When Sol Price was 60 years old, the German investor who bought his company did something cruel. He fired Sol from FedMart, the company Sol had built from nothing over 21 years, and then changed the locks on his office doors overnight. Most men at 60, having just lost everything they'd built, would have taken their savings and retired to a comfortable life. Sol Price did something else instead. He leased an office one floor above the company that had just thrown him out. Then, every morning for the next year, he would ride the elevator past the FedMart offices where they'd locked him out, past the business he'd spent two decades creating. There, he hung exactly two things in his new office: a sign on the door reading "The Price Company" and three words above his desk: "Do it now." Seven months later, at an age when most executives are planning retirement parties, Sol invested $800,000 of his own money into a corrugated steel warehouse in an industrial district where nobody could find it. The first week, Price Club sold $32,000 worth of goods. He needed $200,000 a week to avoid bankruptcy. By his 61st birthday, he'd turned it profitable. And by 70, Price Club had become the blueprint for Costco, Sam's Club, and every future warehouse store in America. FedMart, the company that locked him out, soon disappeared into bankruptcy. Price Club, the company he started in response, became the model for a trillion-dollar industry. Your next chapter isn't about your age. It's about your next decision: Do it now.

When his competitors sold sugar below cost as a loss leader, Sol Price did something unthinkable. He put up signs in his store beside his sugar telling his customers to shop at the competition. His philosophy changed retail forever:

Walmart's founder Sam Walton "stole" from him (though he preferred to use the term "borrowed"). Costco's co-founder Jim Sinegal said he learned "everything" from him. Yet most people have never heard of Sol Price. He invented the warehouse club as we know it, pioneered membership retail, and his $1.50 hot dog deal still hasn't changed price in over 4 decades. This week's episode: the story of a teacher who built his competitors and launched an industry.

Most companies fight bottlenecks wherever they appear. Amazon does something brilliantly counterintuitive. Ryan Petersen @typesfast explains what he learned from studying their operations. Smart operations don't eliminate bottlenecks. They deliberately put them where only money can solve them, not where people get stuck.

Ryan Petersen stepped aside as CEO of Flexport for someone more "qualified" and learned a powerful lesson: Nobody will ever care about your company as much as you do.

New episode with Flexport Founder and CEO Ryan Petersen @typesfast, who's building the hidden engine powering global trade. From discovering secret iPhone shipments that triggered a call from Steve Jobs, to flying 500 million masks into the U.S. during a global shutdown, to why he stepped down as CEO only to return and transform the company, there are stories here you won't find anywhere else. Ryan shares Charlie Munger's advice on finding success through "dumb competition," why quality costs less than efficiency in logistics, and how understanding tariffs at a granular level can save millions. This is a masterclass in building a tech company in an old-school industry, the power of obsession, and why the best bottleneck is the one you choose yourself. Watch here or wherever you get your podcasts. Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (04:58) First 'Start Up' (05:38) Living Abroad In China (07:20) China To Silicon Valley (11:13) Steve Jobs and the iPhone 3G Launch (13:41) Lessons From Import Genius (16:30) Flexport Origins and Y Combinator (20:13) Lessons From Paul Graham (23:10) Flexport Early Days (33:46) COVID Era Flexport (40:32) Hiring Flexport's First COO (43:24) Stepping Down As CEO of Flexport (45:25) Taking Efficiency Too Far (48:53) Telling Paul Graham I Was Stepping Down From Flexport (50:20) Lessons From Other CEOs (53:27) How To Hire The Best Employees (55:53) Lessons From Paul Graham's Closed Door Talk (57:50) How to Train The Best Employees (59:43) The Value Of A 6 Page Monthly Business Review (01:01:23) Origin Of Tariffs And Their Uses (01:03:18) Why Do Tariffs Matter? (01:06:14) Tricks For Dealing With Tariffs (01:09:29) Tricks For Dealing With Tariffs Illegally (01:16:15) Key Indicators Of Recessions (01:17:52) Dealing With Operational Bottlenecks (01:24:03) Lessons From Charlie Munger (01:26:33) Lessons From Peter Kaufman (01:34:13) What Is Success For You?

Former Attorney General John Mitchell delivered this crude threat to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein about their investigation linking the Watergate break-in directly to the White House.. The message was clear: stop publishing or we'll destroy her and her paper. The Nixon Administration tried going after the Post's TV licenses and even launched an IRS investigation. The Washington Post share price dropped sharply and Katharine was even threatened with prison. She never blinked. She kept publishing, upholding her and her father's principle that newspapers exist to tell the truth.

She entered leadership unsure and underestimated. Eight years later she was staring down a president. In June 1971, just days after taking The Washington Post Co. public, Katharine Graham authorized publishing the Pentagon Papers, fully aware she might face criminal charges. When the Nixon White House retaliated by threatening the Post's TV licenses, she backed her newsroom and kept going. The reporting helped set in motion the constitutional processes that ended with Nixon's resignation. From a Georgetown housewife who once called herself a "doormat wife" to a publisher who transformed a paper her father bought for $825,000 into a powerhouse, Kay (as her friends called her) documented this journey in her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir with unflinching honesty. Her discovery: courage isn't the absence of fear, it's doing what is right despite being terrified. How did she find that courage? As Katharine herself put it: "I put one foot in front of the other, shut my eyes and stepped off the edge." Watch or listen to Katharine Graham's amazing story wherever you get your podcasts.

We can exhaust ourselves trying to change people. But what if the answer isn't pushing harder? The late Daniel Kahneman offered this reframe during our 2019 conversation.

Your first take feels “right” mostly because it’s familiar. In our 2019 episode with Daniel Kahneman (1934–2024), he explained how we seize an impression and then spend the rest of the meeting defending it instead of testing it.