Overview of A Small Difference by Raymond Plank
This episode of David Senra’s Founders explores A Small Difference, the memoir of Raymond Plank, founder of Apache Corporation. Rather than a straight company history, the book reads like a 60-year diary of an entrepreneur’s evolving philosophy—covering Plank’s childhood, wartime service, business formation, leadership style, and the values that shaped a company that grew from $250,000 in 1954 to roughly $50 billion by 2008. Senra emphasizes that the most interesting part of the book is not just Apache’s growth, but Plank’s lifetime accumulation of practical beliefs about work, courage, risk, cost control, and purpose.
Raymond Plank’s Formative Influences
Family values and early lessons
Plank traces much of his character to two core memories:
- His father’s advice to “make a very small difference on behalf of others.”
- A final postcard from his mother, who died unexpectedly when he was 15, praising his kindness and urging him to keep his “head up” and his “courage and faith high.”
These moments shaped his lifelong emphasis on service, integrity, self-reliance, and resilience.
Depression-era financial conservatism
Plank grew up during the Great Depression and watched his father lose most of his net worth. That experience reinforced a deep respect for:
- living below your means
- paying bills scrupulously
- staying conservative with capital
- valuing credibility as much as money
Early Entrepreneurial Instincts
Self-employment started young
Plank showed an entrepreneurial bent as a child on a farm, where he learned that:
- work had to be earned
- self-sufficiency mattered
- even small opportunities could be turned into businesses
Examples from his youth include:
- selling eggs
- cutting and selling firewood
- extracting sap from trees and producing syrup
- selling to local grocery stores and meat markets
Senra frames this as an early training ground in sales, operations, and opportunity recognition.
War, Courage, and Risk-Taking
WWII hardened his outlook
Plank served as a fighter pilot / bomber pilot in World War II and saw a great deal of combat. The war shaped his view of courage and made later business risks feel smaller by comparison.
A recurring idea in the episode is that:
- courage is not the absence of fear
- surviving wartime danger gave him perspective on business risk
- his willingness to take entrepreneurial risks later was partly forged in combat
He even kept quotes in his diary about courage, including Churchill’s idea that courage is “the first of human qualities.”
The Origin of Apache Corporation
From bookkeeping to oil
Plank and his team originally ran a tax and accounting service for small businesses in Minneapolis. That work exposed them to oil investors, oil accounting, and the tax structure around energy deals.
He noticed two things:
- Oil investors were being poorly served or cheated
- The tax structure after WWII strongly favored oil and gas investment
The core insight
Apache’s early advantage was not just drilling oil—it was packaging tax-efficient oil investments for wealthy people in high tax brackets.
Senra explains the model clearly:
- investors got large upfront deductions
- oil production also came with favorable tax treatment
- Apache could raise capital by offering both tax benefits and upside potential
This solved a major financing problem for a young, undercapitalized company.
Business Philosophy: Learn, Observe, Adapt
“What are you the best in the world at?”
Plank openly admitted he did not initially know much about oil and gas technically, but he believed he had a strong edge in:
- finance
- taxes
- structuring deals
- spotting inefficiencies
He learned the industry by hiring knowledgeable people and spending time with them in the field. Senra highlights this as an example of learning by immersion and proximity.
Cost discipline as a core advantage
From the beginning, Apache was obsessive about costs. Two themes recur throughout the episode:
- do more with less
- avoid redundant spending
Plank believed that a smaller, leaner operation could outperform larger competitors by being more disciplined and more focused.
Conflict, Ego, and Leadership
The co-founder battle
A major portion of the book covers Plank’s conflict with co-founder Truman Anderson. Their personalities and goals diverged sharply:
- Plank wanted to build a durable business
- Anderson wanted status and personal fortune
The conflict escalated into open hostility, office confrontations, and even spying. Plank’s takeaway was blunt:
- ego can outrun competence
- “fat heads get flattened”
Senra uses this as a cautionary example of how misaligned partners can threaten a business.
Overcommunication as a leadership tool
During difficult periods, Plank wrote daily reports to the board so they were never surprised. He treated overcommunication as a strategic leadership habit that built trust and reduced friction.
Apache’s Strategic Evolution
Diversification as a response to cyclicality
When oil markets became unfavorable, Apache diversified into other businesses, eventually acquiring 58 companies across industries like:
- agriculture
- plastics
- telephone companies
- steel
- auto parts
- ranching
- utilities
- lumber
Plank did not treat diversification as a permanent identity. When conditions changed, he was willing to reverse course and return Apache to a focused energy business.
Counter-positioning against the majors
One of the episode’s key themes is Plank’s knack for finding what big companies ignored.
Apache often bought:
- smaller, overlooked oil properties
- aging wells
- assets that larger companies considered non-core
Plank’s logic was simple: major oil companies wanted giant reserves and often neglected smaller assets, but Apache could extract value from them more carefully and seriously.
Senra compares this mindset to:
- Rockefeller’s relentlessness
- Ray Kroc’s focus on “taking the hamburger more seriously”
- entrepreneurs who win by seeing value where others see scraps
Long-Term Thinking and Compounding
Staying in the game
Senra stresses that one of Plank’s deepest advantages was his willingness to stay patient for decades. Technologies, market conditions, and drilling methods changed over time, often making old assets more valuable later.
This mirrors a broader entrepreneurial pattern:
- hold assets long enough
- let other people’s innovations increase your own asset value
- benefit from compounding over time
Plank’s Maxims and Personal Reflections
The memoir is filled with short, memorable observations. Some of the strongest ideas mentioned in the episode include:
- “Without courage, all virtue is fragile.”
- “Those who lack self-respect are unlikely to enjoy the respect of others.”
- “Beaten paths are for beaten men.”
- learning increases when it is shared and applied
- markets rarely stabilize where rationality suggests they should
Plank also reflects honestly on his family tradeoffs, admitting that work often came at the expense of time with his wives and children. Still, he frames life as a process of:
- living
- learning
- growing
Main Takeaways
- Values shape strategy. Plank’s father and mother strongly influenced his work ethic, integrity, and resilience.
- Risk can be reframed by experience. Wartime service made business risk seem manageable.
- The best businesses start with an edge. Apache’s early edge was in tax and finance, not oil drilling.
- Cost discipline matters. Plank repeatedly outcompeted larger firms by being leaner and more careful.
- Ego destroys value. His conflict with his co-founder is a major warning about misaligned ambition.
- Adaptation is a strength. He was willing to diversify, reverse course, and reinvent Apache as conditions changed.
- Long-term ownership compounds. Staying invested allowed Apache to benefit from future technological improvements.
Memorable Closing Idea
The episode ends on the idea that Plank’s life was about “making a small difference”—not just in business, but in how he treated others, how he thought about opportunity, and how he built something lasting. Senra presents him as a rare entrepreneur whose story is less about flashy growth and more about discipline, courage, and a lifelong commitment to learning.