David Senra

He holds the gun level with my nose.

I stare straight ahead.

I do not move.

Such moments and many more come to mind whenever I think about telling my father that I don't want to play tennis.

Besides loving my father and wanting to please him, I don't want to upset him.

I don't dare.

Bad stuff happens when my father is upset.

If he says I'm going to play tennis, if he says I'm going to be number one in the world, that is my destiny.

All I can do is nod and obey.

Before we get back into the story, I want to tell you about this conversation I had with John Mackey, who's the founder of Whole Foods.

I spent a bunch of time with John, and he told me one of the craziest things that anyone has ever said about this podcast.

By the time I met him, he had listened to over 100 different episodes, and he said that if Founders existed when he was younger, Whole Foods would still be an independent company.

That since this podcast and all of History's Greatest Entrepreneurs,

constantly emphasized the importance of controlling expenses, he would have put more of a priority on it, especially during good times.

During boom times, it is very natural for a company and really for human nature to just not watch your costs as closely because everything is going so well.

This is something that history's greatest founders would warn against.

Andrew Carnegie would repeat this mantra time and time again.

He

Costs, however, could be strictly controlled and any savings achieved in costs were permanent.

This is something that I was talking about with my friend Eric, who's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp.