Sam Hinkie

in a room and Secret Service is surrounding him.

His wife's in the room with him.

Secret Service is surrounding him because they think a coup is on and maybe he's the next target.

JFK is on the operating table next door and he describes a scene where for a long period of time, call it 90 minutes or something, LBJ sits perfectly silently and thinks.

Can you imagine what you would do in that situation?

Pray or be worried or be overcome with anxiety or be, God forbid, excited and then be embarrassed that you're excited.

Because you're maybe about to be the president, but that's only because our president's just assassinated.

And then someone comes in with tear-filled eyes and says, the president's dead.

And from that moment forward, he lets out a set of instructions for what should happen that effectively governed the next 50 days.

That he all planned, presumably, in those 90 minutes.

I mean, can you imagine a situation more stressful than being the vice president when the president has just gotten shot?

The country's in a mess and you're likely to be tasked with something incredible that you may or may not be up to.

And instead he sets out a set of principles, really like a checklist that seems as best we can tell to be hundreds and hundreds of items long, sequenced in exactly the right order, knowing which messes to step around, which ones are the critical ones, and how to influence all the people he's going to need to influence to achieve his actual dream.

And his actual dream, sadly, is to get reelected.

I want to finish the conversation basically where we started, which is with this idea of breadcrumbs.

One of the reasons that I love doing this podcast, especially with friends like you, is that these are breadcrumbs, right?

We're putting something out for hopefully founders out there to listen to and be attracted to a certain set of attributes, which are different and distinct and unique.

And that's a very cool thing.

I think what you've highlighted for us today is how powerful those things can be planned or unplanned to create the right kind of serendipity in someone's trajectory.

How would you suggest people listening to this that want to throw out some of their own breadcrumbs begin to think about doing that?