time I read hard ball. You see how the way he thinks is connected. There's ideas. You could see why he recommends that book, I guess, is what I'm saying. So, he's talking about, hey, you know, in the United States, we have a really big problem. We've been after post World War II, we United States really had no competitors. That has shifted in the last 15 years. And he talks about this report that really bothered him when he was reading it. He says this report was published in Australia. Uh there was a survey of roughly 45 of the most important emerging technologies from quantum computing to solar power cells to various areas in biotechnology and the Chinese led in 30 of these areas. That is really frightening now in the United States. The United States is so entrenched in this unshakable belief that we cannot be challenged in technology, oblivious to the fact that not only are we being challenged, were being beaten. And so if you read hard ball, there's a great line that I just sent to a friend of mine who's dealing with this with a massive organization and from there's a line from Hard says when an organization Ken's talking about it could be a company obviously in the example he just gave it could be a country. When an organization achieves advantage, it develops a tendency to continue operating with the same strategy that produced the advantage. It is the leader's main role to keep alive the quest for advantage. And so then we get to the part where Ken talks about almost going out of business. He says there's a little saying, a little quip that I like to make. History is written by the winners. So the wonderful history of Citadel is how we are the most profitable hedge fund of all time. The chapter of how we were of how we were on the verge of going out of business in '08 is now a footnote in that book. But it is a very important note. It has not been an easy march to success. I think I have the most interesting position in life. I've probably lost and my team has probably lost more money than any other firm in existence. We just happen to have made more money than almost any other firm in existence. And it's the net that everyone talks about. There are years where our losses are hundreds of billions of dollars. I don't know if it's hundreds, but it's over a hundred. The number is incomprehensible. It's also why it's really important like who's interviewing the person or who gets to ask the questions. There's so many times during this it's like if I was the one talking to Ken like, "Wait, pause, pause, pause. Can you explain that? How did you lose $100 billion in a year? And no disrespect to the guy, you know, asking the questions. There's multiple times where I'm like, no, no, like I just think I could do a better job, I guess, is what I'm saying. No disrespect to him, but I want to know more about what what like how the hell do you lose hundred billion dollars in a year? Says the numbers are incomprehensible. But this is the the main point. I didn't mean to distract our conversation. All of my losses are my tuition and I have the most expensive education in American history. If every time you lost money, you got depressed and angry and you couldn't deal with it, you'd have a very short career. So, you need to be able to take a step back and go, it's a tuition bill I paid. This doesn't mean you don't think very long and hard about what went wrong, but you have to keep it in perspective. In 2008, that tuition pill bill bill almost became getting expelled from school because we lost half our equity in 16 weeks in a firm that had never drew had a doubledigit draw down in 20 years. Now, this is another example. He says he's always going to like the scene of the crime, I think is how is how he puts this. I absolutely love the fact that he did this. The principal reason that we survived is that when long-term capital management failed in 1998, so 1998, Ken would be 30 when he's doing what he's about to describe here. In 2008, when he almost goes out of business, he's 40. Okay? So, he's like, "This is the reason that we were able to survive 10 years later." Cuz back in 1998, I went and met with a number of the senior people that worked at Long-Term Capital Management. And why did I do this? What was my agenda? I wanted to understand how does a firm that loses 90% of its equity in a levered financial service industry still stay in business. They lost 90% of their equity before they lost control of their business. And much of what we learned from how they survived was actually fundamentally and ex existentially important to our ability to withstand the turmoil of 2008. So, there's a very important lesson here, which is not only do you want to learn from your mistakes, you really want to learn from the other guys and the other people's mistakes, too, because they're much cheaper tuition bill. So, a few episodes ago, I think it's episode 380 on Buffett and Munger. It's uh 400 pages of Buffett and Munger in their own words, they said this exact same thing. In fact, they quoted Patton. I think Buffett's the one that said this. He says, "The best thing to do is learn from the other guy's mistakes." George Patton used to say, "It's an honor to die for your country. Make sure the other guy gets the honor." And so, this is another great idea that Ken has here. I've spent over my lifetime a lot of time at the proverbial scene of accidents where other firms have gone ary. And so, now he's going to talk about what we talked about at the very beginning when Enron filed for bankruptcy. Enron was the largest energy trading firm in the United States. And they blew apart spectacularly in 2001. the day they so that means around this time that Ken would have been around 33 years old when he's doing this. So that story we told at the beginning, the day they filed for bankruptcy, I charted a Gulfream jet and put 16 people on it straight to Houston and all we did was interview people at Enron for several days. The day, not the day after, not a week. Let's wait a month. He says the day I chartered a jet guy and went down there again hard ball. He's playing. It's very obvious that Kent plays. He's not playing to play. He's playing to win and he wants a landslide. Um, all we did was interview people at Enron for several days. what worked, what didn't work, how they made money, how they ran the business, what their competitive advantage was. Now, the great part of the story is I hired the entire leadership team of the quantitative research effort at Enron. All the people who actually knew how the place worked and we've made $30 billion in commodities since then. So, he calls this being on the ground. That's about being on the ground. That that's about understanding where the business actually created value. That's about extracting the right people from that moment in time and surrounding them with the right leadership team, the right investment professionals, the right software engineers and building what is today one of the most important commodity businesses in the world. So going back to our 2008 experience, the first point is when this is hilarious is when you are walking through hell just put one foot in front of the other. Just keep going. I was praying that we would find our way out of the fire. And he goes, "Why do I use this fire analogy?" I called Lloyd Blankfine, who ran Goldman Sachs at the time, and I said, "Lloyd, when is this going to end?" And he goes, "A forest fire ends when there's nothing left to burn." He said, "That did not make me feel very a lot better." But we never gave up during that period of time. And so, when you're going through hell, he has a piece of advice for you. Make sure you push your decision-m to those who are mentally in the game in the right way because some people just if if it's their first adversity, they they're like the proverbial deer in the headlights. So, I was thinking about this where adversity is an asset. The long the he's going to talk about the importance of reps later on. He's seen so much in his 40-year career in finance. So, when he's talking about this like know people are going through hell, there's some people are just like completely freaked out and some people are cool and calm and collected. You have to push the decision-m to those who are mentally in the game in the right way. This is where who you surround yourself really matters because when you surround yourself with the right team, you will buttress each other on your darkest days. And he said talks about some people just are going to struggle with stress and adversity. Other people are going to prosper. In fact, there my one of my favorite lines I've ever heard of any founder ever and I think it's the right mentality is Herb Herb Keller was the founder of Southwest Airlines. Didn't start at Southwest. He was like in his mid-30s, I think he's like 35, and winds up for the next 40 years just completely kicking all his competitors asses. And he was asked by an interviewer one time, "You undergo a lot of stress all the time. How do you handle it?" And Herb's answer was perfect. I don't handle it. I like it. Entrepreneurs are seeking stress. You're seeking challenge. You're seeking problems that you can solve that no one else can solve. And if you can't deal with stress, then you just can't do this job. What Ken's about to say here, I think he has a common with a lot of history's greatest entrepreneurs is their their main sources of stress are not external. It's the pressure and expectations they put on themselves. It comes from within. He says, "My biggest stressor, that's me. I'm always trying to figure out how I can be better, how I can do better. I might be demanding of the people that work for me, but I am no less demanding of myself." And so one of my favorite stories to ever tell as I'm watching this interview with Kobe Bryant and Ahmad Rashad asked him like how do you deal with fans expectations? And before Ahmad could even finish his sentence, Kobe makes the stanky face. He's just like gh just like complete disgust comes a look at disgust comes takes over his entire face. He immediately interrupts Ahmad Rashad and he says their expectations will never be higher than my own. Never, never, never. I think it's exactly what Ken says. I think again I think a lot of history's greatest is like if other people's expectations of you are higher than your own, you're probably again not in the right in the right job. And so one reason that entrepreneurship is full of stress, I I love this idea that um Mark and Dre said one time that you only ever feel two you only ever feel two emotions, euphoria and terror and nothing in between. And part of the reason that there's a lot of terror and uncertainty and you know stress and discomfort and that I loved Herb Keller's perspective that you should just think of that as good things like I don't manage it I like it I don't handle it I like it is you're constantly making decisions under certainty like that is the job and so he's going to talk a lot about that on you have to get used to and you have to understand that you're that part of the job is making decisions under uncertainty he says good leadership is about acknowledging that I'm going to make decisions under uncertainty and people who are very good at business are very good at understanding the process is what matters. Do I make decisions with a well-framed and thoughtout process? People get in trouble when they start to become reductionists like if I do X, why is going to happen? Very little in business is actually that straightforward. And so he gives an example about the fact that that you're you're you're working in this constantly evolving and changing uh environment. you know, you can't survive over Citadel was founded what what was that 40 years ago? Citadel Securities, I think, 25 years ago. So, you know, he's seen a lot in in that time. And his example was like, okay, well, how many retailers had a mobile strategy in 2004 before the iPhone? He said, "No one. The world around you is going to be constantly changing and by and you need to leave yourself in a position to be more psychologically flexible and to be clear financially flexible to deal with evolving change. And if you do that, you have a much higher chance of being a survivor. So you have to leave yourself to be psychologically flexible and financially flexible to deal with evolving change. There's a great line and and for as far as like the changing technology, there's this uh interview that Steve Jobs does in this book called In the Company of Giants. I think it's episode 208 where these Stanford MBA students interview like 16 or 17 I think 16 uh technology company leaders at the time. So like Michael Dell's in there, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, all these other people as well. And Steve's point was like I don't they're like I don't he's like I don't know. Remember he's saying this in 97. He goes I don't know what the next big thing is. I just know there will be a next big thing. And so he is he was psychologically and and financially flexible to deal with that. But the greatest example of this that came to mind when when I read uh what Ken was saying here comes from Henry Singleton. You know, Henry Singleton, Charlie Mer said Henry Singleton was the smartest person he ever met. Buffett says that it's a crime that more business schools don't study him. That he put up one of the greatest records in American business history. One of Singleton's main ideas was like, "Hey, I'm just going to I'm going to maintain flexibility. I'm going to steer the boat a little bit every single day." and says once criticized for not having a business plan. Henry replied that he knew a lot of people running companies that had very definitive plans that they followed assiduously but we're so this is direct quote from Henry now but we're subject to a great number of outside influences on our business and most of them cannot be predicted so my plan is to stay flexible. My only plan is to keep coming to work every day. I like to steer the boat each day rather than plan way ahead into the future. So, back to Ken, you have a much higher chance of being a survivor if you're financially and psychologically flexible. And then he gives us an example that should terrify you. You do not want to wind up like these people. I keep going back to this main point that in my 50s and even my 40s, I would have friends or contemporaries who you saw got off the learning treadmill and life just passed them by. And it doesn't pass them by in 20 years. it passes them by in five or 10. They stop learning. They lost their edge. It's really important if you're not finding yourself learning and growing as a leader and as a domain expert in your field that you pursue, you've got to move on. The other thing I would say is that if the field that you chose to pursue ultimately inspires no passion, you need to move on also. Because if you're not passionate about the field you're engaged in, you won't have the grit or perseverance to compete with those who are. And does that not repeat over and over again in these biographies that you and I go over? I you could say passion. I I definitely think that's that's a word. Another way to think about that too which I think is very similar is um Munger has this Charlie Mer has this quote that he says another thing that I found is that intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're going to excel in it. So think about that. It's like you know if you don't have this in the field that you're engaged in you're just you're not going to have the grit or perseverance to compete with those who are. think about Todd Grace, go back to, you know, built a10 billion dollar company. And one of the greatest things about that episode uh that I did a week or two ago was the fact that he's asked like, you know, he he he's in his case, he's competing with a in his industry, he's competing with a lot of essentially corporate owned companies. There's there's no founder companies that he's competing with. And so that's why he's just trouncing them all. One of the reasons he's trouncing them and he he says, "I don't fear, you know, the big corporate guys. I'm not worried that McDonald's is going to come in and and destroy me. What I'm worried about is the young guy that has the same hunger that I had that is wants to compete head-to-head with me. But then he makes this this warning where he's like, "That's fine, but understand that I love competing." He goes, "And I'm on this day and night. Are you?" That's an interesting question to ask yourself. And again, I have tried to maneuver my myself into a position where I don't think there's anybody in the planet that is more passionate, more interested in working harder on what I am on this exact thing. I don't care about anything else, but I will collect more information and I will keep doing this on History's Greatest Entrepreneurs than anybody else in the world. And I'm glad if somebody wants to jump in, but like I'm on this day and night. I told you in the Todd Graves episode. I was laughing to myself when I was preparing for the episode and I looked at the clock. It was Saturday night at 9:05 p.m. I didn't want to do anything else. I didn't want to go out. I want to work on this podcast. And the people that I respect and admire the most and people I try to learn from is like they're that they're like I'm on this that whatever I am interested in I am more interested in it in it than almost anybody else in the world and certainly more than anybody else that I know of. I think that's a great line again. Let's go back to that like I'm on this day and night. are you go back to that idea if you don't if you're not really if you don't have this intense interest in what you're working on right you're not going to have the grit or perseverance to compete with those who are think about the very beginning that story he told and I'm pretty like this guy's was wildly successful but he's like listen I started with a niche fund and I burnt out after 17 years Ken started with a niche built one of the most successful financial firms ever and he's never tired he's still on it all right so let's go back to this so Ken says this is very fascinating too success uccess is elusive. However you climb, success is probably twice as far. That was told to me by one of our friends who's one of the most successful people in the history of finance. When he's asked, "What is success?" His answer is, "It's twice what I've accomplished." That is a pretty daunting concept. And he noticed another thing about the most successful people that he knows, and it's definitely true for him. It's really important that you hit the ground running and you run really hard early in life, you know? There's great stories where Ken had convinced uh Harvard to install like a satellite dish and I think it was the first person ever on his dorm so he can get real-time information so he could trade all these options and and all these financial instruments that he was trading. You know, he starts Citadel at 19. He's going to at Dorp's house and pulling out boxes and boxes of data for for Prince from Prince and Newport Partners. And his whole point is just like all the stuff that you're doing. Yeah, life might be long but it compounds the information like the skill set and the knowledge you have like don't like oh I have time like no just work as fast as possible. There's no doubt that in your 20s and 30s your rate of learning is astronomically high. There's a much stronger focus and he's talking about the issue of something he brings up over and over again that I'm kind of skipping over but I'll just kind of fill it in for you. He's very concerned about American competitiveness and that we're not working as hard as the young people are not working as hard. He says there's a much stronger focus on gratification in the here and now. And great anything, great companies, great anything. It takes time. Now, perfect example, uh, Citadel was founded 35 years ago. Citadel Securities was founded 23 years ago. his best and most profitable years have come in the last like three to four. So 25 years into his fund is the most successful years. Same thing with we see this over and over again. This is something that that Peter Teal realized that the problem a lot of technology company entrepreneurs is they optimize for growth at the expense of durability. But if you actually look at when these companies make the most money, it's like 10, 20, 30 years into the future. So that takeaway was like you don't want to optimize for uh growth at the expense of durability because you want to be around two, three, four decades from now to to reap all those rewards that are so much greater than the ones you'll get early in your career. And so it's like you you can't just like oh I have to be really really rich in like a year or two cuz it's highly likely what you think is really really rich, right, will seem like a drop in the bucket if your company is successful and you're still running it three or four decades from now. In fact, a friend of mine was showing me revenue numbers. She was texting me this this last night. In 2017, I think his company did 8 million in revenue and this year it'll do close to 200 million. And one of my texts back to him is something that I've noticed. It's very obvious if you read all these biographies. It's like things grow in mysterious ways. Your job is to get into a great business and stay there. That's exactly what Ken did. So, I'm all over the map. Let me go back to this on hitting the ground, running, and running hard. Okay? So, great companies, great anything take time. It's not clear to me how this is going to play out because what I see is that people that had really intense careers early on just tend to go so much farther over the ensuing 20 or 30 years. This idea of late bloomers in careers, yeah, it happens, but I think it's pretty infrequent. I think it's important to hit the ground running and to run pretty hard. So, there's a bunch of of founders that I've profiled that got their break or their their big break later in life. So Estee Lauder, Sam Walton, Ray Croc, but I think Ken is dead right about this. If you look at what they were doing when they were in their 20s, they weren't just like sitting around waiting for inspiration. They were honing their skills. They just were waiting for the right opportunity. So Estee Lauder, you know, she started her company as a 40-year-old stay-at-home mom, but for 25 years before that, she was obsessed with making these potions. And essentially she was running her business with before running her business. She was making these these skincare, these beauty uh routines and giving it away for free and bothering all the people around her, her sister, her mom, everybody she ran into. She was doing the job before she had the job. Same thing with Sam Walton. Same same thing with Ray Croc. They just needed they were hitting the ground. They were running. They just didn't unlock the their their greatest opportunity for a decade or two. If the work isn't really satisfying, go find somewhere else to run. That is a great line. Go find somewhere else to run because if you're not running and it's not satisfying, where do you think you're going to be in 20 years? Where are you going to be? You're going to be miserable and unhappy is where you're going to be. So, again, this another uh the the the Todd Graves episode on raising canes I did, you know, very wellreceived. A lot of people are listening to it. What's interesting like these guys get some random comments online like I can't believe this guy dedicated his life mission to you know making the best chicken fingers and as if that was a bad thing and my response is is like most people never even find a mission in life. What are you talking about? I'm just glad he I don't care what other people's mission is. I'm just glad he has one. The vast majority of people that have ever lived and died never even had a mission. And the pursuit of that mission is going to be difficult. It's going to cause stress. But I think it is fundamental like you the humans with missions even if they have to go through a lot of stress and adversity will be much more satisfied when they're looking back on their life. In fact, there's a great line. I found this um this biography. It's really hard to find. Uh it's on Bugatti and the founder of Bugatti, his daughter writes the book. I think it's published in 1960. I want to pull this line up because it he's she's quoting somebody else but I think it's it's excellent. It's really talking about the the fact that just try to find work that's satisfying that you can do for a long time. And this is this is a description of Bugatti's, you know, passed away at the time that his daughter's writing this book. And she finds this quote and she's, you know, it sounds to her like what her father was. Says, "A human life by its very nature has to be devoted to something or other to a glorious or humble enterprise, an illustrious or obscure destiny. This is the strange but inexurable condition of things." So, I think it's exactly what he's saying because listen, if you're not if you're not running and you're not satisfying, where do you think you're going to be in 20 years? Where are you going to be? You're going to be miserable and unhappy is where you're going to be. I read the biography of George Lucas, which is remarkable. It's by Brian J. Jones. Uh it's called George Lucas of life. What's remarkable about that is how much struggle everybody knows. Oh, yeah. This guy sold his company for $5 billion. He invented the Star Wars stuff. You didn't see that he was obsessed with building a life that he like he was in charge of that was dedicated to a mission and all the struggle the debt that he had to go into. He was in credit card debt. He was borrowing money from friends. And even when he was doing this, he was talking about the contrast between the path that he's pursuing in life and how most people would just they won't even take the risk. They'll just sit there in jobs they hate. And this is what George Lucas said in 1971. People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. They're people in cages with open doors. Let's go back to what Ken is saying here. If your work is actually engaging and exciting, you're going to look back on the first 10 years of that journey and say, you know what, I worked really hard, but we did some really amazing things and I'm really proud of. I think doing work that you're proud of is really, really important to the satisfaction that we're going to draw out of life. Now, now we're going back into this idea that great takes time, things grow in, you know, mysterious ways. Citadel founded 35 years ago. posted at El Securities, found it 23 years ago and yet you know 23 and 35 years into his business we have a 100,000 applicants for positions this year. We've never had so many people looking to work at our firm. So then at this point in the talk he starts taking questions from audience members. One of one of one of these questions was okay you know you you have to there's these unknown unknowable and highly uncertain future that we all have to navigate. Many of the decisions we're making we they're decisions based on judgment rather than facts. Like at what point in your career did you feel you were able to develop the ability to comfortably make those judgments? And Ken has a great line here. He goes, "It was the quantity of decisions made." Steve Jobs said something very similar when everybody talked about how great his taste was. And he said taste was a byproduct of the number of decisions he made. Again, he gave this interview with Michael Morris. It's on the Steve Jobs archive website, which if you haven't checked out, it's run by Steve's widow. It's excellent. Uh, he says, this is what Steve says. Things get more refined as you make mistakes. I've just had a chance to make a lot of mistakes. Your aesthetics get better as you make mistakes. So Ken says it's the quantity of decisions made. And to be clear, the more decisions of a similar nature you can make, the better at those decisions you become. So when we think about business activities far away from our core, I get much more anxious. Decisions within our core, I think we make pretty easily and pretty fluidly. It is repetition of the type of decision. Reps matter. If you go through my notes, you'll see I'm constantly the notes and the highlights that I I accumulate through the research for the podcast. I see that over and over again. I just the short hand I have is reps, reps, reps. You see this over and over again. Quantity reps matter. It's the repetition of the type of decision. So then he's asked how he decides which new businesses to pursue. He says total addressable market matters. Why does it matter? Because the odds that you get everything right to launch a successful product, those odds are not high. So when it all comes together, you want there to be something at the end of the rainbow. Think about the total adjustable market of the product or business that you're going to pursue. The markets that we're in are deep liquid markets. That means that when we do our research right, we can monetize it because we can get the liquidity to express that view. We want to be in deep liquid markets. And then in the middle of this answer to this question, I think he gives one of the most important pieces of advice during this entire talk or really more more important most important pieces of advice that uh that anybody can give is that entrepreneurship is sales and you better damn well get comfortable selling. He says, 'You're always selling. When the guy that backed me out of college retired from Chicago, he said I could have whatever I wanted from his office. I took a plaque that probably cost $9.99. And that plaque said, "If we're going to eat, someone's got to sell." That is a great line. If we're going to eat, somebody's got to sell. That is the story of being an entrepreneur and that is the story of being a CEO. If we're all going to eat, somebody's got to sell. Every CEO is a salesperson. They've got to sell a venture capital firm. They've got to sell a customer. They have to sell an employee. You are always selling. And if you don't like to sell, here's my advice. Get over it. I had no interest in selling when I was 20 years old. This is this is hilarious. So he he's 20 years old. He's trying to raise money for his fund, right? He says, "I was in a conference room in 1994 in Switzerland trying to raise money. Let me tell you about this bad trip. I show up for lunch and the guy I meet with goes, "You're not John Griffin." And I said, "No, I'm Ken Griffin." And he goes, "I thought you were John Griffin." John Griffin was at Bla at the time. He goes, "I thought you were John Griffin. I need to go." Well, great. I just flew all the way to Switzerland to have my lunch walk out on me. Then I get to another meeting that later that day and we were doing convertible bond arbitrage. And in 1994, that was a tough space to be in. And I'm in this beautiful office in Switzerland and this guy is just smoking his cigar. Puff, puff, puff. So Ken does his pitch. At the end, the guy goes, "So sad. Such a bright young man. Picked the wrong career." My point is, you've got to be able to play through these moments. And then the last comment he has, he's this is where he's recommending all these books. He's talking about the importance of playing hard ball, about playing to win. And he's talking about really having the ability like going through this experience in life. And this is really what you know founders podcast is doing. This is like you want to learn not just from your competition, not just from inside your business from but you can grab all these ideas from businesses and industries that are far a field of where you are. And he gives a great example of this. So first he's talking about all these books that he likes and he goes another book that's out of print is hardball. It's really fun to read. Hard ball is just great. In business, you don't play to win. You play to win by a landslide. If you don't win by a landslide, then your competitors come back. So, and come back and beat you. Again, when I when I think of this, Ken, this is the way Ken thinks, but Jeff Bezos has a line that's almost exactly like this. Jeff says, "When it comes to competition, being one of the best is not good enough." That is how I would describe. That's almost like a one sentence summary of hardball. Being one of the best is not good enough. You want to be the best. So says when it comes to competition, being one of the best is not good enough. Do you really want to plan for a future in which you might have to fight with somebody who is just as good as you are? I wouldn't. That's Bezos. Think about how Bezos built Amazon, right? He played hard ball just like uh Ken Griffin. Ken gives another example of somebody playing hard ball. He talks about Michael Dell. Says Michael Dell of Dell computer. He manufactured computers in America and won. Think about how well he ran the business to do that. The next episode is actually going to be on Michael Dell. Michael Dell sent me the greatest DM I've ever got in my life. He DM'd me. He says, "Your podcasts are A++." And a bunch of like trophy emojis. It's just incredible. I couldn't believe it. Uh, but I've read two books on Michael Dell and I'm going to do an episode. The next episode's going to be on his second autobiography, which is fantastic. If you want to start reading that now, I highly recommend. And he reads the audio book, too, which I've listened to like three times. Excellent. So he says, uh, think about how hard or how well he ran the business to do that. He says, you're going to do this for the rest of your life. So you want to study successful businesses, even if they're far a field of what you do. And so he says, I have a I have a story that you'll love. You'll love this. We built a risk wall in Chicago at the headquarters of Citadel. Okay. Before we built this risk wall, it was written that we had a Bquality risk management. So everything you've heard about Ken so far, he's not going to be accepted. He's not going to find getting a B on something acceptable. Okay. So decide to build a risk wall. What is a risk wall? It's this giant screen in their headquarters. It's 30 ft long, 10 ft high, and they rendered all the risk information in one place and this giant visual and then put it where everybody has to see it, right? And so he says we went from being from getting a B to being an industry leader. He says packaging matters. Where did the idea for the risk wall come from? It came because he went to Saudi Aramco's headquarters in Saudi Arabia. Okay. He says this is where they oversee their production from their oil fields. They have this giant wall on all the important data of their business is what he's telling us here. Okay. They they oversee their production from their oil fields, the output from their power plants, the ships on the open sea. And looking at that visualization and seeing how powerful that was and I said, you know what? What if I render all of our risk numbers that same way? You always need to think like an entrepreneur. You always need to think how do you create advantages and how do you learn not just from your competitors but from businesses far a field from where you are. And when you do this a lot of interesting and fun things happen that you can learn from and incorporate. And that is where I'll leave it. I will leave a link down below for if you want to watch the full talk. I will also leave a link down below in case you want to grab that book that he recommends called Hardball. If you haven't yet joined my personal email list, make sure you do that. That link will be down below. It's also available at davidcenter.com. I email the top 10 highlights from every single book that I read. That is 384 down, 1,000 to go. and I'll talk to you again soon.