The Singular Life of Rick Rubin

To prepare for that episode, I actually really listen to an episode that I made about the singular life story of Rick Rubin a few years ago. There were so many interesting ideas and stories in that episode that I really listen to at twice. So I'm going to replay that episode for you now. Before I do, I want to remind you about the great sponsors and supporters of founders.

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is the life story of Rick Rubin. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. There's no greater enigma than Rick Rubin working in record production today. His career began in hip hop. He co-founded Deaf Jam Records with Russell Simmons in 1984.

He produced rap's first number one album and was widely credited for launching hip hop as a

viable commercial medium. Refusing the play at safe, Rubin jump ship from rap to metal, leaving Deaf Jam to found another record label, Deaf American, where he signed and produced groundbreaking acts like Slayer. After his work on the huge successful Red Hot Chili Peppers acclaimed album Blood Sugar Sex Magic, Rubin was only seven years into his career and already a living legend. Though he worked with legends like Mick Jagger, AC DC and Tom Petty in the early 1990s,

it was his recordings with Johnny Cash that still stand out as his most astonishing and studied collaboration. By the turn of the century, Rubin had invented, reinvented, or redefined, so many musical genres that there was no way to categorize his style. Rolling stones called him the most successful producer of any genre. But the praise and albums sales didn't shake Rubin's focus as he dedicated himself to artist after artist. Grammy nominations and awards

poured in, including winning producer of the year. But Rick Rubin, workaholic and recluse found himself too busy to attend. That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk about today, which is Rick Rubin in the studio and is written by Jake Brown. This book wasn't even on my radar a few weeks ago. I did a podcast on Jay-Z, it's episode number 238, and in that podcast I talked about Jay-Z studying and working with Rick Rubin, and he said something that if I was interesting,

he's like Rick A. Normal. He is strange by strange standards. Rick's 20 years into his career and dude has not changed. He's got his own vibe. You got to love him for that. And so after that episode

“came out, a listener contacted me and they're like, hey, you should check out Lex Friedman's podcast.”

He just released with the Rick Rubin, and I started watching it, and I absolutely loved it. And I realized as I was taking notes, listening to that episode, I was like, I need to find a biography of Rick Rubin immediately. So I'm working off of Rick Rubin's biography, the one I just read from you, our red appart to you from. I took notes on Lex Friedman's podcast. I'm going to link all this below in the show notes, but below the link to the book, if you want to buy the book.

But I used Lex Friedman's podcast. I took notes on that Peter T.S. podcast, which I'll link to, and then I watched a three-part, excuse me, four-part documentary on Rick Rubin's studio in Malibu. It's on Showtime. It's called Shangri-La. And then I also spent several hours listening to Rick's own podcast. I didn't even know he had a podcast. It's actually really, really good. It's called Broken Record. And listening to him speak for so many hours, actually enhanced my

understanding and reading of his biography, because Rick just like a ton of the other founders that

“you and I have said in the podcast, they identify a handful of core beliefs that's really important”

to their philosophy of work and life, and they repeat them over and over again. So I want to jump right into the book, and one of his core beliefs is in the beauty of simplicity. In fact, it's repeated so much. I had this, this idea of Da Vinci, if Leonardo Da Vinci was able to speak to Rick Rubin

I think Rick would smile and nod it his head. And so we go to the first chapter. It's called

production by Reduction. This is one of my favorite ideas of Rick Rubin's. So says when Rick enters the studio, his goal is to record music in, quote, "it's most basic and purest form." No extra bells and whistles. All we know chaff. And then it's what he says. When I started producing, minimalism was my thing. My first record actually says instead of produced by Rick Rubin, it says reduced by Rick Rubin. And he was producing that album when he was around 18 years old.

Death Jam, the company he found, which is probably the most iconic hip-hop label of all time, was actually founded by Rick Rubin in his dorm room at NYU. So we're going to get it to a lot of the early history because it's just fascinating. It's exactly equivalent of like the Silicon Valley starting your company out of your garage. He just happened to do it in the dorm room. Going back to a Rick Rubin's quote, "it's still a natural part of me not to have a lot of extra stuff involved

that doesn't add to the production and try to get to the essence of what the music is. You want to feel like you have a relationship with the artist when you're done listening to their record. And then Rick describes how he works. And when I read this paragraph, the thing that jumped out to me most was this is exactly like Steve Jobs and his hero Edwin Leand, the founder of Polaroid,

how they would talk about seeing the finished product first in their mind and then working backwards

from that. But like, okay, that's the finished state. Now I just have to go through the steps to get there. And I'm going to read a section of this famous interview. But let me read what Rick says about this. Here, he says finding the potential and seeing how to realize it can be the best part. And then the actual work of having to get there is just going through the process. Once you hear in your head, it's like being a carpenter trying to build the thing when you already know what it is. So that's

“the key. You're trying to build the thing when you already know what it is. And so there's this famous”

meeting that happens when Steve Jobs still is in his 20s. Edwin Leand, I think, is in his 70s at this point. Steve Jobs borrowed a lot of ideas from other people. Obviously, he had like this deep historical knowledge and he used that deep historical knowledge and influenced the work in building Apple and Pixar and everything else that he was involved in. But the one person he took the most ideas from was undoubtedly Edwin Leand. And so let me read this excerpt from this meeting that they were having.

And it says, Dr. Leand was saying, I could see what the Polaroid camera should be. It was just as real to me as if it was sitting in front of me before I had ever built one. And Steve said, yes, that's exactly the way I saw the Macintosh. He said, if I was asked, if I asked someone who had only used a personal calculator, what a Macintosh should be like, they couldn't have told me. There was no way to do consumer research on it. So I had to go and create it and then show it

“to people and say, now what do you think? And then this next sentence, I think, is the most important”

part. And it really, from spending an unbelievable amount of hours, probably close to 40 hours studying Rick Rubin in the last couple of days, this, I think this is, this gets to his essence. Both of them had disability to not invent products, but to discover them. Both of them said these products have

always existed. It's just that no one has ever seen them before. We were the ones who discovered them.

The Polaroid camera always existed and the Macintosh always existed. It is a matter of discovery. So back to the book. This is where Rick describes like, what exactly do you bring to, like, you're a producer, but he's not a technical producer. And really, when he describes the role that he plays with the bands and artists and the rappers and the musicians that he works with, I'm like, oh, he's the founder. He's playing the role of the founder. Let's check this out.

Listen to what he says, and I think it makes sense. He says, it's almost more like I join a band when I produce a record. But I'm unlike all the other members of the band who each have their own personal agenda. The base player is concerned about the base part. Everyone else is concerned about their own part. I'm the only member of the band that doesn't care about any of those particulars. I just care that the whole thing is as good as it can be. My goal is to just get out of the way

and let the people I'm working with be the best versions of themselves. And then Rick goes into the process like, how do I choose who I'm going to work with? He's going to say something here that I found almost the identical thought when I read all of

“Warren Buffett's shareholder letters. I think it's founder's episode 88. If you haven't”

listened to that yet, but he says, I like so little in the first place, meaning so little music in the first place. Very few records come out that interest me at all. Very few bands. Do I ever see that interest me at all? I don't like anything that's mediocre. I like it when people take things to their limit. And so that line where he's like, there's just so there's very few records that are great that are really interesting. So Warren Buffett was talking in the shareholder's was talking

focus in studying a business, just like Rick Ruben has spent decade after decade of intense

focus on music, right? So Rick Ruben starts his career in 18. He's turning 16 next year, maybe this year.

“And he's still doing the same job. That's what I mean. I'm interested in him in general because”

that's so many people that I like admire and respect, also like admire, respect him. So I was like, okay, it's clear no brain or I should study this guy. I can clearly learn from something from. But I'm obsessed, absolutely obsessed with people that do things for an extremely long time. How many people that you know have been working the same job or studying the same field dedicated their life to the same thing for 41 years? That's also why Warren Buffett and Charlie Monger

are so interesting to me. The fact is they're, you know, 98. I think Charlie's 98 now and I think Warren's so then like 93 or 92 and they're still working the same thing they've been interested in since they were, you know, in Warren's case is a teenager. And so Warren writes, "Our major contribution to the operations of our subsidiaries, meaning the businesses that he owns, is applause." It's not the indiscriminate applause of a polyana. That's like an old school word. I had to look up. It's just like an excessively cheerful,

“our optimistic person. So he's like, it's not worth it. We're not just applauding because we're just”

excited or we're optimistic. Rather, it's informed applause. That was a really interesting phrase he chose there. Rather, it is the informed applause based upon the two long careers that we have spent intensively observing business performance and managerial behavior. And so Warren's saying before I get to his punchline, he's saying, "Listen, me and Charlie, we've dedicated our life this. We've seen a ton of different businesses." The vast majority are mediocre, just like

Rick Ruben saying, "The vast majority of anything is going to be mediocre." And so if Rick Ruben is admiring what you're doing, just like if Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett are admiring what you're doing, there's like an added importance on their opinion, right? And this is why. Charlie and I have seen so much of the ordinary and business that we can truly appreciate a virtuoso performance. And if you work back from what he's saying is most businesses are poorly run or averagely are

run in an average of manner. Most managers, most CEOs are either poor their job or average. So it pays to pay attention to the people that are putting on virtuoso performances. They know something that others don't. And then two more things from the section that we've said that you and I have talked about over and over again. Love what you do are fine, something else. Love, as they love her, who's once said, "Love your career, or find another." That's the perfect way to describe it.

So he says the bottom line for Ruben to take on any projects is, "I'm falling in love." When he

feels like he's falling in love with the artist, with their work, he's like, "Okay, this is the person I want to work with." Think about the best products or services that you happen to use personally. Their undoubtedly can be traced back to somebody that gives a damn. They truly love what they do. And then he goes to, this is, I mean, I feel like the entire last, while on the in and out,

“the podcast I did on the founder of In and Out Burger. I think like he just had one,”

such a one thing he just repeats over and over again. I'm not sacrificing quality for anything. Not sacrificing for a partner, not sacrificing for employees, anybody. I'm going to pray at the altar of quality above all. Ruben says the same thing. I believe in the quality of content over everything else. This is also something he repeats over and over again and all the interviews I watch with them. So we spend, me in the artist, spent a great deal of time working on

material long before we ever think about going into the recording studio. This is so, so important. I would summarize in the maximum that I repeat to you over and over again. The public praises people for what they practice and private. The public praises people for what they practice and private. So before you hear this album, where they go into the studio and they record and in many cases, I would go through, because the book goes through an order. Like from the 80s, 90s,

other up to 2000s. This book is still almost 15 years old. So it's missing on like his latest stuff. But it goes through like his approach and every single project, like not every single one, but some of his like most his best or like classic projects like how what what role do you play, what were his thoughts, all that stuff. It was very fascinating. So what I would do is as I read the chapters, I'd also be listening to some of the albums. But that idea about how long,

he's like, listen, you can't predict sometimes it takes a few months. Sometimes we're working on the same album for multiple years. And so in that documentary, Shane Rela, he's talking to L.O.

Coolj, L.O. Coolj wants to be one of the first people he signs. He signs L.O. Coolj, when L.O.

Coolj was 16 years old. Rick removed 20. So I get there. It's a crazy how that happens too. It's a lot of ideas for us in that section. But they're so they're talking now. It's older men. This documentary just came in last few years. And he says something to L.O. asks, like what increases the chances of like writing a great song. And he says just practice. Be diligent in the

to find 10 good ones. It's like fishing. You can't say that you'll catch a fish today, but you show up and fish every day and your chances get better. And so that is another main theme. I think of the philosophy of Rick Rubin is the fact that he's obsessed with simplicity. He wants

only what is essential, right? But to get to whittle down, to get to that simplicity,

he won't encourage you to do more. He is by far a workaholic for sure. And so he's like, if I want to get the 10 most perfect songs, we might have to go through 50, 100, a thousand songs. And I think that's extremely important to keep in mind how much work is required. You can not deceive yourself about what this game requires. That's a quote from Michael Jordan. But I think about what Steve Jobs said. He's like, listen, when you're designing a product,

it's keeping 5000 things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways. And then I would combine that quote from Steve Jobs with another one of my favorite quotes of his. And he says there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between an idea and a finished product.

And that's exactly what Rick Rubin is describing to us in this book. We spent a great deal of

time working on material long before we ever think about going into a recording studio. I do the exact same thing. The reason I feel comfortable as recommending founders to my friends

“and family and people I truly care about the most important people in my life is because I know”

how much effort and work goes into every single episode before I sit down and talk to you without exception. Before every single episode, I have to read at the very minimum. I have to read an entire book. And in Rick Rubin's case, I told you I've priced about 40 hours. Like deeply ingesting who he is as a person, how he thinks. And he has to filter through all that to maybe get, you know, maybe I can talk to you for an hour, maybe two hours. I don't know how long it's going

to last because I'm barely a few pages of this book. I haven't even got to the beginning of the copious amount of notes I took. But I just I really believe that with with my entire soul. I think the best thing, the things that you and I most admire, they spend a great deal of time way more time than we could ever believe working on it before we ever get to see it. And so I just turn the page and I ran over my own point. The note left myself on this is Rubin's advice. Do more. Rubin

feels the real work of making of him is in the songwriting. But that work can be dreadful. Writing is dull and on glamour is stuff. For most people, it's really pretty miserable. But if you write 30 songs, there's a better chance that the 10 on your album will be better than if you just write

“10. So he's like, less is more. But you have to do more to get to less is the way I would describe”

Rick's philosophy. And then he talks about something over and over again. He's like, listen, you need to have an open mind. He's like, we know next to nothing. So the idea you can predict, like, you have an idea what a great product is. But the idea is, you can, you're going to get it

right the first time. He's like, you've got to experiment. You've got to iterate. I would say this

reminds you very much of, I've told you my favorite book that I've ever read for the podcast, which James Tyson's autobiography. I read two of them. His second autobiography when he wrote as an old man is very interesting. But the one that he wrote right after having struggling for 15 years and finally Dyson is on, you know, somewhat solid footing. But when he published that book between then and now, his business is like, probably 300 times bigger. But that book is all about

the struggle, the early days of, at that every single person that's trying to do something difficult with a starting a company, trying to be a musician, whatever it is, you know that story, you've lived that story. And in that book, he just constantly talks about, he's like, this man just experiment. He calls it the Edisonian from Thomas Edison, the Edisonian principle of designing a product. And I think Steve Jobs would agree with that too. Art not Steve Jobs. I think he would agree with

it too, because listen what he's about to say. This is one of the things we talk about at the beginning of a project. Let's try every idea and see where it takes us. Don't pre-judge it. Sometimes it still comes up where someone in the band makes a suggestion and part of me says, that's a bad idea. Let's not waste time on that. And then I stop myself and think, let's try it. Let's experiment and see what it sounds like. And very often, it sounds good. So think about the lesson behind

with that simple paragraph, right? It's like you've got to try it. There's so many times in my own experience where somebody says something like, oh, that's going to suck. And then we do it and it doesn't suck. So clearly, the lesson is you got to experiment. Just don't pre-judge it, create a demo, create a prototype, put it on some customers, whatever your process is, and then see what happens. This next sentence is really important. I double underlined it. Rubens most valuable quality

is his own confidence. The reason that's important is because you can transfer that feeling. That

“confidence that you have to other people. So every day, my former practice is I go back and I”

reread past highlights from all the books. And I have over 20,000 highlights, right? And one I just happen to be reading yesterday, which I had forgot because Steve Jobs, when he was young, he

her name's Elizabeth, and part of the cult rules were that you have to cut off everybody from your

life. And Steve Jobs just shows up at the cult house. And he just completely rejected me. He's like, nope, she's coming with me and there's nothing you could do about it. And so they wind up traveling to this apple farm, and they talk about the fact that Elizabeth was telling the story about Steve Jobs, and she said something that was really fascinating. And she said he had the attitude that he could do anything. And therefore, so can you. And she talks about the fact that he helped her believe in

herself. She didn't have the confidence. Obviously, you're really strong personality, probably not going to be joining some kind of religious cult. But the fact that he had this abundance of confidence.

“Oh, I should have that self-confidence too. And I think Rick is really known for that because I”

listened to a lot of the people that he produced records for. And they said that they're like, he brought out the best of me. He made me believe in myself. And in some cases, it's really crazy, because people were super successful like Johnny Cash that Neil Diamond, all these people that had remarkable careers. And maybe they struggled for a few years. And so their confidence was dented, which is shocking that Johnny Cash, right? One of the most legendary musicians to ever live

towards the end of his life before he starts to do. I think he did the last three albums of his life. He did a work of Ruben, which is like, oh, I didn't think I had any more. So let's go back to this. This goes back to Ruben's fanaticism with just stripping everything down to its essence. He loves minimalism, simplicity. A good test of a song's metal is stripping down to its basics. If a song is great on an acoustic guitar, you can make a hundred different versions of that song,

and it's going to still be great. Then he goes back to the importance of preparing before he show up, the importance of practice. He says, as detailed and lengthy as the preproduction process can be, Ruben's productions tend to be quite short on actual in studio time. And this what he says, I often make records fast and a lot of other people. It usually has to do with how prepared we are in advance. It's the preproduction time that really makes all the difference.

Sometimes it's a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's a few months. Sometimes it's a year or two

to get ready to go into the studio and cut the whole album in a week. My preference is always

to get as much done before you go in to the studio as possible. More advice for artists, I think we can apply to whatever work that we're doing. You combine really high expectations with the belief that your life depends on this work. Ruben continues to rally his collaborators asking them to set their expectations of themselves really high. If we're going to do this, let's aim for greatness.

“You have to believe what you are doing is the most important thing in the world.”

And so not only in this book, but also in a bunch of the conversations I heard him have, he talks about his role. He thinks almost like the roles like a coach or something went up like a teacher. And so this is a little bit about that. And he says, listen, a key part of my job is simply listening. A lot of artists really like having someone to bounce things off of because it's hard to truly know. This is very similar to what

when I covered Charlie Munger's fantastic biography. Damn right is the name of the book. It's episode 221. He said something in that book that I thought was really fantastic. He talks about the role he played with Warren Buffett. And he says, listen, everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just a discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. So what the process Charlie's describing is the exact same process

that Rick Ruben is describing that he has. Charlie has it with Warren Buffett and some of their business partners. Rick Ruben has it with the musicians that he's producing for. And then he continues describing his process of how he works. That I'm going to read your couple highlights from these two pages. The way I would summarize the section for my own thoughts was that your work is a reflection of you. And so says, although he's a very private person,

Ruben doesn't shy away from making his professional life very personal. I'm doing things that touch me personally and that I feel and I am moved by. Ruben is very clear on what his strengths and limitations are. I don't know how to work a board. I don't turn knobs. I have no technical

ability whatsoever. My primary asset is I know when I like something or not. It always comes

“down to taste. I'm there for any key creative decision. He summed up the drive behind his life's work”

very simply. I'm just trying to make my favorite music. And so think about that line. I'm just trying to make my favorite music on one of these podcasts I was listening to. He was asked. You have any advice for young people. And it says the only advice I have is to not listen to anyone and do what you love and make your favorite things. Be the audience. Be the audience. Make the thing for you. The audience. You can't make something great with someone else in mind. So then we're going to get into

his early life. So he had three main loves that he discovered really early. His love of music,

obviously chose music. But his love of magic and his love of professional wrestling. He uses those

“influences and his work. He did it from a very young age. He still continues to use it to this day.”

And so it says Ruben spent his formative years in the hard rock glory days of the 1970s. I loved ACDC. He said the group's minimalist approach would show up years later in his sonic approach to recording rock records. And even in the way he constructed hip hop albums. And this way he says there's so little adorn. So going back to that mean theme. Simplify his push for minimalism just I want the essence of the song and nothing more. In fact he talks about something that was very interesting.

We find that my note on it real quick. This is really one of the clearest ways he described on it like why he constantly simplifies like why I'm not a producer. I'm overdoser. It's the way I think it. I'm not a producer. I'm a overdoser. That's a really fascinating thought. If you

sit there and think about it for a while, this is the reason he simplifies. He says often when

you're in the studio, there would be an idea that we need to add layers to make the song seem bigger. But what we discovered is sometimes the more things you add, the smaller it gets.

“And a lot of that is counterintuitive. You need to discover it in practice.”

And so back to his early life. It says Ruben immersed himself in the world of rock and roll. He had the requisite long hair, the leather jacket, and a position as a lead guitarist and a punk band. One part of the lifestyle, though, he avoided entirely with alcohol and drugs. And on the Peter Tia interview, they talked about that for several minutes about why so many people including that Rick worked with. They died of drug and alcohol overdoses. And so there is a

discipline and it seems weird because you look at the guy maybe here. He seems kind of calm and mellow. But he has extreme level of discipline. And part of the discipline is just avoiding things like not trying to be brilliant, but avoiding obviously obvious dumb things. Obviously things that are not good for your life. No one thinks, hey, hair wins good for my life. Hey, excessive cocaine habit is good for my life. Drinking all the time is good for my life.

And so it says one of the part of that lifestyle he avoided entirely was alcohol and drugs. Ruben had a discipline and focus, rare for someone who's age. And he just explains it very simply. Like everything else, I just didn't want to give up any of my time. I was deeply into something, meaning music. So his love of music kept Ruben from the need to distract or entertain himself with drugs. Before music, his deep focus was on magic. From the time I was nine years old, I loved magic.

Even though it was a little kid, I'd take the train from Long Island into Manhattan and it hang out in magic shops. I still think about magic all the time. Ruben's fascination with and love for magic and music was something that delighted his endlessly supported parents. So this is good. His mom and dad just, they were, he had dreams, not dreams. His ideas, like you can't make money in music. Like that was just gonna be hobby. So he's like, Richard, he's like, I'll go to NYU.

Then I'll go to law school and the idea is like, I'll just have a day job and then I'll make music as a hobby. And the day job just allows me to fund my hobby. And no matter what, like the fact that he, his parent, he told his parents to be a attorney and he switches off. He's like, I'm going to be this music producer. I'm going to go to California. I'm going to do all these things. His parents are like, okay, that sounds good to me. So says his parents were endlessly supportive who showed the same

devotion to their son as he did to his passions. Ruben's mother would drive into concerts in New York City, wait outside the venue until the show was over, no matter how late the hour and then drive for son home for a few precious hours of sleep before waking him up for school the next day. And then his quote for his senior year, they say it's his graduation quote was pretty prophetic. And it gives you an idea of who this person is. I want to play loud. I want to be heard.

And I want all to know I'm not one of the heard. And so now we get into the founding of his first company that the beginning of our section. There's like these quotes. It's advice from Rick Ruben.

“This is the first one. The key to it is doing what you believe in as opposed to what you think is”

going to work. There were never any plans to make anything happen. I just did what I liked and

believed in it. And luckily, it all worked out. And so the birth of him making music and him eventually founding deaf jam is because he just saw a gap in the market. It wasn't anything more complicated than that. Ruben began his career as a DJ, throwing parties in his NYU dorm room. The move from DJ to producer resulted from a girth of good material for him to play. I didn't know anything about the record business, but I recognized that hip hop records that

were coming out that I would buy as a fan. And the music that I would hear when I go to the club were two different things. What I set out to do as a fan here beats it was to make records that sounded like what I liked about going to a hip hop club. So his point is, this is very, it's like thinking about the top-down nature of most industries, top-down nature of the music industry at this time. It's like, no, this is what we're making. But that comes from like

executives over the cases, like this is what we're pushing out, where what's taking place in these underground hip hop and metal clubs that he's going to, and this is the early 80s.

audience. The record executives are separated from what the actual customer wants, right? It's like, no, we're pushing this down the channel. Where Ruben's like, why don't we just make records that we like, and we know we like them because when they get played, these closer and people go crazy. Again, that's like a simple idea that you can build a part like a very valuable company around. I remember hearing Elon Musk at this interview one time. There's a documentary that Elon

“Washington, I happen to watch it too. It's like, who killed the electric car? I think it's called,”

and GM had done an electric car, and they made me like, I don't know, like, 1,000, 2,000, some small number like that, but that electric car had like a cult following. So much that when GM closed the program, they repossessed the cars. You couldn't own them. If I'm not mistaken, we were leasing, I could be mistaken on the details, but the punchline I remember correctly. And so the people were so distraught that GM forcefully removed their cars from them, that when they

went to like be impounded and essentially GM destroyed the cars, they held a candlelight vigil. And so Elon said that, and I heard him in an interview one time he goes, "When's the last time somebody held a candlelight vigil for a product?" That one simple sentence. Like, clearly, there's a demand here if we, if I can build an electric car and make it affordable, like people will respond. When it's the last time you heard of people having a candlelight

vigil for a product. So I just love them. I'm completely obsessed with these like these just basic observations. Like, oh, that's pretty simple. That can actually build a very valuable company, a very, very valuable life just off that. And Rick's like, "Well, this is weird. I'm buying hip-hop bombs." Right? And they sound one way. But when I go to the club, people are going crazy for hip-hop bombs that sound completely different. Why don't we just make more of those? And so he says,

"I just saw this void and I started making those records." Just because I was a fan and wanted them to exist. So this is where he starts deaf jam. He's like, "All right, so he does a song." It's

called "It Yours." He's one of the first things he produced. And again, because he's a fan,

he knows what other, like what he likes and he clearly knows because he's going to this club's other people. Like, he's like, "Okay, I'm going to make this record. I'm going to make an album just because no one else is doing this. So I have to do it." His goal here is like, "I'm just going to break even." Right? I just want to cover my cost so I can keep making records. Watch what happens next. This is wild. It's just incredible. This is another example of like one

opportunity leading to the next opportunity to lead to the next opportunity. You can't skip steps.

“Like, you've got to get that first opportunity. Then once you get to the, like, I think about”

like climbing stairs or maybe climbing mountain. Like, once you get to that next peak, you look around the corner or look over and you're like, "Oh, there's something else." For other way, I couldn't see it at the very bottom of the mountain. But now I can then I can reach that. So it says, "Rubin' approached the production of the song from a fan's point of view. Rubin' barred $5,000 from his parents to press the single, imprinting deaf jam records on it."

And he says, "I was planning on putting it out myself strictly for the purpose of breaking

even, making back my costs. That was always my plan." As it turned out, this record was a hit.

It sold 100,000 copies in the New York area. That was a very big deal that is insane. And then he does something. He did something smart too on the sleeve. So when you're buying a physical record, right? It's literally, I record, on the sleeve of the director comes any put deaf jam recording and put his address. The address for deaf jam was his dorm room. And that's going to open up the next opportunity. The single sleeve listed Rubin's

New York address and that launched an onslaught of demos being mailed to him, which helped fuel the fires of deaf jam. So I'm going to get to why without was so important. First we got it, he's realizing, "Hey, this business is screwy." Despite the song's success, Rubin never made a dime on the record. So this is all coming full circle, because in that podcast, I did on JZ, JZ talk, so he said, "Listen, man, I studied." The reason I came in the game into pen

and I own my own record, which is extremely rare, when JZ did that 96, because he studied

“the founding of deaf jam. And he learned from it. He read that book. I think it's called Hitman,”

Hitman, or Hitman. And it talks about all the people that were making the music and putting the music out, and doing all the work. None of those guys got paid. It was all the record executives and the CEOs that came through, you know, this is a, a tales almost time. This is where we are in the story. So essentially, like, we're living through right now with JZ, he's going to learn from 10 years later. So it says, "Enter Russell Simmons." So this is going to be

the Rick Rubin's co-founder. This is also going to be the guy Russell Simmons that JZ talked about. He's like, he was, he was an informal mentor for me. I go to meet with him when we're getting signed a deaf jam. I'm sitting across the table for him. I was like, I don't want to be your artist. I want to be you. I want to be the hip hop mogul. There was no such thing as a hip hop mogul.

Until Russell Simmons peered. He was the very first hip hop mogul. So it says, "Uninter Russell

Simmons." On the recommendation of some other record owner, so some other record owner, record label owners, someone that's going to introduce Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons. And the reason that Rick wanted me with him, because that guy said of Simmons, no one promotes rap records better. Rubin fell that well. Most of the rap records at the time weren't any good.

hey, most of the rap records aren't very good. The ones that were good always had Russell Simmons

name on them. So he's the manager of the best rap acts around in Rubin's opinion. That partnership would revolutionize hip hop began with a simple meeting. They meet at a party and Russell's talking about, "Hey, that album you just produced. The one he sold $100,000 copies, that I love it." He said it was his favorite record and he was excited to meet me and he couldn't believe that I was white. There was nobody white doing anything in hip hop. And here, it was his favorite hip hop

record made by a white guy. I was really excited to meet him. He was already a mogul of rap music, even though there was no business. It was just a small underground scene. The two became fast friends. We did everything together. We would be together in the studio every night. Rubin and Simmons shared a love of hip hop, a vision of where they felt they should have had both musically and commercially. And one other thing, both had hit records under their belts, but no profit to show

for it. And so they both arrived at a conclusion. Like, this is dumb. These people aren't paying us so let's just do it ourselves. And so it says, "Deft Jam was set up to overcome business obstacles. Instead of going to somebody and asking them to, this is Rubin talking. Instead of going to somebody and asking them to do things that need to think it done and not getting them done, it's just easier if we take on the responsibility. It wasn't going to get done unless we did it."

“So Rubin needed an artist to launch "Deft Jam," the hip hop version of "Deft Jam," right?”

The one he's doing with Russell Simmons. And the reason I said, like, it's the importance of

stacking one opportunity on another is if he'd never had that hit single. And if he never put his

address on it, he would have never met Ella Coljé. So that's one opportunity he had to get to before he got to his next opportunity. This is the next opportunity. Rubin had just the right artist to launch the new formalized partnership, a young rapper whose demo was one of the hundreds that had been sent to his dorm room. Ella Coljé, who is 16 years old at this time, and Rubin's giving us context of just he's in the very early days of what is now a gigantic industry. The hip hop industry

is massive. He says, "There were no stars in rap music. It was really just a work of passion. Everyone who was doing it was doing it because they loved it. Not because anyone thought it was a career. We just tried to do something we liked. How many times has it repeated that? We're not even one quarter of the way in the book." And he said, "I just did something I loved. Just try to focus,

like I'm the first listener. I'm the first customer. We just tried to do something we liked. There

was no expectations whatsoever. The only hope was that we would sell enough records to make enough money to make another record." So the partnership between Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons is only going to last for a few years. But while they were together, they actually, they were well matched,

“because it's really important to find a partner that has the skills you lack. So Rubin is going to”

be in the studio with the artists making their records. And then Simmons is going to be the one promoting them. And he was really, both of them were really gifted at their respective strengths. So says Rubin then, with then passed the baton to Simmons, whose promotional expertise pushed the fresh new sound of the music onto the airways of local hip hop stations and into the city's hip hop clubs, Simmons had a talent in old school hustling. So they went up selling so many of

these singles that CBS records gets their attention. And they offer a development deal with a $600,000 advance, which is more money than they could even imagine at the time. And so it says time would prove this deal to be merely a foot in the door that they would kick open a year later. But for 20-year-old Rick Rubin, it was a major milestone. I sent a zerox of the check to my parents. That's when this stopped being a hobby. And so then Russell Simmons has a really smart

marketing push. He's like, "Let's make a movie about the story of the early years of deaf jam," because we're just a few years into the story. That movie he winds up getting made his crush groove. And it was a movie, but it was really content marketing for deaf jam in their artists. You can actually find the entire crush groove movie is on YouTube right now, so actually watching a last night. And Rick Rubin plays with Rubin in the movie. It's been

that's like, "Crush groove was a marketing vehicle. Russell Simmons dreamed up to introduce their label and artist roster." So introduced the world to people like Fat Boys, L.O. Cool J, the Beastie Boys, and Run DMC. And the reason I'm bringing this to your attention is that the next

“sentence that I double underlying that I think is extremely important for all founders or anybody”

trying to get attention to their work, right? Russell really cared about finding new ways to expose their music to a bigger audience. It's a very creative, and the first I think did the best that of anybody that in recent memory to me is Michael Bloomberg. And I didn't know that before I had read his autobiography. It's Founders 228. If you haven't listened to it, the main reason to listen to that podcast, other than the stories insane. In fact, that he owns a company. It's still

private company. He makes billions of dollars a year right now. Michael Bloomberg had a lot of creative

allowed his business to grow into a large, extremely profitable business. But he's just so clever

the way he thought about these things. And what he actually put into work, very similar to this, like the idea is like, "Who's the other thing? Hey, I'm starting a record label. I've sold a little bit of singles clubs like my music, the radio like my music. I have you know, four or five acts signed to my record label. All of them are going to be super famous in their own day, but they're not famous yet." And it's like, "Hey, let's make a movie." This is 1988, maybe 80,

“somewhere around there, 86. Like mid to the 80s. How the hell did you even figure out that idea?”

Like that's remarkable. And so in the back of some of the success of their music that they put out, they wind up finding a Warner Brothers studio agrees to fund $3 million of film budget. So it says Warner Brothers agreed to finance the $3 million film budget. The picture is green light, led CBS who had signed their deal with to change the terms of their original development deal. These are the people that just gave them 600 ran, right? Now they change that like, "Wow, you

guys are getting real popular." They change their original development deal with depth, jam signing deaf jam to a $2 million distribution deal in what Russell Simmons described as the greatest opportunity in the whole world. And again, this is happening in 85. So that they signed that deal in 85. So think about that. Like within one year they go from 600,000.

This is amazing. Can't believe this is happening to signing for $2 million and having a major

“motion picture studio agreed to finance $3 million of what is essentially content marketing in the”

form of a movie. And it was being a smart investment by Warner Brothers, by the way, because they spent $3 million on the movie and the movie went to making $11 million to box office. One of the biggest hits that Rick Rubens is going to have in this point of his career, like a mainstream hit. BC Boyz wins up being the first hit pop-out member to go to number one, which he produced. But he does, he has the idea to do his crossover song between Run DMC

and Aerosmith. And Run DMC is kind of well known at the time. Aerosmith is like orders of magnitude more famous. And this would have never happened if Rick Rubens didn't have an excessive excessive amount of self-confidence. This is something that is talked about over and over again by the people he works with. That he believes so much that he makes you believe. Very similar to that Steve Jobs quote, I just read you earlier. And so I'm going to get into this. It says Rubens

“desired to work with Run DMC dated back to the early 80s when Ruben, upon hearing the group's first”

music, had boldly commented, "This is the real shit, but I could do it better." And so that level of self-confidence, right? You need that that level of some confidence of the mandatory to even approach. So he's like, "Yeah, now I can do it better. I'm going to convince Aerosmith who, again, world famous, they're like operating in a completely different world than Rick Rubens. He's like, "Okay, well, I'm going to sell both Run DMC and Aerosmith on the walk this way."

So it says Rubens sold both groups on the idea. And once they were together, it was interesting. This is what he says. It was interesting because it was very two very different cultures. We were all kids, but Aerosmith was already Aerosmith. They carried themselves in a different way than we did, because they were real rock stars. And we were college students. It was an all-inspiring experience for me because I grew up on Aerosmith and I loved them.

I also knew how great they were. So I became fair and then the thing about this, how crazy it is, like I admire them, they're almost like my idols. And yet when he gets in there and running the production of this of the music, he still applies his excessive, I wouldn't say control because that's not the right word, but it's like his high standards. So he says, so I became fairly demanding with what I asked him to play and contribute. Both sides really didn't know what to make

of it. And so this is another example of something that Ruben uses for his entire career. He wants authenticity, just like other humans, like he wants it to be really simple. So his vision for the music for what they're doing with Rundee M. Aerosmith is also the vision he applies over and over again. His vision was to capture something raw, musical and ferocious. The music that we liked wasn't glossy and shiny. He said, it sounded rough and raw, authentic. It was raw, like a documentary.

So it's like, I'm not making a movie. I'm making a documentary. That's interesting. It was raw, authentic. I used that word raw whenever again. It's not glossy and shiny. It sounded rough and raw. And then on the very next page, he continues to elaborate on that perspective. The music we were making wasn't slick. There's a homemade and handmade quality to it. So think about that because music is a product that gets to scale, right? It's not just one person's listen to it. How many

people have listened to walk this way over the life of that song? Tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people. So I thought that idea was really fascinating. It's like a handmade product at scale,

a handmade product at scale. So after that, he gets the biggest opportunity, the biggest breakthrough

of his early career. And that's when he's going to produce BC boys album licensed to ill. This

first time. It's like, oh, wow. This is the very beginning of an industry that's going to grow

even larger. Think about this 10 years later. Jay-Z is still looking at this. Why it's so important to like, in my opinion, to go back and study the very beginnings of industries, right? We've done this. You and I've done this together. Beginning of Silicon Valley. Not only is like the computer chip industry, the personal computer industry, the software industry. I just did a podcast on the very beginning of the aviation industry. I've done like 13 podcasts on the very beginning of the

American automotive industry. There is so many things that just happen over and over again. They're all making different things. Some people are making computer chips, some making software. Some people making planes, cars, recruitment, making hip hop music. It's the same thing. You think it's too late. There's over and every people are like, oh, you know, it's too late. It's sorry. The ship is already passed. No. These things take forever. So at this point, we're in the story. 10 years later,

Jay Z's like, hey, I can't say that I thought I was going to go rich off rap. All I knew that it was clearly, clearly going to be a lot bigger than it is now before it goes away. And then think about the growth between 1996 when he said that. And in present day, you know, 25, whatever, 25 years later, it's still growing. So he was just dead on right about that. So I just want to pull out one thing from from this section. And then I want to transition. I got to I got ton of highlights

with the with the book, but I want to go through my notes that I have actually written on all these

“talks that he gave because I think I'm going to forget to do that. And there's a lot of valuable”

things. So maybe I'll just give you like a stream of consciousness of a Rap Ruben's ideas, and then we'll jump back into the book. So this is Ruben talking about. And the reason I want to do read the notes is because this is something that he talks about over and over again. It's only done when it can't be any better. But once something's done, just like give it the time to be what it needs to be, but then move on. Like you shouldn't, he's got a really interesting way to not

have regrets, which I think is very powerful for for us because having regrets, so detrimental to it's so common in humanity and also detrimental to us. So says Ruben maintain total autonomy over mixing the record and it was in no rush. He says, listen, I would love for it to be done, but the reality of the creative process is it takes, however long it takes to be great, very similar kind of echoes with these fights that Walt Disney would have with his brother,

his brother was his partner. His brothers run in the money. Walt Disney's obviously making the products, and he says, I'll tell you what it costs when it's done. We're innovating. I don't know

why these things popped in my mind when I read these certain sentences that always draws back

“to something else you and I have talked about, but that's what I thought of there. It's like,”

this I would love if Ruben done. You know, I clearly don't want to be spending more time in money than he needs to, but it's not perfect. It's not what I'm not happy with it. And he was right to do that because he held onto it till he was ready. And then he releases it and it just opens up opportunity for literally millions of people in the future. That's how crazy. Like that's how we, you and I know, like, if you have found a mentality, like you know, the world's not static,

we can push it. We can bend it. We can actually influence the external world. It's crazy. At this point, he's mixing and he's recording this album in a recording studio that used to be a giant old Chinese restaurant. And it's like this biggest, don't be places. They don't have a lot of money. And you're just able, even without the best equipment, the best resources, he's able to make something truly, truly great. I find that personally extremely

inspiring. And then before I jump to my notes, I just want to read one sentence to you that I double on her line. It's, I just said, listen, we're still so, so early in all these things in the

internet, in podcasts, and just a million different in technology in general. So it says rap music

as recorded work was just eight years old. Okay. So I just got to run through a couple, like a give you a stream of regrouping consciousness. So you can download. These are, I don't even know these, these ideas are really related. I just thought they were so interesting that when I heard them, my press pause and kept rewinding to I wrote it down. Basically, I'm reading you like, oh, I need to remember this. Like, I don't want this to disappear. Like, I want to have record of it.

So I can go and reference it in the future. And maybe it gives me an idea, you know, maybe it doesn't give me an idea today. Maybe it gives me an idea, you know, 10 years now. Five years and I would whatever is. So he has this idea, he calls the ruthless edit. Again, his whole thing is you got to do more to get to less, right? Less is better, but you got to do more to get there. So he says, listen, you made 25 songs. You need 10, do not pick 10. Ask yourself, what are the five that I absolutely

cannot live without? And then before you add anything else, ask, what could I add to these five that I cannot live without that would make it better and not worse? So that is the idea of Ruth has said it. I love that idea. This was, this might be my favorite thing he said, because I have,

“I have this like negative internal monologue that I think is absent from Ruben. And I think if I”

learn how to adapt like his mindset more than my own mindset, I'll have more, like I'll have more and drill experience for this my life, right? So he says, do you have an engine of constant dissatisfaction?

which is very common that I've heard a lot of people have. But his answer was really surprising. He says, no, I'm pleased with the work that we did. I'm excited to keep working. It's fun. I don't know what else I do with myself. I like making things. It's fun. I feel like, oh, this is so good. This is so good. I feel like it's my reason to be on the planet. So I just keep doing it. And the elaborates like, how do you arrive at this where you just don't have regrets?

If it could be better, I would have kept working on it. If it could be better, it's not done. I have done everything I can to make it the best it can be. I can't do more than that. So there's

nothing to be critical of. And this is his framework for his music, this mental model that I think

I'm going to remember and take with me. My work is almost like a diary entry. Everything we make is a reflection in a moment of time. It could be a day. It could be a year. It is a reflection in a moment at time. So it's like, I can't go back. His point is like, I can't go back and listen to stuff. I did 25 years ago. Oh, I do it differently now because I did it to the best of my ability as that version of Rick Ruben. It is a diary entry. It's not perfection. I like that idea.

I think I think that's actually really, really helpful. And he also says something's really, really smart. He just nails regret. It's just a fantastic explanation of why it's something

“you have to do. You don't want this in your older life or when you're older rather. And so they're”

talking about this song that he did with Johnny Cash before Johnny Cash died and it's called hurt. And it is a cover of the guy from nine inch nails Trent Resner wrote this song when he's 20. Okay. So he writes a song when he's 20. It's all about regret and pain and all this stuff. And so Rick Ruben is going to say, "Hey, coming out of Trent Resner at 20 is one thing. Coming out of Johnny Cash when you're 70 years old, you're at the end of your life.

It has a completely different meaning." And so, no matter if I sell myself a seat, Rick Ruben just nails regret, I'm just going to read it to you. When you're 20 years old and talking about regret, it's heartbreaking. But it's heartbreaking in a different way because you have your whole life to figure it out. When you're looking back over your life at the end of your life with regret, it's brutal. It's brutal. And I love that he repeated that the way he ended it.

It's brutal. It's brutal. He said it twice. It's the thing we have to avoid at all costs. Because at that point, there's nothing you can do about it. Here's another random idea for you.

The first thing that Rick asks when he's working with somebody else is what's the first thing

that got you into music. So, understanding of why are you doing what you're doing. It's so important. We talk about that all the time. Not only for us to know why we're doing what we're doing, but then to explain it to your customers. Customers resonate. They want to know why you're doing what you're doing. Another great line. This one comes from the documentary. He says these things that we don't understand and cannot explain happen regularly. And so these things that we don't understand and we

cannot explain, they happen regularly. Another great line. Negativity is the enemy of creativity. Now he talks about how magical music is, why he thinks magic and pro wrestling. They all combine, they all understand the same thing. And he says they allow you to understand principles of how there

“is the surface reality where I think most people spend their time. That's what he's saying.”

And then there's this whole other bigger story going on behind it. So think of you, think of you watch a magic trick. You see it happy, you can't believe. And he's like, that's what most people are like, oh, I can't believe that. That's what they're focused on.

Rick is always focused on like what's the actual story happening behind it. Same thing we listen to

now. He knows I had to do that song a thousand times wrestling. It's almost like theater, like live theater. Like you're engaged in what's happening in the ring. I'm focused. I'm interested in like what's the story. How did they they wrote out the storyboards? Who are the characters? What rules are playing? What are the psychological effects they're doing? And so that idea there's always this whole other big story going on behind it. Then he talks about the importance of ignorance of being naive before you

try to something. This has popped up over and over again in history of entrepreneurship. There's so many examples like the founder saying, hey, if I knew how hard, if I knew what I didn't know,

“I wouldn't have started. If I knew how hard this going to be, how long was actually going to take?”

I wouldn't have ever started. So he says the amateur mind possesses a valuable lack of knowledge about rules. When matched with passion and gumption, gravity ceases to exist and new things take flight. That's just fantastic language. When matched with passion and gumption, gravity ceases to exist and new things take flight. So he talks about using what he learned from professional wrestling in the early days of his career as marketing. There's a video they played in the documentary.

That's happening in 1985 when he's trying to go out and promote the BC Boys album. And he's like yelling into, he's getting an interview on the streets in New York with a BC Boys and a reporter. And he's like super hype. And you hear that. And he's like, people that realize, like, I was just copying the bad guy wrestler character that I grew up on. He goes, that was performance art as a

rude. I mean, not really like, I didn't take it as a mean way. But he's like, oh, I'm obviously talking

over your head. This interview is over because he's like, the BC Boys is the most important thing

to ever happen to music. You know, if you've ever watched professional wrestling, this like,

“they're over the top. Like, this is the best thing ever happened. Like, this is the most important”

thing. It's completely provocative. I guess at the point. And the follow-up question to this is interesting. They're like, well, he was asked. Like, using over the top professional wrestling marketing efforts did it matter to you that a lot of people didn't understand what you were doing. So people with all, it's kind of a jerk. Maybe it's kind of crazy. He's yelling, saying, he really believes the BC Boys is the best thing ever happened to music. You know, how can you say

that there's a Beatles? There's all these other people that existed before that? And so he's like, did it matter to you that a lot of people didn't understand. And he had a one-word answer that was

perfect. Never. Let's go back to this unbelievable self-belief he had. They interview his college

roommate. And he said, Rick was the most confident 19-year-old I ever met. Even if he didn't know, he said and did like he knew. Another thing I love from the documentary. He has, I mean, this shouldn't be surprised to you and I at this point, but he has extensive historical knowledge about his industry. So in the documentary, it shows us this beautiful library. It's two-story library he has in his studio. And it contains all kinds of things. Like artifacts and all these

it, like he takes, he's got a lot of old books in there, music, movies. He's such he's taking a, using the world as a classroom. I guess the way I think about this, use the world as a classroom and then apply like all the ideas you're using to your work. And he actually has a copy of the very first record that ever mentions the word hip-hop. The industry that he is partially credited with founding and he went down and tracked the record. The first time that the word hip-hop

ever, ever appeared in recorded music was in 1968, almost 20 years before the founding of Death Jam. And what I was interested about that is in the documentary. So we already go into, like, you clearly see, he'll constantly ask his artist to go back, like he's working with Lincoln Park at the time and he's like, hey, go back and listen to all these records. And it's records that were made like 30 or 40 years before. And what was interesting is how some people didn't. So he's

meeting in 2018 with this rapper called Little Yati and he's a young kid. So I'm not like at the point, I think he's like 22 or something like that when he's recording this. So when he's doing the documentary, so no shade to him, but like he blew up real fast and hip-hop in his since disappeared. And it shouldn't make, it shouldn't exactly be surprising that he disappeared because this is what he says in the documentary. I don't know nothing about the history of rap. I was born in 1997. Why do I know need to know

about what somebody else did? Why do I need to go research somebody else? And so this idea

“is just like, it's normal for humans to fail to learn lessons of history. That's why people”

that study history that make it a part of their lives for the rest of their lives just have a massive advantage. This is a very old idea. Cicero. So this over 2000 years, almost 2000 years ago,

to be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

Little Yati had remained a child and his career has suffered as a result. Going back to great ideas that Rick Ruben said, he says, all the most interesting things happen when you're making stuff, no one else is making. A few more great quotes from this documentary. This says, somebody describing Rick Ruben, which I love this line. He's living in four different centuries at once. Another great description of him, kind of this reality distortion field. I don't think that he's backed in

reality at all, which is probably one of the reasons he's so successful. And then two more lines from the documentary, which I think is just a perfect mentality to have. My reason, this is Rick talking, my reason to exist is to be of service and in the last thing, mainly I'm a researcher. I'm always looking for a better way to do everything. And I never accept whatever the accepted version

“of something is as, oh, that's how it's supposed to be. It is an endless search. So let's go back”

to the early days. So it was early career. He hasn't left deaf jam. He hasn't left New York to go to California. So it's like the second part of his career. And so Chuck D, which is the main, I guess, rapper and in public enemy. And he's like, okay, I got to sign this guy. I got to work with them. And this is really just the value of persistence. Feeling that Chuck D was the next greatest artist, Rubin had to convince Chuck D of all that. This is Rubin describing that. He considered himself a

grown man with a family and a regular job. I put his phone number on a post a note on my phone and I would call it every day and just keep bugging him. Saying, we really have to make a record. It's time to make a record. It took six months until Chuck D said, maybe. And think about the alternate reality because public enemy because one of the most influential hip-hop groups of all time, they're hugely influenced to all the artists to come after them. And the idea is like,

no, I didn't even, Chuck didn't even think it was possible. It's like, you know, there's no

I'm a family and a normal job. And if it wasn't for Rick Rubin's persistence, there's a very

“real possibility that public enemy never existed. And again, I think that's another example of like”

him transferring his confidence to your punishable confidence that he has on other people. Like, that's just extremely valuable for people to do that. It's almost like an act of service. It's like, I believe in you so much. I'm going to make you believe in you. So at this point, he gets interested in saying, hey, I want to also produce a lot of rock records. This is going to cause a split of deaf jam. But before I get there, it goes back to this his obsession with simplicity. He says,

it doesn't matter who I'm working with. I apply the same basic formula. Keep its sparse. Strip down

the sound to something straightforward, but powerful. And so this move by Rubin to go more into rock.

It's actually going to cause a rift and then I wrote this didn't take long because you figure there, their partnership only lasted what three, four years. If that, so it says this shift was an indication of the growing distance between between the partners are Rubin and Russell Simmons. And so what he's about to do here by instinct is something that as mentioned a lot of times, by people that admire him, like he had the money, the fame,

and the success of deaf jam. Who? At the, at the, almost a peek of the popularity says, nope, you're causing me to compromise what I want to make. So I'll just leave it all. He leaves deaf jam. Russell still runs it. And so they want to have a meeting, Rick says he can still remember where they went and having this conversation even many decades later. And he's so he says he asks Russell, do you want to leave? And he said, no. And I said,

okay, fine, I'll leave. Rubin said, if I would have stayed, it would have been completely different. I don't know if it would have been the same successful thing that it is. The reason I left deaf jam had to do with mine and Russell's vision of our company growing apart. Rubin said that he and Simmons have been stepping on each other's toes a lot and kind of growing apart creatively. They weren't communicating. I felt like my vision was being compromised. And I'm sure he felt like his

was, too. Reflecting on this time with deaf jam and the labels influence on the hip-hop scene, Rubin said, it really was a wave. We just happened to be in a good spot on the wave. The wave was coming. And that was really interesting because the way he said he's like, listen, I was just the right person, the right set of skills, the right point of history. But that wave was going to happen with or without me. It's exactly what convinced Paul Allen

and Bill Gates to stop focusing on school and going all in on Microsoft. And so it's a fantastic paragraph that's in the biography of Bill Gates called Hard Drive. But it says Gates and Allen

were convinced that the computer industry was about to reach critical mass. And when it exploded,

it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath and jumped as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane. And this is the punchline, this is the most important part. They could either lead their revolution or be swept along by it. So one of the most successful problems that Rick ever produced was the Red Hot Chili Puppers blood sugar sex magic.

“I just got a couple highlights from this chapter that I think are just applicable to all kinds”

of great work in all kinds of fields. So the first thing is the importance of differentiating your product. So it says they declared that the Red Hot Chili Puppers have never been part of any movement or any collective thing or any existing category. We just try to create our own categories. Another line from this says it's not about being this is Rick talking about what when he was working on some. It's not about being fancy. It's about serving the song. It's not about being fancy

for our purposes. It's about serving the customer. And this is the band describing what's like working with Rick on this album. His participation was incredibly nonchaline. He just comes by and shows out sometimes horizontally. He's got a pen and paper and is somewhere between a nap and a meditation. So that that line's kind of funny. It's like some comes by sometimes horizontally. So there's a you'll see this in documentary. I saw this in an ad. Samsung did for

Jay-Z album like a decade ago. We're Jay-Z invites the producers that worked on his album. It's like Ferrell, Timberland, Rick Rubin. They're all in the studio in New York City. And they're playing the album and Rick just lays down on the couch and kind of closes his eyes and taps his feet.

So that's something he's been doing for a long time. They said he has an incredible head for arrangements.

And again, part of that at this point, he's 20 years into his career. No, maybe 15 years into his career. How much music has he to listen to? How much music has he studied? He, again, he has this

“encyclopedic knowledge historical knowledge of his industry. And I think it's really important for”

two reasons. One, no one can, once you establish a space of knowledge, no one can take it from you. And two, it's going to constantly inform that historical knowledge of studying the great work that came before you is going to constantly inform all the work that you do for the rest of your career. And then this is Rick Rubin describing why he refuses to chase vads or trends. This was fantastic. He says the newest sounds have a tendency to sound old when the next new sound

comes along. But a grand piano sounded great 50 years ago and will sound great 50 years from now. I try to make records that have a timeless quality. And so one of the things that he did that he

world. It's a guy named flee, but what Rick is about to say here is I really think he goes back to

“he's talking about the beginning of the book. The role he plays is like listen, every band player,”

every person on the team, you know, is focused on their role. I'm the only one that's not concerned about your role, but how your role affects the whole. So it says Rubin described the evolution that occurred. Up until that time, flee's base playing was a particular style. He was famous for it. He was considered one of the best base players in the world because of his style. But when we started working together, that base playing that made him one of the best didn't necessarily serve the songs in the

best way. This reminded me of when I read that gigantic like 600 page biography of Michael Jordan. And Michael was a fantastic individual basketball player, but he couldn't get past the Detroit pistons in the playoffs and he failed year after year. It wasn't a turn till he learned how to be the best teammate play as a team, not just an individual person that they actually got we're able to get to the next level. That same process is very similar to what Rick is describing us here.

He's like, let's say he's well known. At that time, they thought Michael Jordan was the best basketball player in the league, but he hadn't win a championship because the best players don't win, the best teams do. But when we started working together that base player, that base playing,

“that made him one of the best didn't necessarily serve the songs in the best way. It was more about”

the base being great. It was more about Jordan being great. And the song is more important than the base and the team is more important than a player. So that's me obviously trying to tie that all together. Starting with that record, Flee changed the way he played. And so he says, this is what Flee said about that. He goes, I consciously avoided anything busy or fancy. I avoided saying, hey, I'm Flee, the bitch in base player. And then he said he goes, I tried to get small enough to get inside the song

as opposed to stepping out. The focus is not on me. So one thing I really admire about studying

Rick Rubin was that he doesn't rest on his laurels. He's always looking for the next challenge.

You could just say, I'm going to produce the same wrap records over and over again. I already had some hit rock and metal albums. Let me just do that. He's like, no, I need another challenge. I need to keep in challenges how you keep growing and adding more skills, right? So in 1994, he's like, I'm going to work with Johnny Cash. And the way he decided to do this is fascinating. So this is a 1994 Rick Rubin was focused on a great challenge. Resurrecting the career of

country music legend Johnny Cash. With Rubin's trademark production by reduction approach, the albums would bring the legendary Johnny Cash his first platinum success in years and showcased a more raw side to him. Rubin explained how he came to work with Johnny. He says it seemed like it would be a fun challenge to work with an established artist. But I wasn't interested in working with a legend at the top of their game.

I'd been thinking about who was really great, but not currently making really great records. What great artists are not in a great place right now. So Johnny and Rick meet and Rick tells Johnny his blueprint. Rubin had a real simple plan. Wherever the magic is, we will follow it.

And so this is the first of their hit albums together. Says it was recorded in Rick Rubin's

living room. Cash recalled there was no echo, no slap back, no overdubbing, no mixing. It just goes back to the reduction by production by reduction right? No overdubbing, no mixing. Just me playing my guitar and singing. I didn't even use a pick. Every guitar note on the album came from my thumb. And this is just, this is just great. I just love that this happened. So it says we had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Our city Johnny Cash had nothing to lose and everything to gain

and wearing his heart on the sleeve. I know I'm 62 years old and I've been around twice. And now it looks like I might have a third shot at a new audience. He found Rick Rubin helped him find that new audience. So MTV ones are putting Johnny Cash's video for the first song and it becomes really popular to an age group that probably didn't even know who Johnny Cash existed or much less all the hits that he had 20, 30, 40 years earlier. And the album won a Grammy. And then this is the

crazy part. What I mentioned earlier, how Rick can just invite, like he can, he could take the

“conference that he has. And again, I think it's like you can clearly transfer your emotions”

both good and bad to the people around you, right? But this idea we have a legend, somebody that had already got to the top of their profession and still having doubts about their ability. Rick made me have faith in myself again. He made me believe in myself and my music, which I thought was gone forever. He's working with a different band. I just want to pull out one sentence here, because that was fantastic. And he's describing the guy named Williams describing

what it was like working with Rick. Williams described being put the way recording, regimen, wearing Rick Rubin made us record every track about 50 times each to obtain the good dynamics. That is a main theme that we should take away from Rick Rubin. Less is more. But to get

this guy, Donovan, that's in this band, says, "Well, you here is 14 songs. But there's 86 songs that you haven't heard. Once the project began, I started writing daily. I wrote 100 songs over a period of a year and so again, the public praises people for what they practice in private.

They are praising these 14 songs. They didn't see the 86 others that I had to do and never use

just to get to the right 14." And then there's just some great stories in the book. Like, he decides, "Hey, I'm going to get together Tom Petty." So there's a fantastic picture in the studio of Tom Petty, Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash. And so this is the album I think that song is on. They played it on the Lex Freeman podcast that that was fantastic. Just to watch Rick, listen to it, it was really interesting to me. So it sounded very different and you know Johnny's

like Johnny's known as a country, as like a country, like music legend. And yet, because it sound had evolved, he wasn't getting the like the attention or the support of his industry. And so this just made me laugh out loud. So it says the music got major airplay on college radio and alternative

rock stations upon its release, but no love from traditional country radio. But the rest of America

love the album. Ironically, the album won a Grammy Award for best country album. Celebrating the achievement in the fuck the system fashion. Rick Rubin ran a full page ad in Billboard featuring the classic photo of Johnny Cash, middle finger aimed at the camera with a caption that read. American recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville Music Establishment and Country Radio for your support. And so Rick Rubin talks about the importance of selecting

“the people that you work with. You have to make sure you like them. You have to make sure you admire”

them. There's no point in working with somebody who's going to like admire a trust. And as a result, it's not just that this is not just business. Like that's not true. This is extremely personal. We're doing it's extremely personal. And so there's a, there's this band called system of a down and one of the artists in system of a down talks about like, what was it, what's at like working with Rick Rubin? He gives you your whole self. And so this is production with Rick

doesn't mean you're going to sit in the studio. It might mean you go to a record store or you go to a beach or you go for a drive. You bond as people first and then you put these songs and ricks like the song Doctor. If you play something for him, it's like going in for a checkup. He's

like here. Take a couple of these vitamins and see how you feel. And the songs always feel better

after his suggestions. And so you do. He's just so easy to be around. That's why people keep going back to him. And so one of the groups I kept coming back to Rick Rubin were the Red Hot Chili Puppers. And so they're building, they're doing the album California California Cation at this point in the book. And one of the guitarists had left the group. And then he came back. But he wasn't playing as much. So this is going to remind me a few weeks ago, I think it was what maybe

episode 240 biography of Mozart that he did. There's a line. There's something that that happens to that book that I don't think I'll ever forget. And it's the importance of like, not really trying to find the most efficient way. Like sometimes just exposing yourself to hours after hours of hard work. Like that's going to build up skill sets at other people that have not gone through all that time to lack. And so he's coming back. I don't know how this pronounced his name. So I'm

going to call him F. F felt somewhat rusty. I hadn't spent too much time playing guitar over the last few years. So my hands were weak. They didn't really get extremely strong until we almost finished recording. So that had an effect on my style of guitar playing during the recording. I was playing guitar constantly. I would go home and play for five hours after a 10 hour recording session. But the main takeaway there was the fact that his music, what he's saying is like the music got

“better the stronger my hands got. The only way to get your hands strong is to actually put in the”

hours. And so that's exactly what happened. Mozart, there's this some kind of instrument called like the viola or something like that. And if I remember correctly, he needs like extreme right hand strength. And so a lot of Mozart's competitors that practice less than Mozart couldn't actually make the instrument perform to its best of its ability because they lacked a hand strength because they didn't practice. Mozart practice Mozart had the hand strength. Mozart then applies that talent that

the people that don't practice lack. And he's able to get magic out of an instrument that his competitors did not. And then in just a few sentences, I really feel we get this kind of blueprint that Rick Ruben like the blueprint of how Rick Ruben works and that we can then apply to so many of his things. And there's four things I picked out. How this is how Rick Ruben works. Number one, he works on one thing at a time. Number two, he gives it his undivided attention. Number three,

he only works with A players. His job is not to motivate you. A players motivate themselves. And number three, he tries to get his thinking as clear as possible. We found that for us,

“we need a producer to be devoted to us for a few months. That's what Rick does. We've got his”

undivided attention. He doesn't do any disciplining. We do it ourselves. I love making music

that gets distracted or comes to the rehearsal studio with something else on his mind or he

“are carrying his personal life into the studio. He is very focused. He's got a clear head about”

everything going on. So again, work on one thing at a time, undivided attention only work with a players and get your thinking as clear as possible. One of my favorite and funniest lines that comes from David Olgawee talks about, hey, all great companies, all great institutions. They're run by a single formidable individual and he has a better grasp of language and I do, but he says, search all the parks in your city. You'll find no statues of committees. Johnny Cash is talking

about why he's some of the last albums he ever did. We're so great. The common theme I see in these albums is they were not made by committee. They were made by Rick Rubin and I. The guitars from the Red Hot Chili Peppers like IF, I just told you about, together, F and Rick Rubin explored another genre of music to find inspiration. Me and Rick would work together every day and he's got, we and Rick would get together every day, excuse me. And he's got these CDs of hits from the 60s. So

“right now, and this point in the book where we are in time, they are using ideas from work done”

40 years before they are meeting. That's another one of Rick's standard MOs. He's constantly saying, hey, I know we're working in 1995. I know we're working in 2005. Go check out what was done in the 50s. Go check out what these guys were doing in the 70s. Go check out this other thing. And so we're going to see Rick Rubin use two parts of his philosophy here again, persistence, and then production by reduction. And so at this point, he's going to do the exact same thing.

He's like, hey, who else is was really good at one point. He's really capable of doing great work, but hasn't yet. It's like hasn't shown that they can still do great work. So he goes and tries to work with Neil Diamond, and he just does it relentlessly. Rubin was eager to work with Diamond,

and unabashedly described his pursuit of the artist as stalking. At first, Diamond found Rubin's

enthusiasm, a little scary. I didn't know what to make of it. So eventually his persistence pays off. They start working together. And it says, once again, working together, Rubin insisted Diamond track all of the album songs playing acoustic guitar while he sang. That's exactly what he said. He's like, listen, a person with just strumming guitar and singing sounded good 50 years ago, just like a piano sounded good 50 years ago. And if it sounds good 50 years ago, it'll sound

if it's 5 that long. That idea, that format survived that long. It is more likely to survive 50 years into the future. So he's like, we're going to all the other crap that your producers had you do with the bells and whistles. We're getting rid of all that stuff. It's not necessary. And so says the singer hadn't recorded like that since the 1960s. And he was reluctant to try it. Diamond would later concede that Rick was right. Rubin wanted to bring back the Neil Diamond,

who made those old records great with a stripped down sound. And then the way the way Neil Diamond describes Rick, I'm only including this because it made me laugh. Since despite his appearance which can be really intimidating, Rick is a big, lovable bear of a man. The only I'd probably had was with this habit of hugging. At first I was taken aback after a while I got to like it. He's like father earth taking you into his possum. I don't know why the baby laughed. That's funny.

And then towards the end of the book, I just realized as I'm reading this, I was like, oh, he's developed a very personal business philosophy. Rubin wanted freedom and not to have to punch a clock or work in a traditional corporate way. Rubin has always kept a full vision of a project in mind as part of his work. He thought about the artwork, the marketing, videos, brand building, and so on. The panic music industry may be focused on how to sell music,

but Rick Rubin has always been focused on making great music first. He is driven by what is really

great. He's very hard to please. Having someone around you like that makes you want to bring something in that's fantastic and not just mediocre. And the effect of this very personal business philosophy is summarized here. Rubin attributes his success to very simple core principles. Try to understand culture as well as music. Surround yourself with people interested in music for the right reasons and be true to the things that you love. His great love and fandom for music

has led to honesty and purity in his work. His impact has been felt by a generation of music fans who would credit Rubin with producing the soundtrack to their lifetime. And that is where I'll leave it. I absolutely love this book. I loved going deep on Rick Rubin, the mind and the philosophy of Rick Rubin this week. I'll leave a link down below

“if you want to buy the book. It's a sports podcast at the same time. That is 255 books down”

1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon.