- The piece is about Winston Churchill's self-confidence and ambition at a young age.
- The author recommends a product called Vesto for investing idle cash in businesses.
- The author also promotes their own podcast and offers a membership for direct communication.
- The piece discusses a book called "Hero of the Empire" about Churchill's early life and ambitions.
- Churchill had a strong belief in his destiny for greatness and desired personal courage and fame.
- He was willing to risk his life to achieve glory and political success.
- Churchill's actions and behavior were criticized for not conforming to societal expectations.
- He pursued opportunities for fame and advancement in wars and military missions.
- Churchill used his connections and resources to achieve his goals.

- The piece discusses Winston Churchill's self-belief and megalomania
- Churchill admired the fearlessness and devotion to destruction of the Pashtuns he fought against in India
- Churchill believed he was destined for greatness and could not be killed
- He stood out on the battlefield to make himself impossible to miss
- Churchill believed that he was meant to do something great with his life and had faith in his star
- He left the army to pursue a career in public office but initially failed
- Churchill practiced and rehearsed his speeches extensively to overcome his discomfort with public speaking
- Despite setbacks, Churchill was determined to succeed and believed in himself more than anyone else did
- He retreated to his family's palace, Blenheim, which served as a reminder of his potential and the weight of his family's legacy

- The piece discusses the biography of Winston Churchill and his experiences during the Boer War in South Africa.
- Churchill seeks glory and political power through his writing and decides to become a war correspondent.
- He observes the arrogance and overconfidence of British military officers on the boat to South Africa.
- The Boers, on the other hand, are perpetually prepared and have a deep knowledge of the terrain.
- The British underestimate the Boers and suffer heavy losses due to their predictability and lack of preparation.
- The Boers' marksmanship and determination give them an advantage in the war.
- The British generals, including Penn Simmons, display overconfidence and are killed as a result.
- The British Army is slow, burdened by possessions, and fails to adapt to the environment.
- Churchill's actions and attitude during the war are compared to Theodore Roosevelt's.
- Churchill takes risks and puts himself in harm's way to get ahead.
- The British and Boers have different approaches to war, with the Boers being more prepared and adaptable.

- The British and Boers had different approaches to war, with the British viewing it as an adventure and the Boers treating it as a trade.
- The Boers were skilled marksmen and used cover to their advantage, while the British learned from them and adapted their tactics.
- Churchill was captured by the Boers and was initially shocked by their civility towards prisoners.
- Despite being a prisoner, Churchill was determined to escape and made multiple plans, but was ultimately successful on his own.
- Churchill's escape caused a national mobilization and he was hunted by the Boers.
- Churchill relied on audacity and followed train tracks to navigate towards Portuguese East Africa.
- During his escape, Churchill found himself praying and later received a fortunate break.
- Churchill experienced moments of worry and fear, but this escape was particularly paralyzing for him.

- The protagonist, Churchill, finds himself in a desperate situation, lacking resources and surrounded by danger.
- He stumbles upon a coal mine and knocks on the door of the mine's manager, John Howard, who agrees to help him escape.
- Churchill is hidden deep in the mine, but eventually moves to a secret hiding space in Howard's office.
- Churchill finds solace in books and spends hours reading every day.
- Churchill's escape relies heavily on the assistance of others, including Charles Burnham, who helps him hide in bales of wool on a train.
- Burnham takes great risks and bribes guards to ensure Churchill's safety.
- After three days, Churchill celebrates crossing the border, but is not yet safe.
- Burnham leads Churchill to the British consulate, and their journey remains dangerous.
- Finally, Churchill sees the Union Jack flying from the roof of the consulate, symbolizing his escape.
- Exhausted but triumphant, Churchill demands to see the consul general.

- Churchill, a filthy madman, demanded to see the council personally
- The council secretary tried to turn him away but Churchill shouted and demanded to see them
- The Consul General heard the commotion and asked Churchill his name
- This was one of the last times anyone needed to ask Churchill his name
- To find out the full story, it is recommended to buy the book and support the podcast.

The text discusses Winston Churchill's self-confidence and ambition, as well as his belief in his destiny for greatness. It mentions a product called Vesto for investing idle cash, promotes the author's podcast and offers a membership for direct communication. The piece also discusses Churchill's experiences during the Boer War in South Africa and his determination to succeed despite setbacks. Churchill's escape from the Boers is highlighted, along with the assistance he received from others. The summary concludes by recommending buying the book to learn the full story.

What I learned from reading Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard.

Winston Churchill may be the most self-confident young man that I've ever studied on the podcast, and that's saying a lot because the people that we study on the podcast, their self-confidence levels are through the roof.

Just wait until you hear the way Churchill talked about himself when he was younger.

Before we get into that, I wanna tell you about a product that several of my founder friends are using and that is Vesto.

Vesto makes it easy for you to invest your business's idle cash.

They can actually help businesses of all sizes with their treasury management.

When your business owns treasury bills, the US government has guaranteed your cash and you earn interest on the cash while it sits there.

I have 1 founder friend who's raised a bunch of venture capital money and he uses Vesto as a way to extend his runway.

And I have another founder friend who bootstrapped his company and he uses Vesto to get a better rate of return than he would get if it was just sitting in his bank account.

If this sounds interesting to you, highly recommend you go over to getvesto.com.

I know the founder, Ben, I've spent a bunch of time with him.

If you schedule a demo, you go to vesto.com, you schedule a demo, You actually speak directly to the founder, Ben.

I think he's incredibly impressive, and I think if you speak to him, you'll think he's impressive too.

You can do this at getvesto.com, and I will leave a link down below.

When you speak to Ben, make sure you tell him that David from Founders sent you.

If you haven't already become a member of the founders AMA feed, I highly recommend that you do so.

You actually get a private email address in the confirmation email and I read every single 1 of those emails myself.

I take the questions that I get from the emails and I answer them by making these short AMA episodes.

I've already made 38 of these episodes, so you sign up and you can actually listen to them immediately.

In your email, you can also leave your name and a link to your website so you can promote the company and what you're working on to other members.

And you can listen to new AMA episodes every week.

To become a member and get access to all of this, the link is down below and available at founderspodcast.com.

And lastly, I wanna recommend this excellent episode of Invest Like the Best.

It's episode 336 with my friend Jeremy Giffin.

It's called special situations in private markets.

It's almost 90 minutes straight of unique insight after unique insight.

I've heard from a ton of people that listen to this episode.

And if you don't know already, I'm actually doing a live show.

So invest like the best is run by my friend Patrick.

Me and Patrick are actually doing a live show in New York City on October 19th.

So come check that out if you want to see me live.

I will leave a link to both the episode and to get your tickets.

That's everything I need to tell you about.

Let's jump into this incredible story of Winston Churchill's capture and his thrilling escape.

Although he was still a very young man, Churchill was no stranger to situations of great personal peril.

He had already taken part in 4 wars on 3 different continents and had come close to death in each 1.

He had felt bullets whistling by his head in Cuba and saw his friends hacked to death in British India.

Although he had tried again and again in war after war to win glory, Churchill had returned home every time without the medals that mattered, no more distinguished or famous than he had been when he set out.

The Boer War, he believed, was his best chance to change that, to prove that he was not just the son of a famous man.

He was special, even extraordinary, and he was meant not just to fight for his country, but 1 day to lead it.

Although he believed this without question, he still had to convince everyone else.

The 1 scenario that Churchill had not envisioned was crossing enemy territory alone, without companions or provisions of any kind.

He didn't have a weapon, a map, a compass, or even any food.

Beyond the vaguest of outlines, he didn't even have a plan, just the unshakable conviction that he was destined for greatness.

That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Hero of the Empire, The Boer War, A Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill.

So about a year and a half ago, I read 1 of my favorite biographies of Winston Churchill.

It's episode 225 if you haven't listened to it.

But what's fascinating is the cover of that book made me think of something.

All the pictures in my mind and things that I've ever seen of Winston Churchill were like the Winston Churchill that fought the Nazis.

And yet the cover of Paul Johnson's book has 4 different pictures.

2 of them are of a young Winston Churchill.

So after that, I realized, hey, I should really read, well, I mean, what's the subtitle?

So I'm always fascinated by these biographies, and I've read a couple of them, where they cover like the first like, you know, 20, 30, maybe 40 years of somebody's life.

And so I ordered 2 books that I could find on Young Winston Churchill.

1 is called A Young Tycoon, and I ordered the book that I'm holding in my hand.

I will leave both linked below in case you wanna get them.

But the reason I wanted to start with this 1, is because the author of this book, Candace Millard, also wrote my...

I've read a bunch of books on Teddy Roosevelt.

But my favorite book so far that I've read on Teddy Roosevelt is this book called The River of Doubt, and Candace Millard was the author of that book as well.

So if I'm reading to understand what Winston Churchill was like, I might as well start with the author that I already love her work.

This book is only going to cover, this is incredible, it's an incredible story, This book's only going to cover the first 25 to 26 years of Winston Churchill's life, and then it ends.

There's a maxim that I repeat over and over again that became really obvious and really apparent the more you study history's greatest founders, and that is, belief comes before ability.

This book, if you had to summarize this book, that's how you would summarize it.

By the time Winston Churchill was 24, he is utterly convinced that it is his destiny to become Prime Minister of England.

And so let's jump into his personality and some of the things that were motivating him to make the decisions he made when he was a young man.

Since his earliest childhood memory, Churchill had been fascinated by war.

There is no ambition I cherish so keenly, he said, as to gain a reputation for personal courage.

And the important part of, or 1 of the important parts, I should say, of having this ambition for personal courage, to being interested in war, and then using, like, being a hero and becoming famous as a, like, an entry or gateway into politics, is he's doing this at the time when the British Empire is at its apex or its zenith.

At this point, it was, the British Empire covered more than a fifth of the world's land surface.

The British Empire had come to rule about a quarter of the human race.

It was 5 times the size of the Roman Empire.

By the time Churchill reached adulthood, the greatest threat to the empire no longer came from other major powers, but from the ever-expanding burden of ruling its own colonies.

So we are going to be in 1899 and 1900 for most of this book.

Now, this is why Churchill took an early interest in this.

To Churchill, such far-flung conflicts offered an irresistible opportunity for personal glory and advancement.

This book has a bunch of excerpts from letters that he wrote, books that he wrote.

There's a lot of correspondence between him and his mother And he tells her exactly what he wants.

Churchill was born into the highest ranks of British aristocracy.

And what I respect about him is he could have lived a life of privilege and a life of leisure.

And very much like Teddy Roosevelt, he desired to test himself and to live a full life and not just rest on the laurels of the like his family came before him.

For a member of Churchill's high social class, such bold unabashed ambition was a novelty.

This is actually really important because it's gonna come up over and over again.

He did not really act British or he did not act as he was supposed to act.

And so 1 thing that Churchill had from a very young age is this like, I don't even know how to describe it, like unbelievable, relentless, self-belief almost like this God complex.

And usually with that you have an indifference to the opinions of other people in regards to how you should behave or what you should be doing.

So it says, in his open pursuit of fame and popular favor, Churchill seemed far less Victorian, as he was expected to act, than Rooseveltian.

There's going to be a lot of parallels between a young Theodore Roosevelt and a young Winston Churchill in fact, there'll be a direct comparison a little later on this is some of the complaints that other people He's like you're not being Victorian.

You're not acting like you're an aristocrat.

Winston advertises himself as simply and as unconsciously as he breathes.

Churchill was widely criticized for being a self-advertiser.

And he did not care at all about this criticism.

He thought, hey, if I could actually seek fame, if I can win glory in these wars, and that's the way I'm going to break into political life." He says this explicitly.

He says, "...distinction, in turn, could be parlayed into political clout, the kind of public life that he longed for and which he believed was his destiny.

For that, he was willing to risk anything, even his life." And that's the important thing.

He was willing to risk his life on things that he believed in.

You know, they said he could have stayed, he could have spent his time playing polo or fox hunting or anything else.

Instead, he goes to Cuba as a military observer.

I think he's like 21 years old at the time.

And this is the first time that he gets up close with death.

He's actually, there's a bullet that goes right over his head and strikes and kills the horse that is standing next to him.

When he doesn't get the glory that he wants in Cuba, he's like, okay, well then I'll just go and fight in India and he'll use this is another thing.

And 2, he's completely fine pulling every single string and using every single relationship that he has to get what he wants.

Churchill had never had any qualms about pulling every string he had.

I am certainly not 1 of those who needs to be prodded.

And this is a great description of him at this time.

And so he goes to India to help the British fight the Pashtuns.

Now in his description of the enemy we see the traits that he admires in other people and then based on his actions this is what I mean I don't even know how to describe it.

Megalomania might be the way you describe it like his you'll see you know when you see what I'm talking about a minute in his actions it just shows you the level of self-belief in this his complete belief that he's like destined for greatness he can't be killed because there's no way he's too important and fate wouldn't have him just have like this normal ending.

The descriptions of Churchill's like self-belief in this book are my biggest takeaway from it, because it just happens, you know, page after page after page.

So let me just get into this and hopefully you'll see why.

It's incredible the way this guy thought about himself.

So he says, the passions fought hand to hand and face to face.

They seem terrifyingly heedless of their own safety or even survival.

And Churchill, you could his behavior, you could say the same thing about him.

They fought when they had no chance of winning, when they were alone on the battlefield when they had been shot and speared and bayoneted.

Careless of what injury they may receive, Churchill observed in awe they devote themselves to the destruction of their opponent.

And so this is what I mean about this like megalomaniacal self-belief.

Churchill understood that he could very easily be killed in the battle that lay before him, but he did not for a moment believe that he would be.

I have faith in my star, he said, that I am intended to do something in the world.

In fact, soon after arriving in India, he had told a fellow officer that he expected to be prime minister 1 day.

And so he does something, and the note I left myself on this page is like, I don't understand this, this I don't understand.

He's not trying to blend in on the battlefield, He literally wants to stand out.

So he gets this gray pony and his entire point is to stand out to the enemy.

Churchill took great satisfaction and knowledge that he would be impossible to miss.

I rode on my gray pony all along the front of the line of the skirmish line where everyone else was lying down in cover.

He would later confess foolish, perhaps, but given an audience, there is no act too daring or too noble.

This is the first time he's ever killed a person, says he would never know how many men he killed that day before help came, but even as he looked down on the mutilated bodies all around him, the bodies of men he knew, men very much like him, he knew that he would not share their fate.

More than that, He was meant to do something great with his life.

I do not believe the gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic and ending.

So I think I should actually pause and back up.

Like why am I doing so many, this is the third podcast I've done on Churchill.

You know, over the next few decades, I hope I do 10 or 15 or 20 different episodes on both of these people.

And the reason is, is because if you study the history of entrepreneurship, 2 people that are not like didn't start companies, they're not typical like entrepreneurs are mentioned over and over again by history's greatest entrepreneurs.

So if you're studying the history of history's greatest founders before World War 2, they all say the same thing, they're motivated and inspired by Napoleon.

After World War 2, Napoleon is still there, but then they bring up Churchill a lot.

And so I wanna know why some of the people that built the world's most successful companies ever were inspired by people like Churchill and Napoleon.

And there's so many times where Churchill's talking and writing and giving speeches where I'm like this just sounds like Napoleon and so this is the first time in the book where I got I'm reading this where it's like I don't believe the gods would create so potent of being as myself for so prosaic and ending I have no idea why but when I read that line I thought of something I learned in the book, The Mind of Napoleon that I did on episode 302.

And Napoleon said, if I have any ambition, it is so natural to me, so innate, so intimately linked with my existence that it is like the blood that circulates in my veins like the air that I breathe This innateness this self-belief is innate in Churchill he everything that happens to him He reads as an affirmation That he should believe what he believes about himself as sobering as Churchill had found the carnage that he had witnessed his faith in himself and the future had not for a moment been shaken on the contrary he was a clearly aware of the fact that the men all around him were killed and he emerged not just alive but whole nothing touched me he wrote I destroyed those who molested me and so past without any disturbance of body or mind but just because he has his level of self-belief doesn't mean he's always right he thought he could leave the army right he's like okay I think I've done enough I'm going I want to run his whole goal is like get glory in war and then parlay that into public office, right?

Then get elected to a basic level, and then eventually work my way up and become prime minister 1 day.

And so this is his first mistake, where he does this.

He's going to run for elected office and lose.

He knew he could believe that he was destined to do this, but it wasn't guaranteed.

It is not without some misgivings that I let go of my tow rope, he said, and commit myself unaided to the waves of life's oceans, propelled only by my own machinery.

He's saying, I will take the risk of not being a soldier anymore for my true goal.

This reminds me a lot when I got to the section of, if you've read any of Robert Caro's books, his multiple-part biography on Lyndon Johnson.

So LBJ, he had a plan to be president, and it started with getting elected to Congress.

If I'm remembering correctly, He even turned down the ability to run for the governor of Texas, because that's not my goal.

I'll have a better chance of getting there going to Congress first.

And so he has a lucky turn of events for him.

Unfortunately, 1 of the representatives dies unexpectedly of pneumonia.

So that opens up the opportunity for Churchill to run.

But this is where his relentless self-belief is going to be proven wrong temporarily.

So it says he was stricken down with pneumonia.

This was less than a month before the election.

Churchill got himself on the ticket, whether he was ready or not.

In his own mind, of course, he was more than ready.

There is no doubt, he wrote, that if anyone can win this seat I can and so as you can guess we know that he is going to lose the selection because this entire book is about his time in the boer war and specifically the fact that he becomes a POW, he gets captured, and then he has this daring, successful escape that makes him world famous.

What I did admire about his approach to running for office, even at a young age, though, is just how much he would practice.

He could use this relentless combination of practice and self-confidence.

Obviously the public praises people for what they practice in private.

Churchill's known his give some of the best speeches.

For Churchill, few things in life could compete with the thrill of climbing onto a stage, stepping behind a podium, and commanding the attention of every man in the room.

As much as he loved public speaking, it did not come naturally to him.

He overcame this problem with practice and perseverance." That is his quote.

Although he would become famous for his sharp wit, Churchill was also uncomfortable addressing an audience unless he had carefully written and exhaustively rehearsed every line of a speech.

Winston spent hours preparing for every formal lecture and even his brief remarks and would do so throughout his life.

A friend would later joke that Winston has spent the best years of his life composing his impromptu speeches.

And then in typical Churchill fashion, he starts to get slightly good at something.

And he's like, oh, I'm going to be the best in the world, best in the world at this.

It was clear to them that he had the potential become a great 1 perhaps even the greatest and so even with the self-belief even with the practice it's not good enough he loses his first election he is 24 years old at this point and so other politicians are making fun of them they say stuff like this I thought it was a young man of promise but it appears he's a young man of promises.

This searing assessment only hardened Churchill's resolve.

He had no money, no occupation, and it appeared no 1 who believed in him quite as much as he believed in himself.

The only thing he knew with any certainty was that in the end, whatever it took, he would succeed or quite literally die trying.

There's a quote, an image of a quote that I keep on my phone from this author, Steve Rinella, who also makes podcasts and shows on Netflix.

And he says, you're often driven by the hatred of the version of yourself that would quit.

And so he goes away to recover, to scheme, to plot, to figure out what his next move is.

His family, They have a family history that goes back like hundreds of years.

You gotta Google image search this thing.

So his family's palace is called Blenheim and this is where he's going to go.

Churchill had always believed that Blenheim it's history.

It's power to all had molded him creating the foundation for the great man he was destined to become we shape our buildings he said and then our buildings shape us Blenheim served as a painful reminder of his inability thus far to live up to it.

And so at this point, the palace is like this entire dedication to somebody who had lived 200 years before, which is John Churchill, who was believed to be 1 of the greatest generals in history.

And in fact, later on, Winston writes a biography of John Churchill.

And he said that he had 1 skill that made him indispensable.

And it was because of all the wars that he had won that he actually gets this palace.

And so it says, nearly 200 years later, the weight of John Churchill's legacy followed his ambitious young descendant wherever he went.

So I was sitting here thinking about what's taking place on these few pages, what's going on in the mind of Winston Churchill at this point in his life.

And essentially, like he's being stretched to what is possible, right?

And I think, I don't have a family palace, you probably don't have a family palace either, but I think biographies of people who achieve great things actually stretch what you think is possible.

And if you think about it, it's kind of this weird closed loop, because people that live lives so remarkable that somebody wrote a book about them wrote a biography about him in their biographies.

You realize that they're reading biographies too.

And so as prone to happen at this point in history, there's another war that the British are fighting.

And so Churchill had already written like 2 or 3 books at this point, mostly about his time at war.

And so he winds up becoming the best paid war correspondent in England.

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#319 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 1