#292 Daniel Ludwig (The Invisible Billionaire)
02/27/23 • 46 min
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What I learned from rereading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.
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[2:00] Obsessed with privacy, Ludwig pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers.
[4:00] An associate speaks of his unlimited ingenuity in dreaming up new ways of doing things.
[5:00] Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut.
[5:00] I'm in this business because I like it. I have no other hobbies.
[6:00] Holding strongly to an opinion, purpose, or course of action, stubbornly or annoyingly persistent.
[8:00] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243)
[10:00] At his peak, he owned more than 200 companies in 50 countries.
[23:00] War makes the demand for Ludwig's products and services skyrocket.
[25:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)
[28:00] He did not mellow as he grew richer and older.
[28:00] Some years later, the captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke for his prodigality: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!"
[29:00] Ludwig’s tightfistedness, however, persisted after the Depression, putting him in sharp contrast to such free spenders as Onassis and Niarchos. It also was largely responsible for many of his innovations in the shipbuilding industry.
[29:00] Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. (Founders #211)
[30:00] Ludwig’s ridding his ships of any feature that did not contribute to profits pleased his own obsessive sense of economy and kept him a step ahead of the competition. When someone asked why he didn't put a grand piano aboard his ships, as Stavros Niarchos did, Ludwig snapped, "You can't carry oil in a grand piano."
[31:00] Stay in the game long enough to get lucky.
[32:00] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)
[37:00] The yacht was as much a business craft as any of his tankers and probably earned him more money than any of them.
[40:00] Like the Rockefeller organization, Ludwig had mastered the practice of keeping his money by transferring it from one pocket, one company to another, while appearing to spend it.
[42:00] He had learned something by now. Opportunities exist on the frontiers where most men dare not venture, and it is often the case that the farther the frontier, the greater the opportunity.
[43:00] The way to escape competition is to either do something no one else is doing or do it where no one else is doing it.
[43:00] Much of Ludwig's success was due to his willingness to venture where more timid entrepreneurs dared not go.
----
Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes
----
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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book:
What I learned from rereading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.
----
Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes
----
Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best !
----
[2:00] Obsessed with privacy, Ludwig pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers.
[4:00] An associate speaks of his unlimited ingenuity in dreaming up new ways of doing things.
[5:00] Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut.
[5:00] I'm in this business because I like it. I have no other hobbies.
[6:00] Holding strongly to an opinion, purpose, or course of action, stubbornly or annoyingly persistent.
[8:00] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243)
[10:00] At his peak, he owned more than 200 companies in 50 countries.
[23:00] War makes the demand for Ludwig's products and services skyrocket.
[25:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)
[28:00] He did not mellow as he grew richer and older.
[28:00] Some years later, the captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke for his prodigality: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!"
[29:00] Ludwig’s tightfistedness, however, persisted after the Depression, putting him in sharp contrast to such free spenders as Onassis and Niarchos. It also was largely responsible for many of his innovations in the shipbuilding industry.
[29:00] Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. (Founders #211)
[30:00] Ludwig’s ridding his ships of any feature that did not contribute to profits pleased his own obsessive sense of economy and kept him a step ahead of the competition. When someone asked why he didn't put a grand piano aboard his ships, as Stavros Niarchos did, Ludwig snapped, "You can't carry oil in a grand piano."
[31:00] Stay in the game long enough to get lucky.
[32:00] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)
[37:00] The yacht was as much a business craft as any of his tankers and probably earned him more money than any of them.
[40:00] Like the Rockefeller organization, Ludwig had mastered the practice of keeping his money by transferring it from one pocket, one company to another, while appearing to spend it.
[42:00] He had learned something by now. Opportunities exist on the frontiers where most men dare not venture, and it is often the case that the farther the frontier, the greater the opportunity.
[43:00] The way to escape competition is to either do something no one else is doing or do it where no one else is doing it.
[43:00] Much of Ludwig's success was due to his willingness to venture where more timid entrepreneurs dared not go.
----
Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book:
Previous Episode
#291 David Packard (Founder of HP)
What I learned from reading The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard.
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Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best !
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Do our products offer something unique?
Customer satisfaction second to none is the only acceptable goal.
What I learned from rereading Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters for the 3rd time (Founders #282)
In Silicon Valley, the ultimate career standard was set by David Packard: start a company in a garage, grow it into the leading innovator in its field, then take it public, then take it into the Fortune 500 (or better yet, the Fortune 50), then become the spokesman for the industry, then go to Washington, and then become an historic global figure. Only Packard had accomplished all of this; he had set the bar, and the Valley had honored his achievement by making him the unofficial "mayor" of Silicon Valley.
—The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company by Michael Malone
Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #214)
Gates read the encyclopedia from beginning to end when he was only seven or eight years old. — Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)
My father wouldn't let me quit.
Given equally good players and good teamwork, the team with the strongest will to win will prevail.
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)
That was a very important lesson for me —that personal communication was often necessary to back up written instructions.
Insisting On The Impossible: The Life Of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny
More businesses die from indigestion than starvation.
I found, after much trial and error, that applying steady, gentle pressure from the worked best.
Bill and I knew we didn't want to be a “me too” company merely copying products already on the market.
Netbooks accounted for 20% of the laptop market. But Apple never seriously considered making one. “Netbooks aren’t better than anything,” Steve Jobs said at the time. “They’re just cheap laptops.” Jony proposed that the tablets in his lab could be Apple’s answer to the netbook.
—— Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. (Founders #178)
Gains in quality come from meticulous attention to detail, and every step in the manufacturing process must be done as carefully as possible, not as quickly as possible.
Exponential growth is based on the principle that the state of change is proportional to the level of effort expended.
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by signing up for Founders Notes
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
Next Episode
#293: Ray Kroc (The Making of McDonald's)
What I learned from rereading Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc.
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Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube
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Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best !
[2:00] I have always believed that each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems.
[4:00] I was fascinated by the simplicity and effectiveness of the system they described that night.Each step in producing the limited menu was stripped down to its essence and accomplished with a minimum of effort.
[5:00] When I flew back to Chicago that fateful day in 1954, I had a freshly signed contract with the McDonald brothers in my briefcase. I was a battle-scarred veteran of the business wars, but I was still eager to go into action. I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns. But I was convinced that the best was ahead of me.
[6:00] It’s not what you do it’s how you do it:
Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. (Founders #288)
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)
The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)
[8:00] I never considered my dreams wasted energy. They were invariably linked to some form of action.
[10:00] For me, work was play.
[13:00] I vowed that this was going to be my only job. I was going to make my living at it and to hell with moonlighting of any kind. I intended to devote every ounce of my energy to selling, and that's exactly what I did.
[14:00] Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)
[20:00] This was the first phase of grinding it out—building my personal monument to capitalism. I paid tribute, in the feudal sense, for many years before I was able to rise with McDonald's on the foundation I had laid.
[21:00] Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.
[26:00] I was putting every cent I had and all I could borrow into this project.
[28:00] Perfection is very difficult to achieve and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald's. Everything else was secondary.
[29:00] If my competitor was drowning, I'd put a hose in his mouth.
[44:00] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)
John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254)
[47:00] The advertising campaign we put together was a smash hit. It turned Californians into our parking lots as though blindfolds had been removed from their eyes.
[48:00] Authority should go with the job.
----
Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes
----
Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
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