Founders

What I learned from reading Decoded by Jay Z. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:39] I would practice from the time I woke in the morning until I went to sleep [2:10] Even back then I though I was the best. [2:57] Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography (Founders #219) [4:32] Belief becomes before ability. [5:06] Michael Jordan: The Life (Founders #212) [5:46] The public praises people for what they practice in private. [7:28] Lock yourself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers. [7:50] Sam Walton: Made In America (Founders #234) [9:50] He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own — from Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Founders #209) [12:47] The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50) [13:35] I'm not gonna say that I thought I could get rich from rap, but I could clearly see that it was gonna get bigger before it went away. Way bigger. [21:10] Over 20 years into his career and dude ain’t changed. He’s got his own vibe. You gotta love him for that. (Rick Rubin) [21:41] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) [25:27] I believe you can speak things into existence. [27:20] Picking the right market is essential. [29:29] All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason – they run out of money. —Don Valentine [29:42] There are two things in business that matter, and you can learn this in two minutes- you don’t have to go to business school for two years: high gross margins and cash flow. The other financial metrics you can forget. —Don Valentine [31:54] I went on the road with Big Daddy Kane for a while. I got an invaluable education watching him perform. [33:12] Everything I do I learned from the guys who came before me. —Kobe [34:15] I truly hate having discussions about who would win one on one or fans saying you’d beat Michael. I feel like Yo (puts his hands up like stop. Chill.) What you get from me is from him. I don’t get 5 championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice. [34:50] Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography (Founders #214) [37:20] This is a classic piece of OG advice. It's amazing how few people actually stick to it. [38:04] Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success(Founders #56) [39:04] The key to staying on top of things is to treat everything like it's your first project. [41:10] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233) [44:46] We (Jay Z, Bono, Quincy Jones) ended up trading stories about the pressure we felt even at this point in our lives. [45:22] Competition pushes you to become your best self. Jordan said the same thing about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. [46:43] If you got the heart and the brains you can move up quickly. There's no way to quantify all of this on a spreadsheet, but it's the dream of being the exception. [52:26] He (Russell Simmons) changed the business style of a whole generation. The whole vibe of startup companies in Silicon Valley with 25 year old CEOs wearing shell toes is Russell's Def Jam style filtered through different industries. [54:17] Jay Z’s approach is I'm going to find the smartest people that that know more than I do, and I'm gonna learn everything I can from them. [54:49] He (Russell Simmons) knew that the key to success was believing in the quality of your own product enough to make people do business with you on your terms. He knew that great product was the ultimate advantage in competition. [55:08] In the end it came down to having a great product and the hustle to move it. [56:37] Learn how to build and sell and you will be unstoppable. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (Founders #191) [58:30] We gave those brands a narrative which is one of the reasons anyone buys anything. To own not just a product, but to become part of a story. [59:30] The best thing for me to do is to ignore and outperform. [1:01:16] Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90) [1:06:01] Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary (Founders #78) [1:08:42] Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products(Founders #178) [1:11:46] Long term success is the ultimate goal. [1:12:58] Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love - Bill Gurley [1:15:11] I have always used visualization the way athletes do, to conjure reality. [1:18:14] The thing that distinguished Jordan wasn't just his talent, but his discipline, his laser-like commitment to excellence. [1:19:42] The gift that Jordan had wasn't just that he was willing to do the work, but he loved doing it because he could feel himself getting stronger and ready for anything. That is the kind of consistency that you can get only by adding dead serious discipline of whate

What I learned from reading The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon by John Paul Rathbone. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:02] Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime (Founders #236) [3:22] This is a cautionary tale. [6:18] One of the main lessons of the book is just how fast things can change. [6:25] The History of Cuba in 50 Events [10:14] Lobo walked with a limp due to a murder attempt 14 years before that had blown a four inch chunk out of his skull. [12:29] One of the most human of all desires is to perpetuate what you have created. [12:55] Lobo thinks he has leverage when he really doesn’t. [18:39] He dies in poverty. Imagine having $5 billion and then at the end of your life having to rely on an allowance from your adult daughters. [20:30] I think about what Charlie Munger says: Don't try to be really smart. Just try to be consistently not dumb over a long period of time. [20:58] Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams (Founders #146) [22:59] Chico, I was born naked. I will probably die naked. And some of the happiest moments of my life happened when I was naked. [29:01] From an early age it was apparent that Lobo sought not only wealth but glory too. [30:21] He was an individualist who did not spare himself any sacrifice to attain his objectives. [31:26] The clearest path to wealth is building a business that benefits somebody else's life. Make a product or service that makes somebody else's life better. Do that for a long period of time and keep improving it. [33:45] His father told him I would much rather you make your mistakes now than later when I may not be around to pick up your pieces. [38:16] It turns out that almost being executed makes you impatient for large success. [40:32] If you instead focus on the prospective price change of a contemplated purchase, you are speculating. There is nothing improper about that. I know, however, that I am unable to speculate successfully, and I am skeptical of those who claim sustained success at doing so. Half of all coin-flippers will win their first toss; none of those winners has an expectation of profit if he continues to play the game. And the fact that a given asset has appreciated in the recent past is never a reason to buy it. —Warren Buffett from The Essays of Warren Buffett (Founders #227) [45:09] Think about the type of funeral you want. There is a story about a person who died. The minister said it is now time to say something nice about the deceased. After long time a person came up and said, “His brother was worse.” That is not the kind of funeral you want. —Charlie Munger [50:34] Alfred Nobel: A Biography (Founders #163) [52:30] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King(Founders #37) [54:26] They almost resorted to a duel, which was still common in Cuba at the time, where differences were often settled with machetes at dawn. [1:04:34] There are times when chasing the things money can buy, one loses sight of the things which money can't buy and are usually free. [1:05:10] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (Founders #191) [1:05:17] A calm mind, a fit body and a house full of love, these things cannot be bought, they must be earned. —Naval Ravikant [1:08:52] His business collapsed like a house of cards. [1:09:34] It was the same ending that befell so many other famous speculators throughout history. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime by Nims Purja. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [3:36] Walking out on my career felt risky, but I was prepared to gamble everything for my ambition. [4:20] Your extremes are my normal. [12:04] Wow, this is my shit. I'd been working without much thought, operating in the flow state that athletes often describe when they set world records or win championships. I was in the zone. Brother, I thought. You're a badass at high altitude. [13:27] I was poor from the beginning. We didn't have any money, and the thought of owning a car was unimaginable. But we were a loving family, and I was a happy kid. It didn't take a lot to keep me amused. [14:57] From an early age, I believed in the power of positive thinking. [18:17] I also like the idea of being on top. [19:00] Sam Walton: Made In America (Founders #234) [19:03] I understood that to become a special forces operator, it was important to adapt to an increased workload. [19:25] One thing I don’t even have on my list is “work hard.” If you don’t know that already, or you’re not willing to do it, you probably won’t be going far enough to need my list anyway. —Sam Walton [19:44] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #141) [20:58] This is insane: On weekends, my daily routine involved running for hours at a time. I'd haul my ass around the streets with two or three Gurkha buddies; we operated in a relay system, where I was the only soldier prevented from taking a break. One guy would accompany me for six miles, leading me along at a strong pace. Once he completed his distance, another running partner took over, and together we'd go six more miles. This went on for hours, and left me physically and psychologically pummeled. [21:43] Emotional control was only one of the many traits I'd need to possess to become elite. [22:22] Read the first 113 pages of this book Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #193) [24:14] I focused only on the 24 hours ahead. Today I will give 100 percent and survive, I thought at the beginning of each day. I'll worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes. [26:47] You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t start by saying, ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ If you do that every single day, soon you will have a wall. —Will Smith [28:52] I always smiled my way through the mud. [29:03] Excellence is the capacity to take pain. —Isadore Sharp (Founders #184) Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy [30:02] Dru Riley founder of Trends.VC has a 100 Rules Personal Philosophy [32:14] The glass-half-empty attitude went against everything I'd been taught in the military, where grumbling or giving up wasn't an effective strategy. If problems or challenges came my way, I was supposed to find solutions, having been trained to adapt and survive. [35:30] The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Founders #100) [43:33] I approached every day with a positive thought: I can do this. I will navigate every problem the mission can throw at me. I've already climbed the world's tallest peak. The only thing standing in my way right now is funding. Get out there and smash it. [48:48] I'd proven to everybody that it is never too late to make a massive change in your life. [53:43] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233) [54:40] There were occasions when a panicked call would come over the radio: “Nims, it's snowing heavily on the mountain. It's going to be a rough climb!" Rather than wallowing in negativity, I'd make a smart-ass comment to lift the mood. "Come on, bro, what do you think we're getting on a mountain—a bloody heat wave?" [54:58] Mark Twain once wrote that if a person’s job was to eat a frog, then it was best to take care of business first thing in the morning. But if the work involved eating two frogs, it was best to eat the bigger one first. In other words: Get the hardest job out of the way. [57:57] Suffering sometimes creates a weird sense of satisfaction for me. It creates a sense of pride when seeing a job through to the end. [58:23] It is important to keep the promises you make yourself: If I say that I'm going to run for an hour, I'll run for a full hour. If I plan to do 300 push-ups in a training session, I won't quit until I've done them all-because brushing off the effort means letting myself down, and I don't want to have to live with that. And neither should you. [1:02:05] The adventure taught me an important lesson. Fear was never going to hold me back from pressing ahead with my plans. It established in me a mindset with zero doubts and zero tolerance for excuses. [1:03:12] We work

What I learned from reading To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History by Lawrence Levy. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:34] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233) [3:42] Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Founders #34) [3:52] Readwise App [7:22] George Lucas: A Life (Founders #35) [7:48] Steve jobs had been a Silicon Valley's most visible celebrity but that made it all the more glaring that he had not had a hit in a long time —a very long time. [8:49] Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing (Founders #77) [13:35] Why would I join a company that had been struggling for sixteen years and whose payroll was paid every month out of the personal checkbook of its owner? I had not realized how dire Pixar's financial situation was. It had no cash, no reserves, and it depended for its funds on the whim of a person whose reputation for volatility was legendary. [14:05] There is no a better advertisement than a demo. [15:57] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (Founders #141) [16:03] There was nothing normal about me. My drive was not normal. My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like Kryptonite to me. —Arnold [16:31] I looked at my start-up clients and to me they were on an adventure. I yearned for the kind of adventure they were on. [17:28] Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life (Founders #229) [17:46] I regard myself as guardian of the company's soul. [19:06] Pixar has this amazing collection of talent doing work that no one has seen before. Now it's time to turn that into a business. —Steve Jobs [22:01] Steve had an almost permanent intensity about him, like he was always in top gear. [28:25] Pixar was embarked on a lonely courageous quest through terrain, into which neither it nor anyone else had ever ventured. [28:52] Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader (Founders #19) [31:37] Home video was turning animated feature films into big business. Bigger than we had ever imagined. [32:24] There was no modern precedent for taking an independent animation company public. [36:54] Look at the value of the major Hollywood studios and you'll see their library of films is really significant. [39:27] There was no part of Steve that bought into the idea of making products that might not all have a shot at greatness. [41:22] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony (Founders #102) [48:40] Steve once told me that the gestation of great products takes much longer than it appears. What seems to emerge from nowhere belies a long process of development, trials, and missteps. [53:46] The problem with success, even a little success, is that it changes you. You are no longer walking along the same precipice that drove you to do great work in the first place. Success can take the edge away. [54:16] Creative vision does not spring forth fully formed. [59:33] Fear and ego conspire to rein in creativity, and it is easy to allow creative inspiration to take a back seat to safety. [1:01:38] The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice (Founders #126) [1:06:41] Once Steve decided what he wanted in a negotiation, he developed something akin to a religious conviction about it. In his mind, if he didn't get what he wanted, nothing else would take its place, so he'd walk away. This made Steve an incredibly strong negotiator. [1:10:52] One never knows if an event that appears detrimental is in fact part of a larger pattern that we cannot see. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:56] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179) [5:45] We just got after it and stayed after it. [6:06] Foxes and Hedgehogs [6:39] Hedgehogs may not be as clever as foxes but they obsessively measure and track everything about their business, and over time, they acquire deep, relevant knowledge and expertise. Their single minded approach may appear risky at times but they are conservative by nature. Hedgehogs don’t speculate or make foolish bets. If all their eggs are in that one proverbial basket, they follow Mark Twain’s advice – and watch that basket very carefully. [7:17] The thing with Hedgehogs is that they never give up. They keep at it – and they don’t ever get bored because they just love what they do – and they have a lot of fun along the way. [7:28] Hedgehogs are the ones who build great, lasting companies. As entrepreneurs, they are the rarest of breeds – those who can start something anew, make it work, stick with it, and build something special, and ultimately, inspire others along the way, with their determination, dedication and commitment. [8:49] At first, we amazed ourselves. And before too long, we amazed everybody else too. [9:26] Think about how crazy this is. He died weeks after that writing this. His last days were spent categorizing and organizing his knowledge so future generations can benefit. [12:32] Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger(Founders #90) [12:56] "It's quite interesting to think about Walmart starting from a single store in Arkansas – against Sears, Roebuck with its name, reputation and all of its billions. How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas, with no money, blow right by Sears? And he does it in his own lifetime – in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store. He played the chain store game harder and better than anyone else. Walton invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart – and he did it with more fanaticism. So he just blew right by them all. —Charlie Munger [17:11] What motivates the man is the desire to absolutely be on the top of the heap. [17:32] Practice your craft so much that you're the best in the world at it and the money will take care of itself. [18:44] We exist to provide value to our customers. [21:18] A Conversation with Paul Graham [22:32] It never occurred to me that I might lose; to me, it was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. [26:42] Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey by William Rosenberg. (Founders #231) [29:35] It didn’t take me long to start experimenting—that’s just the way I am and always have been. [30:56] Do things that other people are not doing. [33:13] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233) [33:41] I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of the biggest contributions to the later success of Wal Mart. [34:10] Our money was made by controlling expenses. I gotta read that again because it's so important. Our money was made by controlling expenses. [37:49] Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man (Founders #150) [38:37] I’ve always thought of problems as challenges, and this one wasn’t any different. I didn’t dwell on my disappointment. The challenge at hand was simple enough to figure out: I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time. [42:47] Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184) [45:12] The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie (Founders #74) [47:08] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price. (Founders #107) [49:56] Sam had a really simple hypothesis for the first Wal Mart: We were trying to find out if customers in a town of 6,000 people would come to our kind of a barn and buy the same merchandise strictly because of price. The answer was yes. [52:19] I have always been a Maverick who enjoys shaking things up and creating a little anarchy. [54:23] In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and/or minimizing one or a few variables. —Charlie Munger [55:02] He does something really smart here. And this is something I missed the first time I read the book. He finds a way to force himself to know the numbers for every single store. [56:13] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts. (Founders #110) [58:11] Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213) I’m not so domi

What I learned from reading The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:50] Your life will be shaped by the things that you create and the people you make them with. [2:45] A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age (Founders #95) [3:17] Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Founders #1 and #30) [4:48] It is hard to find a lukewarm opinion about PayPal's founders. [5:29] To skip PayPal's creation is to neglect the most interesting stuff about its founders. It is to miss the defining experiences of their early professional lives —one that defined so much of what came later. [6:39] There's just so many times I put down the book and I'm like, “That is really, really smart, what they just did there.” [6:59] It perfectly captures when they [Musk, Thiel, Sacks, Hoffman, Levchin, Rabois] were just hustlers trying to figure it out. [8:31] For the next several years, the company’s survival was an open question. They were sued, defrauded, copied, mocked— from the outset. PayPal was a startup under siege. Its founders took on multi-billion dollar financial firms, a critical press and skeptical public, hostile regulators, and even foreign fraudsters. [10:14] From Henry Ford’s autobiography: That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. [11:11] Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy (Founders #89) Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson (Founders #115) Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble (Founders #151) [12:03] A wall in the engineering office had two banners. One was titled The World Domination Index. The World Domination Index was a total count of PayPal's users that day. The other was a banner bearing the words Memento Mori —Latin for remember that you will die. PayPal's oddball team was out to dominate the world, or die trying. [15:37] At PayPal disharmony produced discovery. [16:22] Steve Jobs The Lost Interview Notes [17:36] Properly understood PayPal story is a four year odyssey of near failure followed by near failure. [20:22] He showed early signs of his hallmark intensity. He wanted to be the best at everything he did. [21:08] Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Tim Ferriss [21:50] Knowledge Project: Marc Andreessen [23:01] What would Shimada do? I understand how this guy thinks. I've studied how he thinks. Now I'm presented with a difficult decision. I'm running it through my own calculus—but to enhance that is like, let me ask what would Shimada do in this situation? That is genius. [23:47] The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz (Founders #41) [25:19] Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel (Founders #31) [29:25] Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. —Charlie Munger [31:14] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams [32:25] "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Characte by Richard Feynman [35:32] He walked into Musk's his bedroom. The room was literally filled with biographies about business luminaries and how they succeeded. Elon was prepping himself and studying to be a famous entrepreneur. [38:32] Musk had learned that startup success wasn't just about dreaming up the right ideas as much as discovering and then rapidly discarding the wrong ones. [39:04] Keep iterating on a loop that says, Am I doing something useful for other people? Because that is what a company is supposed to do. Too much precision in early plans, Musk believed, cut that iterative loop prematurely. [40:10] My mind is always on X, by default, even in my sleep. I am by nature, obsessive compulsive. What matters to me is winning and not in a small way. —Elon Musk [48:20] PayPal prioritized speed on everything over everything else except in one category —recruiting. They would rather staff slowly then compromise on quality. [48:47] Max would keep repeating “As hire As. Bs hire Cs. So the first B you hire takes the whole company down.” [50:52] Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham [52:31] Is there something that you're not working on that could be a more simple version of what you're currently doing? [55:30] Why is that crazy? Because three years later Elon Musk will make $180 million from this broken situation that he's currently finds himself in. [55:48] Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation

What I learned from reading Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:28] Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulleby Paul Johnson (Founders #226) [2:16] Each was brave, highly intelligent, almost horrifically self-assured, whose ambitions knew no bounds. [2:46] He was a man of formidable achievements. He was highly creative. He woke up early. His diet was spare. He was skilled with the sword and the spear and an expert at all forms of arms drills. He dressed to be seen. [3:50] He had supernatural self confidence and persistence. There is no substitute for will. [4:26] Churchill by Paul Johnson (Founders #225) [5:50] Addiontal research: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Addenum Glimpses of Olympias [6:03] The Macedonians were a rugged people. [7:23] Think about this— At 19 years old you think it is your place in history to take revenge on something that happened 150 years previous. That is unapologetically extreme. [9:42] There’s a rule they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School. It is: If anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess.” —Edwin Land [12:11] Alexander had excessive tolerance of fatigue [13:14] Combine an excessive tolerance of fatigue with an intolerance of slowness. [14:06] Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp (Founders #184) "Excellence is the capacity to take pain." [14:17] All the things you want in life are on the other side of difficulty and discomfort. [17:12] The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (Founders #175) [21:59] He considered that the task of training and educating his son was too important to be true and trusted to the ordinary run of teachers. [22:14] Knowledge Project: Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen [25:03] Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones (Founders #161) Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life by Sidney Harman (Founders #229) Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg. (Founders #228) [27:40] Learning is nonlinear. [31:38] I meant to say Alexander, not Aristotle. Alexander is the one writing the letter to Aristotle. [33:49] Alexander was a lover of books. [38:55] George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones (Founders #35) [44:51] Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey by William Rosenberg (Founders #231) [49:16] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann (Founders #192) [51:24] Fortune generally makes those whom she has compelled to put their trust in her alone more thirsty for glory than capable of coping with it. [54:11] What folly forced you, knowing as you did the fame of my achievements, to try the fortunes of war? [58:05] No trait of Alexander's was more firmly held or enduring than his admiration for genuine excellence and brilliant achievement. [58:30] Winners don't go around leaving negative comments about other people winning. [1:01:59] Stand firm, for it is toil and danger that lead to glorious achievements. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey by William Rosenberg. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [5:18] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley [5:30] A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age (Founders #93) [10:28] When I opened my first Dunkin Donuts store I focused on making the first store a success. Then after I did that I could move on to the second and the third and the fourth, but I gave all my heart and my soul to making that first store a winner. [12:13] From an early age these working experiences taught me that if I put my mind to it and worked hard, I could do whatever I was doing as well or better than most other people. I learned to strive for excellence. [14:05] Odd as it may sound I think one of the best lessons I ever learned from my Dad is what he didn't do properly. He taught me what I never wanted to have happen to my family. [15:02] I decided I wanted to quit school, go to work and help support my family. I knew they desperately needed help. We didn't have enough money to live. [19:25] I learned an important lesson about sales. You don't sell to people. You get people to buy from you. You say to yourself, if I were in their position why would I want to buy this product? If I was in their position why would it be to my benefit? [19:48] The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century (Founders #206) My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising (Founders #170) Ogilvy on Advertising (Founders #82) Confessions of an Advertising Man (Founders #89) [22:58] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (Founders #141) [27:00] They were not interested in building a long-term business. They were only interested in a fast buck, buying their wives mink coats, and driving Cadillacs. They did not have the same ideas that I had about building a business. These guys didn't care about gaining respect, about being honest and honorable. I didn't want to be in business with people of that nature. [27:29] Adversity is a great teacher. Little did I know that this downturn of events would catapult me to a higher ground. [30:25] Copy This!: Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic who Turned a Bright Idea Into One of America's Best Companies (Founders #181) [32:18] I came from within inches of quitting that day. [32:43] Not many things are as exciting and satisfying as being part of a business that is succeeding and growing rapidly. There's an atmosphere and a feeling that's tremendous. [41:48] How can you get closer to the customer? And then just keep maintaining that relationship. [42:44] I wasn't content to rest on my laurels. Good enough wasn't good enough for me. I saw that we had a good thing going and I wanted to expand in a big, big way before somebody else did. [43:02] Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business(Founders #20) [50:07] Identify your bottleneck and put all your resources into attacking that bottleneck. [51:33] Focus is saying no. —Steve Jobs [53:34] Bloomberg by Bloomberg (Founders #228) [56:39] Keep your foot on the gas and stay close to the customer. [1:00:19] Les Schwab’s autobiography (Founders #105) [1:02:27] I was eager to have Bob takeover. I think this is common in family businesses when a parent hands over the reigns to the child. But the danger is that the parent becomes blind to some of the drawbacks of such an arrangement. This didn't become apparent until later. [1:10:22] They spent a lot of time in court preparing and fighting legal battles. Instead of building the business. I stuck by my son and his team. My fortune in Dunkin donuts stock went from $30 million to $3 million. [1:13:06] I made many mistakes in my life. I believe one of the biggest mistakes was trying too hard to accommodate my son's desires. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [3:19] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #141) [3:28] Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #193) [4:37] Lucille Ball gave me advice about Hollywood. “Just remember, when they say, ‘No,’ you hear ‘Yes,’ and act accordingly. Someone says to you, ‘We can’t do this movie,’ you hug him and say, ‘Thank you for believing in me. [6:21] I like reading about people that do things that they're not supposed to do. [9:45] Create a comprehensive family history. [14:43] People with happy childhoods never overdo; they don't strive or exert themselves. They're moderate, pleasant, well liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field-not only show business-often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood. [19:27] This is a school that teaches acting, telling what is going to wind up being one of the most successful actresses that ever lives, that she can't do it. [20:29] I soon learned that to survive you have to be very strong, very healthy, and damned resilient. Rarely does anyone give you an encouraging word. [20:52] I'd show up early for rehearsals and stay until they had to sweep me off the stage. . .I didn't give up. I wore out my soles trudging to casting offices. [21:08] I can't say that I was discouraged. For some incomprehensible reason, knew that someday I'd make it. [21:15] Remember that there are practically no “overnight" successes. Before that brilliant hit performance came ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty years in the salt mines, sweating it out. [25:08] I was determined to stay in Hollywood. I would do what I could to make sure I'd survive the long haul. [27:34] What would you give to be a star in two years?’’ Lela asked me when I first was getting to know her. “What d’ya mean?’’ "Would you give me every breath you draw for two years? Will you work seven days a week? Will you sacrifice all your social life?" “I certainly will," I promised. "Okay," she said, "let's start. Lela was the first person to see me as a clown with glamour. [28:43] Lela taught us never to see anyone as bigger or more important than ourselves. [30:07] Buster Keaton used to tell me about dozens of Hollywood people who ran into trouble. This was comforting, like reading an autobiography and thinking, “Well, that happened to them, too. I'm not the only one.” [35:51] He soon learned that in striking out on your own, you have to throw out your chest and sell yourself. [42:03] I learned the bitter lesson that directors and producers can make or break an actress. I was a star, but I felt that I couldn't afford to turn down parts for fear of infuriating these bigwigs If I did turn down a script I would be put on suspension, without salary. I couldn't accept an offer from any other studio, no matter how good, yet I could be fired at any time without the bosses showing cause. All the glittering “stars" were at the mercy of the whims of the top people. [45:12] I had a driving, consuming ambition to succeed in show business. [47:23] Founder mentality. Desi and I decided that since nobody else seemed to have faith in us as a team, we’d form our own corporation to promote ourselves. Desilu Productions, Inc., was launched. [48:54] At that time, television was regarded as the enemy by Hollywood. So terrified was Hollywood of this medium, movie people were afraid to make even guest appearances. (As bill gates and Walt Disney learned — go with the phenomenon— not against it) [50:50] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140) Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace (Founders #178) [52:57] To my delight, I discovered that the I Love Lucy show drew from everything I'd learned in the movies, radio, the theater, and vaudeville. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life by Sidney Harman ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [3:46] Foxes and Hedgehogs [7:17] The thing with Hedgehogs is that they never give up. They keep at it – and they don’t ever get bored because they just love what they do – and they have a lot of fun along the way. [8:27] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World [9:38] “The essence of commitment is making a decision. The Latin root for decision is to ‘cut away from,’ as in an incision. When you commit to something, you are cutting away all your other possibilities, all your other options” From the book The Lombardi Rules: 26 Lessons from Vince Lombardi—The World's Greatest Coach [11:16] The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis [13:12] I regard myself as guardian of the company’s soul. [15:05] Steve Jobs liked to say the Beatles were his management model—four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great. [15:50] Avoid recklessness, encourage daring. [18:08] His main point here is the fact that he started the company in defiance of conventional wisdom [24:08] Bloomberg by Bloomberg [26:16] I believe that refusing to accept business orthodoxy uncritically can open your eyes to opportunity. [34:56] We were free to follow our best instincts. We were free to bring totally new thinking to what we were doing. [38:44] Treat hard work and your smarts respectfully, but recognize that they are neither decisive nor do they guarantee anything. Most of all, I told myself, don’t underestimate determination and persistence, and never quit. [40:25] Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys [41:51] I loved building a business. What could be better? The products were wonderful. They employed technology wisely. They made beautiful music. My instinct for marketing—for selling, for emotive advertising—was not only indulged, but rewarded. [43:00] Mavericks do not play well with others. [55:12] It did not require a genius to recognize that I was looking at the future. [58:34] Reducing business matters to their essence, whittling away that which obscures or is unnecessary, has served me well. I admire greatly those who practice the art. [59:48] A company requires an articulated mission, a philosophical base, a moral compass, critical judgment, and the realization that it is a dynamic, living instrument populated by complex human beings. [1:05:05] The best leaders are catalysts who prompt others to reach beyond their most natural abilities to find something they had previously thought beyond their reach. [1:18:03] I have found that by insisting on simple explanations, the mystery disappears and with it most of the nonsense. [1:23:12] It is vital that everyone know what business he is in. [1:28:23] Opportunity can be attacked with enthusiasm. [1:30:01] The person who invests in writing, who exercises the discipline to do it well, and who uses it frequently, will possess a matchless instrument for discovery, clarity, and persuasion. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:08] Answering to no one is the ultimate situation. [3:02] Twitter thread on Michael Bloomberg by Neckar.Substack.com [5:28] We never made the error that so many others have: mistaking their product for the device that delivers it. [6:27] We knew our core product was data and analytics. [7:01] We were motivated by an idea that we could build something new that just might make a difference. [9:04] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger [10:05] I was willing to do anything that they wanted. I would have never left voluntarily. [16:00] Street smarts and common sense were better predictors of career achievements. [17:40] Almost all occupations have a big selling component: selling your firm, your ideas and yourself. [18:20] It is the doers, the lean and hungry ones, those with ambition in their eyes and fire in their bellies, who go the furthest and achieve the most. [21:36] Comparing John to Bill on leadership, I always thought John was more egalitarian, but less effective. [22:55] It was a lowly start. We slaved in our underwear and an un-air conditioned, a bank vault. [23:57] The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer - The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb [24:22] Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity by Frank Slootman [27:20] David Geffen biography: The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood [30:07] It's said that 80 percent of life is just showing up. I believe that. You can never have complete mastery over your existence. You can't choose the advantages you start out with, and you certainly can't pick your genetic intelligence level. But you can control how hard you work. [31:20] Life, I've found, works the following way: Daily, you're presented with many small and surprising opportunities. Sometimes you seize one that takes you to the top. Most, though, if valuable at all, take you only a little way. To succeed, you must string together many small incremental advances-rather than count on hitting the lottery jackpot once. Trusting to great luck is a strategy not likely to work for most people. As a practical matter, constantly enhance your skills, put in as many hours as possible, and make tactical plans for the next few steps. Then, based on what actually occurs, look one more move ahead and adjust the plan. Take lots of chances, and make lots of individual, spur-of-the-moment decisions. [32:12] Don't devise a Five-Year Plan or a Great Leap Forward. Central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao, and it won't work for an entrepreneur either. [34:16] I truly pity people who don't like their jobs. They struggle at work, so unhappily, for ultimately so much less success, and thus develop even more reason to hate their occupations. There's too much delightful stuff to do in this short lifetime not to love getting up on a weekday morning. [38:48] Did I want to risk an embarrassing and costly failure? Absolutely. Happiness for me has always been the thrill of the unknown, trying something that everyone says can't be done, feeling that gnawing pit in my stomach that says danger ahead. I want action. [40:28] Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman [41:37] I rented a one room temporary office. It was about a hundred square feet of space with a view of an alley, a far cry from my previous place of employment. I deposited $300,000 of my Salomon Brothers windfall into a corporate checking account. And fifteen years later, I had a billion-dollar business. [45:25] By endurance we conquer. [46:50] Zero to One by Peter Thiel [47:14] Made In Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita [51:19] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness [54:35] Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games [58:30] Each news story is a product demo. More demos lead to more revenue. More revenue leads to more stories and then even more revenue. [1:03:24] He's got a lot of these like roundabout ways to get in front of potential customers. He’s repurposing the information that his unique business collects. [1:15:53] When it comes to competition, being one of the best is not good enough. Do you really want to plan for a future in which you might have to fight with somebody who is just as good as you are? I wouldn't. —Jeff Bezos ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective know

Here are 10 episodes to start with: #168 Driven: An Autobiography by Larry Miller #171 The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune #219 Anthony Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography #223 Unstoppable: Siggi Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend #216 Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans #212 Michael Jordan: The Life #210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft #193 Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder #185 Ritz & Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class #170 My Life in Advertising ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:39] Founders #88 Warren Buffett’s shareholder letters — All of them! [2:36] Buffet and Charlie Munger built this sprawling enterprise by investing in businesses with excellent economic characteristics and run by outstanding managers. [5:21] Founders #224 Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson [5:41] Books on Henry Singleton: The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success and Distant Force A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It [7:06] Founders #226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson [8:03] Founders #34 Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull [9:19] Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. [9:58] Founders #208 In The Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World [11:11] Run your business as if: You own 100% of it It's the only asset that you hold You can’t sell it for 50 years [14:04] Buffett’s essays are sprinkled with historical reference points, especially economic history. He reflects the importance of understanding the past to handle the present and navigate the future. [16:04] A main theme of Buffett: Identify good ideas and then concentrate your resources around them. [16:54] Buffett’ Shareholder Letters on Kindle [23:44] Founders #104 Leading By Design: The IKEA Story [24:53] Founders #93 and Founders #222 A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market [27:19] Businesses seldom operate in a tranquil, no surprise environment and earnings simply don't advance smoothly. [29:28] Founders #143 Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II Loomis had one important characteristic. His ability to concentrate completely on a chief objective, even at the cost of neglecting matters that appear to other people to be of equal importance. [31:19] The competitive position of each of our business grows either weaker or stronger each day. If we are delighting customers, eliminating unnecessary costs, and improving our products and services, we gained strength. But if we treat customers with indifference or tolerate bloat, our businesses will wither on a daily basis. [33:45] Founders #50 Marc Andreessen’s Blog Archive [36:07] Business is like nature. It doesn't care if you arrive at the right answer from the wrong reasoning. [42:23] Games are won by players who focus on the playing field, not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard. [47:16] Some part of your business philosophy will not be financial and that's the way it's supposed to be. [50:39] Founders #155 Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos [58:15] “My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.” —Edwin Land [1:01:50] Even smart chickens shit on their own feathers. [1:02:16] Loss of focus is what worries Charlie and me the most. [1:04:08] Helpful cheat sheet to use when reading Warren’s shareholder letters [1:06:30] I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire. We have never succeeded in making a good deal with a bad person. [1:10:33] By being so cautious in respect to leverage and having loads of liquidity, we will be equipped both financially and emotionally to play offense while others scramble for survival. [1:18:38] Bull markets can obscure mathematical laws, but they cannot repeal them. [1:19:14] The 3 part series on Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick Founders #73, 74, and 75 Book links: The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick:The Life of the Perfect Capitalist, and Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America [1:19:44] Cut the prices, scoop them market, watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves. [1:21:00] Founders #96 James J. Hill: Empire Builder of The Northwest [1:24:09] One of Larry Ellison’s favorite maxims was, “The brain’s primary purpose is deception, and the primary person to be deceived is the owner.” Book: The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice [1:24:55] There's two ideas that saves us time and effort: 1. If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well. 2. If it is worth doing, do it to excess. [1:28:09] An absolute masterclass on how to differentiate your product. Scroll all the way down. It’s appendix B. [1:50:33] If horses had controlled investme

What I learned from reading Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:55] I have always had a soft spot for those who speak out against the conventional wisdom and who are not afraid to speak the truth, even if it puts them in a minority of one. [1:20] 4 traits of heroes: 1. Absolute independence of mind. Think everything through yourself. 2. Act resolutely and consistently. 3. Ignore the media. 4. Act with personal courage at all times regardless of the consequences to yourself. [2:25] Churchill by Paul Johnson [2:47] Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky by Paul Johnson and Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson. [3:34] Founders #196 Book link: The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitzby Erik Larson. “It’s slothful not to compress your thoughts.” —Churchill [4:58] They carved out vast empires for themselves and hammered their names into the history of the earth. [5:04] Each was brave, highly intelligent, and almost horrifically self-assured. [6:09] Founders #208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World "People are packaged deals. You take the good with the confused. In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same thing." —Steve Jobs [10:22] Alexander the Great read Homer all of his life and knew the passages by heart. It was to him, a Bible, a guide to heroic morality, a book of etiquette and a true adventure story. The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer. [11:50] Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins [12:15] The most important factor, as always with men of action, was sheer will. [15:56] Caesar appreciated the importance of speed and the terrifying surprises speed made possible. [16:15] Founders #155 Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos “You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow." [18:33] Caesar was a man of colossal energy and farsighted cunning. He aimed to conquer posterity as well as the world. [19:42] You should avoid an unfamiliar word as a ship avoids a reef. —Julius Caesar [20:55] You train an animal, you teach a person. —Sol Price [23:02] Caesar’s approach to difficulty was all problems are solvable. [24:36] Caesar was a man of exceptional ability over a huge range of activities. Among his qualities: great mental power, energy, steadfastness, a gift for understanding everything under the sun, vitality, and fiery quickness of mind. Few men have had such a combination of boldness shrewdness and wisdom. [26:30] George Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow [27:14] Founders #191 The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness [27:25] George Washington was a vigorous and active man, an early riser about his business all day. And by no means intellectually idle, he accumulated a library of 800 books. [29:57] The best talk on YouTube: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love [35:08] His (Washington) strategy was clear, intelligent, absolutely consistent, and maintained with an iron will from start to finish. [36:12] All that counts is survival. The rest is just words. [37:18] A lesson from the history of entrepreneurship: Why you start your company matters. Doesn’t have to be complex. A great example: Phil Knight said he started Nike because he believed if everyone got out and ran a few miles every day the world would be a better place. [42:06] Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin [45:23] Words and the ability to weave them into webs which cling to the memory are extremely important in forwarding action. [53:01] Founders #200 Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson: This is part of my anti-brilliance campaign. Very few people can be brilliant. Those who are, rarely do anything worthwhile. You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And if you can't of be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers." — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founde

What I learned from reading Churchill by Paul Johnson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:09] Churchill never allowed mistakes, disaster, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism to get him down. [4:19] The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. (Founders #196) [4:57] He wrote best-selling biographies on Napoleon, Churchill, Eisenhower, Socrates, and Mozart. [6:39] 3 part series on Larry Ellison: Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle (Founders #124), The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice (Founders #126), The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison(Founders #127) [7:40] How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets by Felix Dennis (Founders #129) [8:35] On the importance of belief: I am not asking you to be Winston Churchill. None of us could be. But I do ask that you begin, right now, right at this very moment, to ask yourself whether you believe in yourself. Truly. Do you believe in yourself? Do you? If you do not, and, worse still, if you believe you never can believe, then, by all means, go on reading this book. But take it from me, your only chance of getting rich will come from the lottery or inheritance. If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else? [10:15] How did one man do so much, for so long, and so effectively? [11:29] Reading is not a chore. Reading is theft. It is a robbery. Someone smarter than you has spent 20 years beating their head against the wall trying to solve the problem you're dealing with. You can steal that hard won knowledge and make it yours. That is power. [12:57] Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons in Life by Richard Branson (Founders #49) [15:27] Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela [16:44] My personal email list: My top 10 highlights from Churchill. [21:51] He had accumulated a number of critics and even enemies, and a reputation for being brash, arrogant, presumptuous, disobedient, boastful, and a bounder. [22:22] He thirsted for office, power, and the chance to make history. [27:29] Paul Orfalea The educational system teaches kids they have to be good at everything, or else. Out of the classroom, I've found this just isn't so. Adults have a much easier time. They get to specialize. They pick one thing. It's a whole lot easier. Copy This!: How I Turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 Square Feet into a Company Called Kinko's (Founders #181) [33:34] He is so resourceful and undismayed. [35:00] It's amazing how much of an advantage simply not giving up can give you. [37:28] Don’t turn your back on he who will not accept defeat. [38:10] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS (Founders #192) [41:09] Really it’s a pretty simple philosophy. What you have to do is just draw a line in the dirt, and force the bureaucracy back behind that line. And then know for sure that a year will go by and it will be back across that line, and you’ll have to do the same thing again. —Sam Walton [42:26] Shit happens. Acknowledge it. Learn from it. Forget it. Move on. —Paul Van Duren Authentic: A Memoir by The Founder of Vans (Founders #126) [44:00] Churchill was again sent to the bottom and had to face the task of wearily climbing the ladder again, for the third time in his life. It was not so easy now he was nearing fifty. [44:35] The World Crisis by Winston Churchill [45:01] No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money by David Lough [45:40] Churchill had his own version of PEDs: In those days, Churchill often took several whiffs of pure oxygen to lift him before a bout of oratory, and he traveled up with two canisters. [47:14] He called for a premium on effort and a penalty on inertia. [50:30] You have to work yourself into a position where you can trust your own judgment. That's all you have in life. [52:28] Never underestimate your opponent. All downside, no upside. [1:02:49] From Shoe Dog: I looked down the table. Everyone was sinking, slumping forward. I looked at Johnson. He was staring at the papers before him, and there was something in his handsome face, some quality I'd never seen there before. Surrender. Like everyone else in the room, he was giving up. The nation's economy was in the tank, a recession was under way. Gas lines, political gridlock, rising unemployment, Nixon being Nixon-Vietnam. It seemed like the end times. Everyone in the room had already been worrying about how they were going to make the rent, pay the light bill. Now this. I cleared my throat. "So...in other words," I said. I cleared my throat again, pushed aside my yellow legal pad. "What I'm trying to say is, we’ve got them right where we want them." [1:08:52] We shall never surrender. [1:10:00] Identify your most valuable asset and go all in: What’s going to win this war? Airpower. [1:1

What I learned from reading Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [6:45] The Winston Churchill episode is #196 based on the book The Splendid and The Vile [7:07] Don’t turn your back on he who will not accept defeat. [7:54] The greatest founders in history have identified a series of ideas that are extremely important to them and they repeat these ideas over and over again. Repetition is persuasive. [12:24] De Gaulle was a voice before he was a face. [16:45] Whatever happens the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished, and it will not be extinguished. [19:15] De Gaulle spoke about the army the way Enzo Ferrari spoke of his cars. Founders #97 Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans [23:30] Nothing dented his belief in victory. [23:38] The victor is the one that wants victory most energetically. [32:17] “Henry Singleton always tries to work out the best moves and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much because when you're playing a game, you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is.” —Claude Shannon [32:51] A country (or a person, or a company) is defeated only when it has lost the will to fight. [36:19] Excellence is the capacity to take pain. [42:13] To be passive is to be defeated. [48:18] Leadership is a solitary exersize of the will. [53:23] “I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass. We are going to kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing.” —General Patton [53:45] That central is completely opposite of what the French* generals thought. [54:34] Founders #208 In The Company of Giants [59:15] The history of entrepreneurship is extremely clear about the need to be able to concentrate. [1:00:38] All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. [1:04:55] He pushed himself to the limits and he expected the same from his men. [1:05:53] All those who have done something valuable and durable have done so alone and in silence. [1:07:07] Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime by Nims Purja [1:14:31] What everyone seems to ignore is the incredible mixture of patience, of obstinate creativity, the dizzying succession of calculations, negotiations, conflicts, that we had to undertake in order to accomplish our enterprise. [1:15:19] He really believed that giving up was treason. That you deserved death for giving up. [1:20:12] Fortune cannot always be favorable to us. [1:23:01] It was from this moment in his memoirs that DeGaulle starts to talk of himself in the third person. De Gaulle appears as a figure whom the narrator of the memoir watches. [1:27:55] No question or discussion, we must go forward. Whoever stands still, falls behind. [1:30:05] I have only one aim: to deliver France. [1:41:10] The effective formula De Gaulle used was 1. Ruthlessness. 2. Brilliance. 3. Total clarity about what he wanted to achieve. [1:45:36] Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of all France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France! ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Unstoppable: Siggi Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend by Joshua M. Greene. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- Never give up. Only death is permanent. Everything else can be fixed.I couldn't take such talk about not coming out alive. I didn't want to hear it. Whenever my mind told me I was not going to survive, the Almighty told me to keep going. So I stayed away from the others.Because I could outwit the guards, I always felt superior to them. I hated them. I hated their brutality, their inhuman behavior. I felt stronger, more intelligent, and I had confidence in myself from childhood. So even though they had the guns and did all the killing, I felt superior. It was obviously a touch of arrogance, and some of it was justified and some not justified, but even in that totally hopeless condition I looked down on all of them.It was clear that Americans were alive in every sense, moving purposefully toward some vision of tomorrow. He liked that. He would do that, too: grasp opportunities and not allow the darkness of the past to rob him of a bright future.Even smart chickens shit on their own feathers!When Naomi found out her husband was purchasing shares of Wilshire on a regular basis, she chided him. "More stock? We can barely pay the bills and you're buying more stock?" Siggi made excuses, but he didn't stop buying. "I didn't see how this was going to change our life," Naomi said, remembering other stocks her husband had bought and other career moves he had made. "But that's how it turned out."You are looking at a man who had the foxlike instincts to survive history's darkest hour, a man who has no fear of adversity and who cannot be intimidated by overwhelming odds.Siggi had grown his bank from $180 million in assets to more than $4 billion.Siggi was the first person in history to sue the Federal Reserve.He's just happy to be alive. People thought he was nuts and laughed at him, but he didn't care.Less than a year after his death, his estate was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. “Not bad," as Siggi once said, "for a short, bowlegged Jew with flat feet who never graduated kindergarten and started with only $240 in his pocket." ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- 1. The book reveals a thorough, rigorous, methodical person in search of life, knowledge, financial security, and, not least of all, fun. 2. I learned at an early age to teach myself. This paid off later on because there weren’t any courses in how to beat blackjack, build a computer for roulette, or launch a market-neutral hedge fund.3. Even though the Goliath I was challenging had always won, I knew something no one else did: He was nearsighted, clumsy, slow, and stupid, and we were going to fight on my terms, not his.4. I admired the heroes who, through extraordinary abilities and resourcefulness, achieved great things. I may have been inspired to mirror this in the future by using my mind to overcome intellectual obstacles.5. Rather than subscribing to widely accepted views—such as you can’t beat the casinos—I checked for myself. 6. What matters in life is how you spend your time.7. Life is like reading a novel or running a marathon. It’s not so much about reaching a goal but rather about the journey itself and the experiences along the way. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Time is the stuff life is made of,” and how you spend it makes all the difference.8. I also believed then, as I do now after more than fifty years as a money manager, that the surest way to get rich is to play only those gambling games or make those investments where I have an edge.9. Since much of what we were doing was being invented as we went along, and our investment approach was new, I had to teach a unique set of skills. I chose young smart people just out of university because they were not set in their ways from previous jobs. Better to teach a young athlete who comes fresh to his sport than to retrain one who has learned bad form.10. Whatever you do, enjoy your life and the people who share it with you, and leave something good of yourself for the generations to follow. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [16:02] I had a considerable passion to get rich. Not because I wanted Ferraris—I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it. [26:49] I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in the classroom, which is natural. My family was into all that stuff, getting ahead through discipline, knowledge, and self-control. [37:44] He talked about business in a way that was animated and interesting though now I see he was almost broke. I knew he drove an awful car. But I never thought he was anything but a big success. Why did I think that? He just had this air-everything he did was going to be first class, going to be great. He had these enthusiasms for his projects and his future. [38:48] Charlie drummed in the notion that a person should always "Do the best that you can do. Never tell a lie. If you say you're going to do it, get it done. Nobody gives a shit about an excuse. Leave for the meeting early, Don't be late, but if you are late, don't bother giving people excuses. Just apologize. They're due the apology, but they're not interested in an excuse.” [42:22] The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner.[49:15] He wouldn't accept anything on face value. His interest in almost everything can be so intense, he will have a perspective that others will not have. [49:29] Do things that other people aren't doing. [1:07:55] I am a biography nut myself and I think when you're trying to teach the great concepts that work, it helps to tie them into the lives and personalities of the people who developed them. I think that you learn economics better if you make Adam Smith your friend. That sounds funny, making friends among the eminent dead, but if you go through life making friends with the emìnent dead who had the right ideas, I thìnk it will work better in life and work better in education. It's way better than just giving the basic concepts.[1:15:15] It is Charlie's philosophy that a first-rate man should be willing to take at least some difficult jobs with a high chance of failure.[1:21:28] Though few companies last forever, all of them should be built to last a long time, says Munger. The approach to corporate control should be thought of as "financial engineering." Just as bridges and airplanes are constructed with a series of back-up systems and redundancies to meet extreme stresses, so too should corporations be built to withstand the pressures from competition, recessions, oil shocks, or other calamities. Excess leverage, or debt, makes the corporation especially vulnerable to such storms. It is a crime in to build a weak bridge. How much nobler is it to build a weak company? ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:01] Editorial writers around the world groped for words to express what Enzo Ferrari had meant. Many tried to describe him as an automotive pioneer, which he was not; others called him a great racing driver and engineer, which he was not. He was, however, exactly what he had repeatedly said he was: an agitator of men. And he remained true to his credo to the day he died. [0:43] If there was one essential quality about the man it was his ironbound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name. For nearly sixty years, hardly a day passed when this thought was not foremost in his mind. Win or lose, he unfailingly answered the bell. In that sense his devotion to his own self-described mission was without precedent. For that alone he towered over his peers.[44:26] Enzo Ferrari was a man with a diamond-hard will to win at all costs.[45:08] If they were to survive, it would be thanks to their wits and their ability to play the ancient game of life. Few men understood this game better than Ferrari. [48:49] Enzo Ferrari was born with simple tastes, and even after he became rich and prominent, he retained the ways of a simple, uncluttered man. During the 1930s, when every ounce of his energies and every lira in his pocket were being plowed back into the business, he lived a modest, frugal life. [1:05:50] It is often said that his greatest skill was his ability to recognize talent. [1:06:13] Ferrari appeared to be happier when he was losing, which jibes with mechanics' observations that the race shop on Monday was more serene following a defeat than a victory. But why? Was not winning the central object of the exercise? Ferrari explained: “There is always something to learn. One never stops learning. Particularly when one is losing. When one loses one knows what has to be done. When one wins one is never sure.”[1:08:08] The source of much of Ferrari's success over the years was not technological brilliance or tactical cleverness, but dogged, gritty, unfailing persistence in competing—a willingness to appear at the line no matter what the odds and run as hard as possible. [1:15:44] Those who knew him best understood that Enzo Ferrari would never retire. There was little else in his life besides automobile racing. It was that simple.[1:19:34] His view of racing remained constant; the event itself was essentially meaningless. For him the stimulation came in the planning and preparation, in the creation of the machines, in the organization of the human beings who would man the team.---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [28:32] All the energy he'd put into trying to destroy himself, he put that into building himself back up. All that negative energy became something else. He became so serious, and so driven and focused. He worked really hard. It takes a lot of determination to wake up early in the morning and write, and then go to a job in the kitchen, and come home at god knows what hour, and get up the next morning and do it again. He was a fiend. One time, he said about his disciplined writing regimen, "Such was my lust to see my name in print." He threw himself into his work in a manner that I found astonishing. [41:17] He gave me really good advice: "Stay public. You gotta promote, promote, promote, or it all dies. You just gotta be out there all the time." Tony embraced that.[56:17] He proceeded to tell everyone to ignore the network. He said, "Completely ignore everything they're saying about music, about story, about shots. Let me deal with it all. I'm gonna make the show I want to make, across all fronts.” I had already been editing for ten years, and this was the first time I'd heard anything like this. Everyone is always just trying to make the network happy. [1:01:51] The line between Tony and the show was very thin, if it existed at all. [1:07:07] This life isn't a greenroom for something else. He went for it. [1:20:50] He demanded excellence, and he never settled for shit. He just wanted the show to be the greatest thing ever, all the time.[1:22:48] It was his life's work, and he never slacked.[1:34:56] Tony gorged himself on being alive.[1:46:13] The world is not better off with him not here. It's just not.[1:45:46] I liked him better when he was just kind of living his best life and looking in the rearview mirror like he stole something. This beautiful life that he had, something people would dream of, and no one else could do it but him. A "slit my wrist" love story is just the shittiest ending to it all. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading My Turn: A Life of Total Football by Johan Cruyff. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- [0:01] I always say you play football with your head; you just use your legs to run. [1:09] I'm not capable of doing something at a low level. [8:45] I'm definitely cunning. I'm always on the lookout for the best advantage. [13:16] To be able to touch the ball perfectly once, you need to have touched it a hundred thousand times in training.[14:00] My father died in 1959, when he was forty-five and I was twelve. His death has never let go of me. [21:07] Winning was the consequence of the process that we had concentrated on.[45:30] It doesn't work without full commitment. [55:17] The experiences I have been through have given me a vast store of knowledge that needs to be shared so that others can profit from my experiences. [56:09] I've led a full life and can look back on it the way you're supposed to. It's been so incredibly intense that I feel like I've lived for a hundred years.[56:21] A setback is probably a sign that you need to make some adjustments. If you learn to think that way, all experiences are translated into something positive. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Estée Lauder: A Success Story by Estée Lauder. Watch Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ----[21:14] I sometimes wonder if I had set my heart on selling tassels, cars, furniture, or anything else but beauty, would I have risen to the top of a profession? Somehow I doubt it. I believed in my product. I loved my product. [32:07] Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances.[39:24] I was single-minded in the pursuit of my dream.[44:38] Despite all the naysayers, there was never a single moment when I considered giving up. That was simply not a viable alternative.[55:59] We took the money we had planned to use on advertising and invested it instead in enough material to give away large quantities of our products. [1:02:20] Never underestimate the value of an ally. Today they call it networking—this sharing between colleagues. It is one of the most powerful tools in the business. [1:12:22] It's not enough to have the most wonderful product in the world. You must be able to sell it.[1:15:03] Love your career or else find another. [1:19:05] Visualize. If in your mind's eye you see a successful venture, a deal made, a profit accomplished, it has a superb chance of actually happening. Projecting your mind into a successful situation is the most powerful means to achieve goals. If you spend time with pictures of failure in your mind, you will orchestrate failure. Countless times, before the event, I have pictured a heroic sale to a large department store every step of the way and the picture in my mind became a reality. I've visualized success, then created the reality from the image. Great athletes, business people, inventors, and achievers from all walks of life seem to know this secret.[1:21:34] I've always believed that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. I kept my eye on the target. I've never allowed my eye to leave the particular target of the moment. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans by Paul Van Doren. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- The way we deal with hardship is our legacy. You can accept defeat, or you can overcome it.Quitting Randy's had probably been the biggest stroke of luck in my life. Opportunity is a strange beast.Whenever a situation went sideways and things looked dire, I always called up my one superpower: focus.I believe honest self-evaluation and the ability to listen to others has been one of my greatest strengths, one that has served me well over the years. If someone had a better idea than mine, of course I would adopt that. I really didn’t care if I didn’t get credit. I didn’t need credit; I needed success.The very best thing that occurred during that first decade of Vans was that we truly became a family business. Without exception, family has always been the most important thing in my life.Most of the kids in the early skater crews came from single-parent households, from the wrong side of the tracks. They were idiosyncratic, creative, independent—they were seen as the “freaks” of the sport. In so many ways, they were our people.If you do something no one else can do, or do something better than most, the odds are in your favor for success.Shit happens—it really does. Letting yourself get stuck in it doesn’t do any good. Acknowledge it and then move on. Don’t let it weigh you down—just cope. Tackling things in a positive way will help you succeed more often than not. Shit happens: these two words fully acknowledge the difficulties in life, but you can put them firmly in the rearview mirror, without letting them mess with your head or your path in life.To me, the more critical the situation, the better I’ll perform. I don’t create clutch situations just to feel the rush—I’d prefer to eliminate risk than encourage it—but I for one have always found defeat intoxicating, especially when it's someone else's. And when it's mine, I can’t say it's ever done anything but make me think smarter and behave differently, even courageously. Hell, it's only after I lost something or when something didn’t go my way that I was afforded the opportunity to shine.I’ve learned that what makes a successful entrepreneur is the same thing that makes a good skateboarder or good surfer: you need grit and determination to get back up every time you’re knocked off the board. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- It is clear that nothing short of a full-speed, all-out attempt would be worthwhile.Once Leslie Groves accepted his new assignment, he embraced it completely. From his appointment in September 1942 until the end of the war, he worked at full speed, often fourteen hours a day or more. His remarkable energy and stamina frequently exhausted those who worked and traveled with him.Groves's style was to delegate whatever he could and then put the screws to the delegees. He was a taskmaster.The instructions to the project were that any individual in the project who felt that the ultimate completion was going to be delayed by as much as a day by something that was happening, it was his duty to report it direct to me. Urgency was on us right from the start.When Marshall asked him if he ever praised anyone for a job well done, Groves said no. "I don't believe in it. No matter how well something is being done, it can always be done better and faster.”Oppenheimer insisted that Los Alamos should have one director. He had learned enough about management from studying Groves to believe that while consensus was important, an organization needed a single leader.The dual approaches reflected Groves's belief in pursuing multiple solutions to a problem until the problem is solved. In a frank assessment of his boss after the war, he called him, "the biggest S.O.B. I have ever worked for. He is the most demanding. He is the most critical. He is always a driver, never a praiser. He is abrasive and sarcastic. He disregards all normal organizational channels. He is extremely intelligent. He has the guts to make timely, difficult decisions. He is the most egotistical man I know. He knows he is right and so sticks by his decision. He abounds with energy and expects everyone to work as hard or even harder than he does. If I had to do my part of the atomic bomb project over again and had the privilege of picking my boss I would pick General Groves."Groves had a reputation for competence. He was demanding, rough, and sometimes brutal with his staff, intolerant of delay and mental slowness. On the other hand, he never swore, rarely lost his temper, and never raised his voice. He was also prepared to let subordinates disagree if their arguments were sound. He disliked people who groveled.Groves remained unflappable, accepting the unanticipated as normal. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- 1. He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you.2. He refused to accept automatically received truths, and he wanted to examine everything himself.3. Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.4. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.5. The way we're running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let's make it simple. Really simple.6. Jobs’s intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions.7. The thing that struck me was his intensity. Whatever he was interested in he would generally carry to an irrational extreme.8. One of Jobs's talents was spotting markets that were filled with second-rate products.9. Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.10. His mind was never a captive of reality. He possessed an epic sense of possibility. He looked at things from the standpoint of perfection. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- [4:55] Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention play well when everyone is watching.[9:47] It's hard, but it's fair. I live by those words. [12:49] To this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing, and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche. People talk about my work ethic as a player, but they don't understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me. [24:00] You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared. [24:26] Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. [37:01] I knew going against the grain was just part of the process. [53:20] The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be.[57:41] I would wake up in the morning thinking: How am I going to attack today?[1:06:04] I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long.[1:06:22] In all honesty, I don't know what's ahead. If you ask me what I'm going to do in five years, I can't tell you. This moment? Now that's a different story. I know what I'm doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what's ahead. I'm so connected to this moment that I don't make assumptions about what might come next, because I don't want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen, or might not happen, you start limiting the potential outcomes. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- [5:07] His competence was exceeded only by his confidence.[5:58] He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it. [6:33] It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise to the occasion. [14:06] At each step along his path, others would express amazement at how hard he competed. At every level, he was driven as if he were pursuing something that others couldn't see.[16:10] Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I'd close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it, and that got me going again. [19:29] Jordan could sense immediately that he had something the others didn't. [59:53] The Jordan Rules succeeded against the Bulls so well that they became textbook for guarding athletic scorers. The scheme helped Detroit win two NBA championships, but it also helped in the long run, by forcing Jordan to find an answer. "I think that 'Jordan Rules' defense, as much as anything else, played a part in the making of Michael Jordan," Tex Winter said. [1:16:35] Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required. [1:19:56] I have always liked practice and I hate to miss it. When you miss that one day, you feel like you missed a lot. You take extra work to make up for that one day. I've always been a practice player. I believe in it.[1:29:47] Jordan presented a singleness of purpose that was hard to dent. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- He became one of the richest men in U.S. history ever to be arrested.The epic life of Aristotle Onassis is as mysterious as a tale from ancient Greek mythology and is a study of paradoxes, altogether gripping because of their seeming inconsistencies.Onassis had long since begun to formulate a personal business philosophy. The key to success was boldness, boldness, and more boldness.He was constantly visiting and inspecting ships, talking to ship owners and other importers and quietly absorbing everything, making a very conscious attempt to learn as much as he could before going into ship-owning seriously.He was quite observant about what, to others, were trifles but, to him, were important details. He often quoted Napoleon: “The pursuit of detail is the religion of success.”Onassis was a man of the pier, but with the cocksureness of a king.She simply never knew anyone quite as free or exotic as Aristotle Onassis, a paradoxical blend of raconteur and ruffian.Onassis was a born orator. He could keep a dinner party of some of the world's most sophisticated conversationalists spellbound.Onassis spent almost all of his time working. He would pore over shipping journals from Antwerp, Vancouver, Hamburg, and New York, looking for intelligence, trends, and opportunities. He would scan, study and memorize tonnage, prices, insurance rates and schedules of the world's great and small steamship companies and then attempt to outbid his competitors. He read the maritime sections of at least six foreign language daily newspapers each day.And I, of course, will do exactly as I please. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- My earliest memory is of imagining I was someone else.By the time I was fourteen the nail in wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all. I'm not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.There was also a work-ethic in the poem that I liked, something that suggested writing poems (or stories, or essays) had as much in common with sweeping the floor as with mythy moments of revelation.The realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit.If I ever came close to despairing about my future as a writer, it was then. I could see myself thirty years on, wearing the same shabby tweed coats with patches on the elbows, potbelly rolling over my Gap khakis from too much beer. I'd have a cigarette cough from too many packs, thicker glasses, more dandruff, and in my desk drawer, six or seven unfinished manuscripts which I would take out and tinker with from time to time, usually when drunk. And of course. I'd lie to myself, telling myself there was still time, it wasn't too late.You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.“When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.” Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate - four to six hours a day, every day – will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them.You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself. These lessons almost always occur with the study door closed. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ----Whatever is there, he makes it work.Spielberg once defined his approach to filmmaking by declaring, "I am the audience.""He said, 'I want to be a director.' And I said, 'Well, if you want to be a director, you've gotta start at the bottom, you gotta be a gofer and work your way up.' He said, 'No, Dad. The first picture I do, I'm going to be a director.' And he was. That blew my mind. That takes guts."One of his boyhood friends recalls Spielberg saying "he could envision himself going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar and thanking the Academy.” He was twelve.He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own.Spielberg remained essentially an autodidact. Spielberg followed his own eccentric path to a professional directing career. Universal Studios, in effect, was Spielberg's film school. Giving him an education that, paradoxically, was both more personal and more conventional than he would have received in an academic environment. Spielberg devised what amounted to his own private tutorial program at Universal, immersing himself in the aspects of filmmaking he found most crucial to his development.At the time he came to Hollywood, generations of nepotism had made the studios terminally inbred and unwelcoming to newcomers. The studio system, long under siege from television, falling box-office receipts, and skyrocketing costs, was in a state of impending collapse.When Steven was very discouraged trying to sell a script and break in, he always had a positive, forward motion, whatever he may have been suffering inside.In the two decades since Star Wars and Close Encounters were released, science-fiction films have accounted for half of the top twenty box-office hits. But before George Lucas and Spielberg revived the genre there was no real appetite at the studios for science fiction. The conventional wisdom was science-fiction films never make money.Your children love you. They want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? We have a few special years with our children, when they're the ones who want us around. So fast, it’s a few years, then it's over. You are not being careful. And you are missing it. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. —Steve Jobs There are no shortcuts around quality, and quality starts with people. —Steve Jobs Usually people never think that much about what they're doing or why they do it. They just do it because that's the way it has been done and it works. That type of thinking doesn't work if you're growing fast and if you're up against some larger companies. You really have to outthink them and you have to be able to make those paradigm shifts in your points of view. —Steve Jobs ————Steve Jobs answer to What advice would you give someone interested in starting their own company?A lot of people ask me, "I want to start a company. What should I do?" My first question is always, "What is your passion? What is it you want to do in your company?" Most of them say, "I don't know."My advice is go get a job as a busboy until you figure it out. You've got to be passionate about something. You shouldn't start a company because you want to start a company. Almost every company I know of got started because nobody else believed in the idea and the last resort was to start the company. That's how Apple got started. That's how Pixar got started. It's how Intel got started. You need to have passion about your idea and you need to feel so strongly about it that you're willing to risk a lot.Starting a company is so hard that if you're not passionate about it, you will give up. If you're simply doing it because you want to have a small company, forget it.It's so much work and at times is so mentally draining. The hardest thing I've ever done is to start a company. It's the funnest thing, but it's the hardest thing, and if you're not passionate about your goal or your reason for doing it, you will give up. You will not see it through. So, you must have a very strong sense of what you want.You have to need to run such a business and know you can do it better than anyone else. ————There are no safe harbors. The only safe harbor is competency. Competency at doing something. —T.J. Rodgers founder of Cypress SemiconductorThe first time someone says, “The product you've made has changed my life," is the biggest sense of satisfaction you get. It motivates me more than anything else, by far. —Charles Geschke, founder of AdobeBeing detached from the customer is the ultimate death. —Michael Dell The faster you experiment and get rid of things that don't work and keep doing things that do work, the faster you get to the winning business model. —Michael DellThe important things of tomorrow are probably going to be things that are overlooked today. —Andy Grove The best assumption to have is that any commonly held belief is wrong. —Ken Olsen ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ----Individuals come and go, but they leave their records and ideas behind them. These become a guide to all who follow.Genius is the art of taking pains. The best ads ask no one to buy. That is useless. The best ads are based entirely on service. They offer wanted information. They site advantages to users.Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. The care nothing about your interests or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising. Ads say in effect, “Buy my brand. Give me the trade you give to others. Let me have the money." That doesn't work.We learn that people judge largely by price. We often employ this factor. Perhaps we are advertising a valuable formula. To merely say that would not be impressive. So we state as a fact that we paid $100,000 for that formula. That statement when tried has won a wealth of respect.The weight of an argument may often be multiplied by making it specific. Makers of safety razors have long advertised quick shaves. One maker advertised a 78-second shave. The difference is vast. If a claim is worth making, make it in the most impressive way.The product itself should be its own best salesman. Not the product alone, but the product plus a mental impression, and atmosphere, which you place around it. Samples are of prime importance. However expensive, they usually form the cheapest selling method. Samples serve numerous valuable purposes. They enable one to use the word "Free" in ads. That often multiplies readers. Samples pay for themselves in multiplying the readers of your ads.Mail order advertising tells a complete story if the purpose is to make an immediate sale. You see no limitations there on the amount of copy. The motto is, "The more you tell the more you sell." And it has never failed to be proven wrong in any test we know.Show health, not sickness. Don't show the wrinkles you propose to remove, but the face as it will appear. Your customers know all about the wrinkles. Show pretty teeth, not bad teeth. Talk of coming good conditions, not conditions that exist. We are attracted by sunshine, beauty, happiness, health, and success. Point the way to them, not the way out of the opposite.I spend far more time on headlines than on writing. I often spend hours on a single headline. The identical ad run with various headlines differs tremendously in its returns. It is not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns by five or ten times over. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ----Advertising is a very simple thing. I can give it to you in three words: Salesmanship in print.Before he arrived on the scene, advertising agencies were mostly brokers of space in newspapers and magazines. With Lasker's prodding, the industry became a creative force and began earning substantial commissions.His rare ability to put troubled geniuses to work on challenging problems grew in part from the fact that he himself had been driven by "a thousand devils.”Albert measured himself against the man who had braved the privations and horrors of the Civil War, epidemics, and hurricanes and made several fortunes in a foreign and sometimes hostile land.Thomas was often taken aback by his young colleague's unconventional views and methods.He decided that he could represent as well as anybody, because at least as far as he could tell, nobody in his office really knew anything much about the business they were in.He was beginning to suspect that advertising agencies were leaving an enormous amount of money on the table. Lasker felt sure that he could build the business, and boost commissions if he could improve the agency's copywriting.You are insufferably egotistical on the things you know nothing about, and you are painfully modest about those things about which you know everything.Hopkins began imparting his theory of copywriting. We should never brag about a client's product, he said, or plead with consumers to buy it. Instead, we must figure out how to appeal to the consumer's self-interest.Lasker argued that rather than maintaining many modestly successful small brands, the company needed to create one overwhelmingly powerful product. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Invention: A Life by James Dyson. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- This is a story told through a life of creating and developing things, as well as expressing a call to arms for young people to become engineers, creating solutions to our current and future problems.I have tried to seek out those young people who can make the world a better place. I have seen what miracles they can achieve. This book is aimed at encouraging them. Some may well become heirs to my heroes—inventors, engineers, and designers—who make their appearance in these pages. Like them, they will not find it easy and they will need oodles of determination and stamina along the way. That was the last time I saw him. His brave cheerfulness chokes me every time I recall the scene. It is impossible to imagine my father's emotions as he waved goodbye knowing that he might be on his way to London to die. Sixty years have not softened these memories, nor the sadness that he missed enjoying his three children growing up.I felt the devastating loss of my dad, his love, his humor, and the things he taught me. I feared for a future without him.Running also taught me to overcome the pain barrier: when everyone else feels exhausted, that is the opportunity to accelerate, whatever the pain, and win the race. Stamina and determination, with creativity, are needed to overcome seemingly impossible difficulties.I admire Soichiro Honda greatly for his addiction to the continuous improvement of products.Craziest of all, during the first thirty years of our marriage, she agreed unselfishly to keep putting her signature to endless bank guarantee forms in front of solicitors, signing away our possessions. If we had defaulted on the bank loans, we would have been evicted from our home.At Dyson, we don't particularly value experience. Experience tells you how things should be done when we are much more interested in how things shouldn't be done.Jeremy Fry encouraged me to think for myself and to "just do it."Jeremy Fry taught me, without saying a word, that each day is a form of education.I wanted to make new things—things that might seem strange—and not things you make because you know they will sell.I was left with a burning ambition to emulate designer-engineers like Issigonis and Citroën in my own small way.I happen to find factories and production lines romantic places. They are truly exciting.Selling goes with manufacturing as wheels do with a bicycle. Products do not walk off shelves and into people's homes. And when a product is entirely new, the art of selling is needed to explain it. What it is. How it works. Why you might need and want it.He believed, most of all, in the power of enthusiasm.I still find myself putting into practice at Dyson some of the same things Jeremy said and did when I worked for him half a century ago. He believed in taking on young people with no experience because this way he employed those with curious, unsullied, and open minds.Jeremy was always looking for a better way of doing things.He loathed arrogance and experts, by which he meant those who want you to believe that they know everything about a subject when the inventive mind knows instinctively that there are always further questions to be asked and new discoveries to be made.Alec's view was that market research is bunk and that one should never copy the opposition.I was also putting into practice ideas I'd learned directly from Jeremy Fry and indirectly from Alec Issigonis: Don't copy the opposition. Don't worry about market research. Both Jeremy and Alec Issigonis might just as well have said "Follow your own star." And this is indeed what successful entrepreneurs do.I was penniless again with no job and no income. I had three adorable children, a large mortgage to pay, and nothing to show for the past five years of toil. I had also lost my inventions. This was a very low moment and deeply worrying for Deirdre and me. It was deeply upsetting, too. My confidence took a big blow, and it would take some years to regain it.Here was a field-the vacuum cleaner industry-where there had been no innovation for years, so the market ought to be ripe for something new.For the following fifteen years I lived in debt. This might not sound encouraging to young inventors with an entrepreneurial spirit, yet if you believe you can achieve something then you have to give the project 100 percent of your creative energy. You have to believe that you'll get there in the end. You need determination, patience, and willpower.Experts tend to be confident that they have all the answers and, because of this trait, they can kill new ideas.I had various degrees of perseverance underpinned by a kind of naïve intelligence, by which I mean following your own star along a path where yo

What I learned from reading Inside Steve's Brian by Leander Kahney. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- 1. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.2. He remade Apple in his own image. Apple is Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives.3. I'm looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. Am willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that 'vision thing' and I'm not afraid to start from the beginning.4. Good storytelling lasts for decades. I don't think you'll be able to boot up any computer today in 20 years. But Snow White has sold 28 million copies, and it's a 60-year-old production.5. Jobs has said the starting point is the user experience.6. In everything I've done it really pays to go after the best people in the world. 7. My dream is that every person in the world will have their own Apple computer. To do that, we've got to be a great marketing company.8. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.9. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea or a problem you're passionate about; otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.10. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that motives make so much difference. Our primary goal here is to make the world's best PCs—not to be the biggest or the richest. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital by Spencer Ante. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- 1. He was very important because he was the first one to believe there was a future in financing entrepreneurs in an organized way.2. He brought a unique style to everything he did. 3. He called his course Manufacturing, but it was really his philosophy of life and of business.4. At Harvard, Doriot became a Yoda-like figure, dispensing wisdom to an ever-growing group of disciples.5. He got me motivated to start a business.6. A real courageous man is a man who does something courageous when no one is watching him. 7. If any information is to be exchanged over whiskey, let us get it rather than give it. 8. You will get nowhere if you do not inspire people.9. Always remember that someone somewhere is making a product that will make your product obsolete.10. Decades before economists appreciated the value of technology, Doriot realized that innovation was the key to economic progress.11. He upset the conventional wisdom by proving that there was big money to be made from patient investing in and the nurturing of small, unproven companies.12. He believed in building companies for the long haul. 13. I don’t consider a speculator constructive. I am building men and companies.14. A creative man merely has ideas; a resourceful man makes them practical. I look for the resourceful man.15. When ARD liquidated its stake in Digital, the company was worth more than $400 million—yielding a return on their original investment of more than 70,000 percent. It was the young venture capital industry’s first home run.16. Doriot never figured out a way to appease government regulators, who repeatedly threatened to put ARD out of business.17. More than any other person, Doriot pioneered the transition to an economy built on entrepreneurship and innovation.18. Celebrating anything less than the best possible result smacked of contentment19. A commercial bank lends only on the strength of the past. I want money to do things that have never been done before.20. Every successful man can usually point to a mentor that helped guide his career.21. One of things that profoundly affected Georges was his father getting wiped out financially.22. Doriot would go on to mentor thousands of other students, giving them advice, finding them jobs, guiding them in their careers, and taking an extraordinarily personal interest in each and every one of their futures.23. Doriot believed strongly in forming a close bond between student and teacher.24. Doriot described with a palpable sense of glee the importance of imparting a strong work ethic.25. Doriot encouraged his students to ponder the purpose of life and business. It was a highly unusual technique but the students realized Doriot was giving them knowledge of much deeper value.26. Always challenge the statement that nothing can be done about a certain condition27. There was still a fire that burned in Doriot. A passion that kept him searching for his next mission impossible.28. Doriot was a workaholic with no family responsibilities to divert his energies29. A committee is an invitation to do nothing.30. Lack of competent personnel was his most vexing problem.31. One word is omitted from Doriot’s vocabulary. That word—“impossible.” If a thing must be done, it can be done.32. Doriot was putting in twelve-hour days, seven days a week. 33. We cannot depend safely for an indefinite time on the expansion of our old big industries alone. We need new strength, energy and ability from below.34. A team made up of the younger generation, with courage and inventiveness, together with older men of wisdom and experience, should bring success.35. On his desk, Doriot kept a stopwatch. “Sometimes I use it to see how long it takes someone in a meeting to tell me the same thing three times,” he said.36. An average idea in the hands of an able man is worth much more than an outstanding idea in the possession of a person with only average ability.37. The riskiest investments, they were learning, held the potential to generate the greatest financial returns and the highest personal satisfaction38. He knew that if entrepreneurs weren’t self-driven and a bit egotistical they’d be punching the clock for IBM or General Electric.39. Creative ability knows no boundaries.40. It’s very important to cultivate the memory of great people. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each

What I learned from reading A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- Big opportunities come infrequently. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.Speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it. —W. Somerset Maugham"Moats" —a metaphor for the superiorities they possess that make life difficult for their competitors. Business history is filled with "Roman Candles," companies whose moats proved illusory and were soon crossed.When a company is selling a product with commodity-like economic characteristics, being the low-cost producer is all-important.In a business selling a commodity-type product, it's impossible to be a lot smarter than your dumbest competitor.As a wise friend told me long ago, "If you want to get a reputation as a good businessman, be sure to get into a good business."The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph.Our managers have produced extraordinary results by doing rather ordinary things—but doing them exceptionally well.If we are delighting customers, eliminating unnecessary costs and improving our products and services, we gain strength.On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous. When our long-term competitive position improves as a result of these almost unnoticeable actions, we describe the phenomenon as "widening the moat."We always, of course, hope to earn more money in the short-term. But when short-term and long-term conflict, widening the moat must take precedence.Charlie and I are not big fans of resumes. Instead, we focus on brains, passion and integrity.It's difficult to teach a new dog old tricks.Investors should understand that for certain companies, and even for some industries, there simply is no good long-term strategy.Most of our directors have a major portion of their net worth invested in the company. We eat our own cooking.Our trust is in people rather than process. A “hire well, manage little" code suits both them and me.Just run your business as if: (1) You own 100% of it; (2) It is the only asset in the world that you and your family have or will ever have; and (3) You can't sell it for at least a century.We believe in Charlie's dictum-“Just tell me the bad news; the good news will take care of itself".We do have a few advantages, perhaps the greatest being that we don't have a strategic plan. Thus we feel no need to proceed in an ordained direction but can instead simply decide what makes sense for our owners.We always mentally compare any move we are contemplating with dozens of other opportunities open to us. Our practice of making this comparison- acquisitions against passive investments –-is a discipline that managers focused simply on expansion seldom use.We have no master strategy, no corporate planners delivering us insights about socioeconomic trends, and no staff to investigate a multitude of ideas presented by promoters and intermediaries. Instead, we simply hope that something sensible comes along-and, when it does, we act.Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me.Charlie and I know that the right players will make almost any team manager look good. We subscribe to the philosophy of Ogilvy & Mather's founding genius, David Ogilvy: “If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But, if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants."Our experience has been that the manager of an already high-cost operation frequently is uncommonly resourceful in finding new ways to add to overhead, while the manager of a tightly-run operation usually continues to find additional methods to curtail costs, even when his costs are already well below those of his competitors.A compact organization lets all of us spend our time managing the business rather than managing each other.Thirty years ago Tom Murphy, then CEO of Cap Cities, drove this point home to me with a hypothetical tale about an employee who asked his boss for permission to hire an assistant. The employee assumed that adding $20,000 to the annual payroll would be inconsequential. But his boss told him the proposal should be evaluated as a $3 million decision, given that an additional person would probably cost at least that amount over his lifetime, factoring in raises, benefits and other expenses (more people, more toilet paper). And unless the company fell on very hard times, the employee added would be unlikely to be dismissed, however marginal his contribution to the business.In both business and investme

What I learned from reading Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Definitive Biography of The Engineer, Visionary, and Great Briton by L.T.C. Rolt. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- 1. His career was to him a tremendous adventure.2. I have always made it a rule, which I have found by some years experience a safe and profitable one, to have nothing to do with newspaper articles.3. It is consoling to be thus reminded that the lunatic fringe is a hardy perennial and not a phenomenon peculiar to our day and age.4. The livelihood of anybody relying upon their penmanship is generally precarious.5. One whose high spirits seemed quite impervious to cold and discomfort.6. The ready wit and the gaiety concealed a fire and a power which would drive him, undeterred by repeated disappointments, to achieve fame and fortune.7. The name of Isambard Brunel would not mean what it does today if he had not displayed the same characteristics of dogged persistence and an unlimited capacity for hard work which distinguish the self-taught engineers.8. A great man achieves eminence by his capacity to live more fully and intensely than his fellows and in so doing his faults as well as his virtues become the more obvious.9. It is not in freedom from faults but in the ability to transcend and master them that greatness lies.10. Isambard Brunel threw into the work all that unsparing energy which was to distinguish his whole life. For as much as thirty-six hours at a time he would not leave the tunnel, pausing only for a brief cat-nap.11. The Brunels were not men to sit down with folded hands and bewail their misfortune.12. Spurred on by Brunel's unconquerable determination, the work went forward.13. Iť's a gloomy perspective and yet bad as it is I cannot with all my efforts work myself up to be down hearted.14. Never Despair has always been my motto – we may succeed yet. Persevere.15. This time he was going to win, but it would be a great struggle.16. He never lost faith in himself.17. He determined then to make perfection of his work the supreme goal and from that resolve he never subsequently wavered.18. He knew that it would be so because, as any artist or craftsman must, he had alrcady conccived the completed work in his imagination19. For it was an inviolable rule of Brunel's that he would never, under any circumstances, accept an appointment which involved divided responsibility. In any work upon which he engaged there could be only one engineer and he must have the full responsibility for the work and for the conduct of his staff.20. Plain, gentlemanly language seems to have no effect upon you. I must try stronger language and stronger measures. You are a cursed, lazy, inattentive, apathetic vagabond, and if you continue to neglect my instructions, and to show such infernal laziness, I shall send you about your business. I have frequently told you, amongst other absurd, untidy habits, that that of making drawings on the back of others was inconvenient; by your cursed neglect of that you have again wasted more of my time than your whole life is worth.21. Experiment was the breath of life to Brunel and for him precedents only existed to be questioned.22. Brunel rejected precedent and proceeded from first principles. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson and reading A History of Great Inventions by James Dyson. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- 1. I am a creator of products, a builder of things, and my name appears love on them. That is how I make a living and they are what have made nom my name at least familiar in a million homes.2. This is also the exposition of a business philosophy, which is very different from anything you might have encountered before.3. It has all happened, I really believe, because of the intrinsic excellence of the machine; because it is a better vacuum cleaner than anything that has gone before; and because it looks better than anything like it has ever looked.4. Perhaps millions of people, in the last few thousand years, have had ideas for improving it. All I did was take things a little further than just having the idea.5. My own success has been in observing objects in daily use which, it was always assumed, could not be improved.6. Anyone can become an expert in anything in six months, whether it is hydrodynamics for boats or cyclonic systems for vacuum cleaners. After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology. My first cyclonic vacuum cleaner was built out of cereal packets and masking tape long before I understood how it worked.7. The best kind of business is one where you can sell a product at a high price with a good margin, and in enormous volumes. For that you have to develop a product that works better and looks better than existing ones. That type of investment is long term and high risk. Or at least, it looks like a high-risk policy. In the longer view, it is not half so likely to prove hazardous to one's financial health as simply following the herd.8. Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control.9. This is not even a business book. It is, if anything, a book against business, against the principles that have filled the world with ugly, useless objects, unhappy people, and brought the country to its economic knees. We all want to make our mark. We all want to make beautiful things and a little money. We all have our own ideas about how to do it. What follows just happens to be my way.10. I have been a misfit throughout my professional life, and that seems to have worked to my advantage. Misfits are not born or made; they make themselves. 11. I took on the big boys at their own game, made them look very silly, just by being true to myself.12. Herb Elliot was a big name at the time, so I read a few books about him and discovered that his coach had told him that the way to develop stamina and strengthen the leg muscles was to run up and down sand dunes. This suited me fine, because if I had nothing else I certainly had sand dunes. Out there alone on the dunes I got a terrific buzz from knowing that I was doing something that no on one else was - they were all tucked up in bed at school. I knew that I was training myself to do something better than anyone else would be able to do.13. The act of running itself was not something I enjoyed. The best you could say for it was that it was lonely and painful. But as I started to win by greater and greater margins I did it more and more, because I knew the reason for my success was that out on the sand dunes I was doing something that no one else was doing. Apart from me and Herb, no one knew. They were all running round and round the track like a herd of sheep and not getting any quicker. Difference itself was bon making me come first.14. In so many ways it taught me the most significant lessons in all my youth. I was learning about the physical and psychological strength that keeps you competitive. I was learning about obstinacy. I was learning how to overcome nerves, and as I grew more and more neurotic about being caught from behind, I trained harder to stay in front. 15. To this day it is the fear of failure, more than anything else, which makes me keep working at success.16. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was unable to think small, and nothing was a barrier to him. The mere fact that something had never been one before presented, to Brunel, no suggestion that the doing of it was impossible. He was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age. While I could never lay claim to the genius of a man like that —I have tried to be as confident in my vision as he was. And at times in my life when I have encountered difficulty and self-doubt I have looked to his example to fire me on.17. I have tried, in my own way, to draw on Brunel's dream of applying emerging technology in ways as yet unimagined. He was never afraid to be

What I learned from reading Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- 'When my customers come to me, they like to cross the threshold of some magic place; they feel a satisfaction that is perhaps a trace vulgar but that delights them: they are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend. For them this is a far greater pleasure than ordering another suit. Legend is the consecration of fame.” —Coco Chanel, 1935 Her father soon left them, discontented with marriage and fatherhood. The dead are not dead as long as we think of them. I like talking to myself and I don't listen to what I'm told. Gabrielle spent seven years in the orphanage, until she was 18. Her father never returned to see her or her siblings. I was thoroughly unhappy. I fed on sorrow and horror. I wanted to kill myself I don't know how many times. And having to hear people call me an orphan! They felt sorry for me. All this was humiliating. She was one of the charity pupils who were provided with a free place, and therefore treated differently to those whose family could afford to pay for their education. It was here, too, that she was given further instruction in how to sew. She sought to define herself by her idiosyncratic choice of clothes. She distanced herself from the past in storytelling. For telling stories is a way in which to imagine a happy-ever-after. What she did want was to earn her own living. They didn't understand how important this was to me. Coco made hats that were stripped of embellishments, of the frills that she dismissed as weighing a woman down. Coco began to edge her way to the centre of attention, elbowing past her rivals and competitors. Paul Poiret, whose fame at the time was such that he dubbed himself the 'King of Fashion', said of Chanel's early days as a milliner, 'We ought to have been on guard against that boyish head. It was going to give us every kind of shock, and produce, out of its little conjuror's hat, gowns and coiffures and jewels and boutiques.’ I often fainted. I had too much emotion, too much excitement, I lived too intensely. My nerves couldn't stand it. The House of Chanel seemed to give her stability. I am not here to have fun, or to spend money like water. I am here to make a fortune. She rejoiced in her independence. I was my own master and I depended on myself alone. Chanel was neither slave girl nor wife, but something of her own making. The little black dress wasn't formally identified as the shape of the future until 1926, when American Vogue published a drawing of a Chanel design, and announced: 'Here is a Ford signed Chanel.' It was simple yet elegant sheath, in black, with long narrow sleeves, worn with a string of white pearls; and Vogue proved to be correct in the prediction that it would become a uniform, as widely recognised as a Ford automobile; fast and sleek and discreet. I imposed black; it's still going strong today, for black wipes out everything else around. She did not see herself as an artist – she repeatedly described herself as an artisan who 'works with her hand' - and yet her precision and commitment to her craft was reminiscent of Reverdy. Coco was always contrary. Chanel N°5 was the solid foundation of her empire. N°5 was multiplied a million times over - and more, far more - in a dizzying proliferation that made Coco Chanel rich and recognised around the world, so that her name became a brand, and her face as famous as her logo. She surreptitiously sprayed the women who passed their table with the new perfume. “You've got to be able to lead them by the nose.” Each tormented the other at different points in their lives, with such antagonism that Pierre had to employ a full-time lawyer simply to deal with her. She was both a copyist, and much copied. Coco is really strong being fit to rule a man or an Empire. —Winston Churchill, 1927 Chanel's deft designs were not without precedents. Nor did she invent its associated fashions. But as was often the case in her career as a designer, she was quick to distil its essence, absorbing it into her own style, and selling it to customers eager for her clothes. It is immoral to play at earning one's living. I am only a little dress-maker, trying to make women young and pretty. These other designers that do the pretty little sketches, the boys, they don't understand women, they don't know how they live. Their idea is to make them weird, freaks. When I showed it in Paris, I had many critics. They said that I was old-fashioned, that I was no longer of the age. Always I was smiling inside my head, and I thought, I will show them. She devotes her energies to barely noticeable refinements of detail of her suits and dresses. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collec

What I learned from reading The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- A business can only be managed well if one pays as much attention to the smaller business transactions as one does to the larger ones.All banks have histories, only the Rothschilds have a mythology. Ever since the second decade of the nineteenth century, there has been speculation about the origins and extent of the family's wealth; about the social implications of their meteoric upward mobility; about their political influence, not only in the five countries where there were Rothschild houses but throughout the world.Unlike modern multinationals, however, this was always a family firm.Perhaps the most important point to grasp about this multinational partnership is that, for most of the century between 1815 and 1914, it was easily the biggest bank in the world. In terms of their combined capital, the Rothschilds were in a league of their own. The twentieth century no equivalent.What exactly was the business the Rothschilds did? To answer these questions properly it is necessary to understand something of nineteenth-century public finance; for it was by lending to governments or by speculating in existing government bonds-that the Rothschilds made a very large part of their colossal fortune.It was war and the preparation for war which generally precipitated the biggest increases in expenditure.It was in this highly volatile context that the Rothschilds made the decisive leap from running two modest firms—a small merchant bank in Frankfurt and a cloth exporters in Manchester—to running a multinational financial partnership.The system they developed enabled British investors (and other rich "capitalists” in Western Europe) to invest in the debts of those states by purchasing internationally tradeable, fixed-interest bearer bonds. The significance of this system for nineteenthcentury history cannot be over-emphasised. For this growing international bond market brought together Europe's true “capitalists": that elite of people wealthy enough to be able to tie up money in such assets, and shrewd enough to appreciate the advantages of such assets as compared with traditional forms of holding wealth (land, venal office and so on). Bonds were liquid.The Rothschilds spent so much time, energy and money maintaining the best possible relations with the leading political figures of the day.They constantly strove to accelerate the speed with which information could be relayed from their agents to them. They relied on their own system of couriers and relished their ability to obtain political news ahead of the European diplomatic services.The primary concern of this book is therefore to explain the origins and development of one of the biggest and most unusual businesses in the history of modern capitalism.The history of the firm is inseparable from the history of the family.Inevitably, there were conflicts between the collective ambitions of the family, so compellingly spelt out by Mayer Amschel before he died, and the wishes of the individuals who happened to be born Rothschilds, few of whom shared the founder's relentless appetite for work and profits.There are few major political figures in nineteenth-century history who do not feature in the index of this book."I see in Rothschild," he went on, "one of the greatest revolutionaries who have founded modern democracy": Rothschild destroyed the predominance of land, by raising the system of state bonds to supreme power, thereby mobilizing property and income and at the same time endowing money with the previous privileges of the land. He thereby created a new aristocracy.All the copies of the outgoing letters from the London partners were destroyed at the orders of senior partners.Nathan was a fiercely ambitious and competitive man.The merchants who are well organised are the ones who get very rich, and the ones who are disorganised are the ones who go broke.In a market crowded with numerous small businesses, subject to rapid fluctuations in prices and interest rates and almost completely unregulated, it took a combination of burning aggression and cool calculation to survive and thrive. Nathan Rothschild possessed both in abundance.Nathan felt himself almost at war with his business rivals.Nowadays everybody calls himself 'Excellency.' I remember, however, what our father used to say, With money you become an Excellency.Father used to say, If you can't make yourself loved, make yourself feared.We owe not only our wealth but also our honourable position in society primarily to the spirit of unity and cooperation that binds together all our partners, bank houses and establishments.Playing hide and seek with the authorities was becoming second nature to the brother

What I learned from reading Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- Riches cover a multitude of woes.Only a few crumbling bricks are left today of the dark, foul-smelling alley in Frankfurt where, in the second half of the eighteenth century, a disenfranchised Jew named Meyer Rothschild founded a European banking dynasty.Rothschild was a man of seemingly inexhaustible energy and ingenuity.He raised five famously gifted sons, veritable money-making machines, to carry on his work after him. Their names overshadowed his own and became synonymous with colossal wealth, extravagant living and hidden political power.A century after his death they would still ask, in all seriousness, if a great war was still possible in Europe if the House of Rothschild set their face against it.Rothschild's origins were certainly modest. There was little reason to foresee his destiny. The personal circumstances of his life were difficult throughout. They suggest a saga not only political and financial but also human and dramatic – more dramatic, perhaps, than that of his flamboyant sons. The sons were not persecuted human beings, legally confined to the squalor of a congested ghetto.The old ghetto where Rothschild lived his entire life was a narrow lane, more slum-like and overcrowded than any other tenements in Frankfurt. A closed compound, it was shut off from the rest of the city by high walls and three heavy gates. The gates were guarded by soldiers and were locked at night, and all day on Sundays. In it lived the largest Jewish community in Germany in conditions of almost total isolation, and apartheid.How they managed to survive under these circumstances and at times even to prosper was a mark of human enterprise and ingenuity.Every petty principality minted its own currency. The only coins from outside the city that were accepted as payment were those which had the same silver content as the Frankfurt gulden. All others had to be exchanged before a purchase could be made. Constant variations in the exchange rates offered knowledgeable moneychangers ample opportunity to profit.The spirit of the place was workaday and businesslike. A city ruled "by the God of this world – Money".At home, from an early age, he was apprenticed in the family business. Everybody in the family, boys and girs, were expected to help.As a thirteen-year-old orphan, with a few coins in his pocket, the future tycoon launched out alone into the world.Besides learning the rudiments of the financial business, Rothschild broadened his knowledge of rare and antique Jews were disencoins and historic medals. Coins had fascinated him since early childhood.He was acquiring a certain amount of historical knowledge without which he might not have been able to find his way. Coins and medals attracted collectors who often bought them as an investment. By the time he was eighteen, he had become something of an expert. He read every other book or paper he could find on the subject.Selling a few old coins could not possibly make him rich., But it was a means to establish contacts with persons of wealth, power and importance. Such a person was the young Crown-Prince Wilhelm, who would play a decisive role in Rothschild's future career. Wilhelm was the presumptive heir to his father's vast fortune. His pedigree was one of the finest in Europe.Rothschild threw himself into his business with determination and zest.He ran something like a mail-order business. In 1771 he published the first of several printed coin catalogues which he sent out during the next twenty years at regular intervals to potential customers all over Germany.He brought to his work a certain natural flair, a knowledge of human nature and a capacity to generate trust.As a rule, he preferred to minimize profits in the hope of increasing turnover and consequently his prices were often lower that those of other dealers. He was ready to lower them even more, at times even at a small loss, in the hope of more profitable business in the future.Thrifty Guttle Rothschild spent only a fraction of this annual income on her household; a large part was pumped back into the business.There was little, if any, visible wealth. The family's modest lifestyle did not reflect the true extent of Rothschild's accumulated riches, which he continued to channel back into the business. Rothschild had an inborn compulsion to hide his wealth.Long after his death one of his sons quoted him as saying: "Something three people know about is no more a secret".He shunned all conspicuous displays of wealth.He practised his old policy of maximizing volume by minimizing profits. His competitors, who for decades had handled the affairs of the landgraves of Hesse, were gradually squeezed out. By 1807 Roth

What I learned from reading The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- I wondered how on earth anyone could have endured it: fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of nighttime raids over the next six months. In particular I thought about Winston Churchill: How did he withstand it? It is one to say "Carry on," quite another to do it.History is a lively abode, full of surprises.The only effective defense lay in offense.The king harbored a general distrust of Churchill's independence.He had lived his entire life for this moment. That it had come at such a dark time did not matter. If anything, it made his appointment all the more exquisite.At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.Churchill brought a naked confidence that under his leadership Britain would win the war, even though any objective appraisal would have said he did not have a chance. Churchill knew that his challenge now was to make everyone else believe it too.He considered Churchill to be inclined toward dynamic action in every direction at once."If I had to spend my whole life with a man," she wrote, "I'd choose Chamberlain, but I think I would sooner have Mr Churchill if there was a storm and I was shipwrecked.”Churchill was flamboyant, electric, and wholly unpredictable.Churchill issued directives in brief memoranda.No detail was too small to draw his attention.Churchill was particularly insistent that ministers compose memoranda with brevity and limit their length to one page or less. "It is slothful not to compress your thoughts," he said.Anything that was not of immediate importance and a concern to him was of no value.Churchill wanted Germans to "bleed and burn."I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.In the Churchill household defeatist talk inspired only rage."It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour," Churchill said. "It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage.”Churchill said, "We shall not hesitate to take every step-even the most drastic-to call forth from our people the last ounce and inch of effort of which they are capable.”Recognizing that confidence and fearlessness were attitudes that could be adopted and taught by example, Churchill issued a directive to all ministers to put on a strong, positive front. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.Churchill demonstrated a striking trait: his knack for making people feel loftier, stronger, and, above all, more courageous. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.He had been fond of quoting a French maxim: "One leads by calm."“Your idle & lazy life is very offensive to me," Churchill wrote. "You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence." So confident was Hitler that England would negotiate, he demobilized 25 percent of his army. But Churchill was not behaving like a sane man.Churchill’s message was clear. “We shall not stop fighting until freedom, for ourselves and others, is secure.”Nothing must now be said which would disturb morale or lead people to think that we should not fight it out here."It typified the uniquely unpredictable magic that was Churchill—his ability to transform the despondent misery of disaster into a grimly certain stepping stone to ultimate victory.There was still no sign that Churchill was beginning to waver.When raids occurred, he dispatched his staff to the shelter below but did not himself follow, returning instead to his desk to continue working.Churchill did many things well, but waiting was not one of them.Churchill’s resilience continued to perplex German leaders. "When will that creature Churchill finally surrender?" Brush aside despondency and alarm and push on irresistibly towards the final goal.Goebbels confessed in his diary to feeling a new respect for Churchill. "This man is a strange mixture of heroism and cunning. If he had come to power in 1933, we would not be where we are today. And I believe that he will give us a few more problems yet. He is not to be taken as lightly as we usually take him.To be stupid about one's life is a crime.She told Churchill that the best thing he had done was to give people courage. He

What I learned from reading Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- Sometimes it takes a misstep to figure out where you should be headed.Each game taught me something, each game was both painful and gratifying in its own way, and each game contributed to what came after it.We are surrounded by decisions, and therefore games, in everything we do. If my gravestone reads "Sid Meier, creator of Civilization" and nothing else, I'll be fine with that. It's a good game to be known for, and I'm proud of the positive impact it's had on so many players' lives.There was no such thing as a retail computer game, only free bits of code passed between hobbyists, so it would have been difficult for me to harbor secret dreams of becoming a professional computer game designer."I could design a better game in two weeks." “Then do it," he insisted, "If you can do it, I can sell it."At the time it felt like a fun project, but not any sort of life-changing decision. The big moments rarely do, I think, and the danger of retroactive mythologizing is that it makes people want to hold out for something dramatic, rather than throwing themselves into every opportunity. —As soon as the articles were published, Bill began placing calls to hobby stores that were farther than driving distance away."Hello, I'm looking to buy a copy of Hellcat Ace."Hmm, I don't think we carry that one""What?" he would fume. "What kind of computer store are you? Didn't you see the review in Antic?" Then he would hang up in a huff, muttering about taking his business elsewhere.A week later he would call again, pretending to be somebody else. And a third time a week after that. Finally, on the fourth week, he'd use his professional voice. "Good afternoon, I'm a representative from MicroProse Software, and I'd like to show you our latest game, Hellcat Ace." Spurred by the imaginary demand, they would invite him in. —My appetite for making games was growing stronger. I never forgot that moment. My mother had become emotionally invested in this little game, so profoundly that she'd had to abandon it entirely.Games could make you feel. If great literature could wield its power through nothing but black squiggles on a page, how much more could be done with movement, sound, and color? The potential for emotional interaction through this medium struck me as both fascinating and enticing.Were there people who got paid for making games? Could I be one of those people? I knew by now that I was a person who would make games, probably for the rest of my life, but it had never occurred to me that it could be a source of income. If that were true, then being a game designer seemed like the ideal job.I was cautious about giving up my steady paycheck, and still not convinced that this dream was going to last.Quality content was the driving force behind it all.All that mattered to me was that I got to make games for a living.I don't think any of us could have imagined back then the kind of cultural domination that gaming would someday achieve.Robin Williams pointed out that all the other entertainment industries promoted their stars by name, so why should gaming be any different?A pirate's career would last about forty years between childhood and old age, and his goal was to accomplish as much as he could in that window-to have an adventurous life with no regrets.Life is not a steady progression of objectively increasing value, and when you fail, you don't just reload the mission again. You knock the wet sand off your breeches and return to the high seas for new adventures. And if you happen to get marooned on a deserted island a few times, well, that makes for a good tavern story, too.I'd always had a distaste for business deals in general, simply because it's not the kind of thing I want to spend my day doing, but I was starting to realize that there was potential danger in them as well.People play games to feel good about themselves.Age and experience may bring wisdom, but sometimes it's useful to be a young person who hasn't learned how to doubt himself yet.Sid Meier makes a pathetic Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he makes a magnificent Sid Meier.Deciding what doesn't go into the game is sometimes more important than deciding what does.Conventional wisdom said a strategy title would never make the big money. (Sid sold 51 million copies)They were interacting with the game as a tool, rather than an experience.Good games don't get made by committee.What I didn't see at the time is that imagination never diminishes reality; it only heightens it.The dichotomy between someone else's talent and your own is a cause for celebration, because the further apart you are, the more you can offer each other.This is not to say that my version of Civiliz

What I learned from reading Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 by Nicholas Reynolds. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- I knew I was going to be a bodybuilder. It wasn't simply that either. I would be the best bodybuilder in the world, the greatest.I'm not exactly sure why I chose bodybuilding, except that I loved it. I loved it from the first moment my fingers closed around a barbell and I felt the challenge and exhilaration of hoisting the heavy steel plates above my head. The only time I really felt rewarded was when I was singled out as being best.I had it tougher than a lot of my companions because I wanted more, I demanded more of myself.I was literally addicted.I learned that this pain meant progress. Each time my muscles were sore from a workout, I knew they were growing.I could not have chosen a less popular sport. My school friends thought I was crazy. But I didn't care. My only thoughts were of going ahead, building muscles and more muscles.I remember certain people trying to put negative thoughts into my mind, trying to persuade me to slow down. But I had found the thing to which I wanted to devote my total energies and there was no stopping me.My drive was unusual, I talked differently than my friends; I was hungrier for success than anyone I knew.Reg Park looked so magnificent in the role of Hercules I was transfixed. And, sitting there in the theater, I knew that was going to be me. I would look like Reg Park. I studied every move he made. From that point on, my life was utterly dominated by Reg Park. His image was my ideal. It was fixed indelibly in my mind.I had this insatiable drive to get there sooner. Whereas most people were satisfied to train two or three times a week, I quickly escalated my program to six workouts a week.With my desire and my drive, I definitely wasn't normal. Normal people can be happy with a regular life. I was different. I felt there was more to life than just plodding through an average existence. I'd always been impressed by stories of greatness and power. Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon were names I knew and remembered. I wanted to do something special, to be recognized as the best.My dreams went beyond a spectacular body. Once I had that, I knew what it would do for me. I'd get into the movies and build gymnasiums all over the world. I'd create an empire.This inspired me to work even harder. When I felt my lungs burning as though they would burst and my veins bulging with blood, I loved it. I knew then that I was growing, making one more step toward becoming like Reg Park. I wanted that body and I didn't care what I had to go through to get it.My weight room was not heated, so naturally in cold weather it was freezing. I didn't care. I trained without heat, even on days when the temperature went below zero.From the beginning, I was a believer in the basic movements.Most of the people I knew didn't really understand what I was doing at all.My mind was totally locked into working out, and I was annoyed if anything took me away from it.I started this practice early in my career and continued it for as long as it served to help me maintain a clear focus and drive myself toward a fixed point.In two or three years I had actually been able to change my body entirely. That told me something. If I had been able to change my body that much, I could also, through the same discipline and determination, change anything else I wanted.I know that if you can change your diet and exercise program to give yourself a different body, you can apply the same principles to anything else.Every day I hear someone say, "I'm too fat. I need to lose twenty-five pounds, but I can't. I never seem to improve." I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak.By observing the principles of strict discipline that bodybuilding taught me, I can prepare myself for anything.My desire to build my body and be Mr. Universe was totally beyond their comprehension. I listened only to my inner voice, my instincts.Even people's ideas were small. There was too much contentment, too much acceptance of things as they'd always been.I felt I was already one of the best in the world. Obviously, I wasn't even in the top 5,000; but in my mind I was the best.At that point my own thinking was tuned in to only one thing: becoming Mr. Universe. In my own mind, I was Mr. Universe; I had this absolutely clear vision of myself up on the dais with the trophy. It was only a matter of time before the whole world would be able to see it too. And it made no difference to me how much I had to struggle to get there.They paid and came to the gym. But it was a disgusting, superficial effort on their part. They merely went through the motions, doing sissy workouts, pampering themselves.I went right down the line, trying

What I learned from reading Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. ---- Casey pursued a Spartan business philosophy that emphasized military discipline, drab uniforms, and reliability over flash.I had heard stories about the company's tireless founder. He was a living legend. Jim Casey started working from the age of eleven to support a family of five.Casey began at the bottom. He speedily delivered messages and packages on foot. Casey learned about efficiency by doing.Seconds saved become minutes over the day and a few minutes each day mean big dollars.To outsiders the UPS regime has always seemed excessive.People have always bought more than they could carry, and a hundred years ago they had no cars to help them out. When Jim Casey and his partners began their delivery service, it served only department stores, and the UPS role was to complete the stores' retail transactions.Humility was one of Jim Casey's most strongly held values.Our real, primary objective is to serve. To render perfect service to our stores and their customers. If we keep that objective constantly in mind, our reward in money can be beyond our fondest dreams.Service is the sum of many little things done well.Good management is taking a sincere interest in the welfare of the people you work with. It is the ability to make individuals feel that you and they are the company–not merely employees of it.Jim Casey watched the streets carefully. He watched movement. He watched what people sold and what people bought. He was an eternal puzzle solver, his mind constantly preoccupied by every sensory detail involving his core business, packages. He gravitated to them, mesmerized by how they were wrapped and how they were delivered.When traveling between meetings Casey would frequently tell his driver to stop when he saw a UPS delivery in progress. Without identifying himself, Casey would ask UPS drivers what they thought of their job. He'd listen carefully and consider their answers seriously. These informal "man on the street" interviews became an invaluable way for him to assess the efficiency of UPS delivery operations in a way that a UPS manager's filtered version could not.Jim Casey's office was a small stark room, occupied only by a desk, several chairs, and a coat tree. His door was never closed.His answer for sluggish layers of management was decentralization, and his attitude toward employees was an unwavering belief in and respect for the individual.Money and prestige did not push him. Excellence did.Casey's personal code was discipline.Hardly a shining star, Jim Casey was more a steadily burning flame.Distill Jim Casey's lifelong message to its essence and you get: Neatness, humility, frugality, dependability, safety, strong work ethic, integrity.This unassuming ascetic with an iron will based his company and his every move on ethics that he learned as a child. Jim Casey's parents greeted hardship with grit and ingenuity.Jim was by then old enough to apprehend his parents' mounting anxiety, to understand that his father was not healthy by comparison with other men. The worried atmosphere undoubtedly had effect.At the end of the nineteenth century, the number of American children in the workforce reached staggering proportions. Over two million children worked in mines, factories, and sweatshops, many in appalling conditions.For the Caseys, there was no alternative. It was critical. With two younger brothers to protect and a mother and an ailing father to support, eleven-year-old Jim Casey had developed a maturity that belied his age. His family was in precarious straits, and it was up to him to solve the problem.He worked more than ten and a half hours a day, and longer on Saturdays, starting at $3 a week. [He is 11]He picked up and delivered telegrams, mail, and packages —working from 7 P.M. until 7 A.M.It wasn't all telegrams. Many of the night calls were drug addicts summoning a messenger to help replenish their stash.During winters, it rained and rained. Jim was often cold and wet. Wealthy people could afford fancy hotels. Jim often looked with envy at them through the windows, as they sat in the big hotel chairs looking out onto the rain from warm lobbies.Thompson shot and killed Moritz. [Jim’s partner]The cold-blooded murder left the other two boys stricken.The company, founded in that six-by-seven-foot basement office, would eventually become United Parcel Service.Jim wrote to the Chambers of Commerce of every American city with a population over 100,000, asking for names of local delivery firms. He accumulated the names and then initiated a communications link that he called the "Parcel Delivery Service Bureau." The bureau was a means of sharing new methods, ideas, or systems that worked in different cities. Every once in a while, the correspondence disclosed a gem of an idea, which Jim would hurry to implement. [Founders allows you to do the same]Mr. Carstens told them that he would not fund their venture, but th

What I learned from reading The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. Read the book online for free here. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- Naval has changed my life for the better, and if you approach the following pages like a friendly but highly competent sparring partner, he might just change yours.Books make for great friends, because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom.If you don't know yet what you should work on, the most important thing is to figure it out.Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.Ignore people playing status games, They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers, Most people haven't figured this out yet.Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.Fortunes require leverage.Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.An army of robots is freely available-it's just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it.If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment.Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve.When you're finally wealthy, you'll realize it wasn't what you were seeking in the first place. But that is for another day.Your summary says "Productize yourself"-what does that mean? “Productize" has leverage. “Yourself" has accountability.Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone.When I talk about specific knowledge, I mean figure out what you were doing as a kid or teenager almost effortlessly. Something you didn't even consider a skill, but people around you noticed. Your mother or your best friend growing up would know.No one can compete with you on being you. Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.If you're not 100 percent into it, somebody else who is 100 percent into it will outperform you. And they won't just outperform you by a little bit-they'll outperform you by a lot because now we’re operating the domain of ideas, compound interest really applies and leverage really applies.Escape competition through authenticity.If you are fundamentally building and marketing something that is an extension of who you are, no one can compete with you on that.The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets.The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.If you don't own a piece of a business, you don't have a path towards financial freedom.Find a position of leverage. We live in an age of infinite leverage.Forget rich versus poor, white-collar versus blue. It's now leveraged versus un-leveraged.The most interesting and the most important form of leverage is the idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication.This newest form of leverage is where all the new fortunes are made. The new generation's fortunes are all made through code or media.Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay.What you want in life is to be in control of your time.Demonstrated judgment-credibility around the judgmentis so critical. Warren Buffett wins here because he has massive credibility. He's been highly accountable. He's been right over and over in the public domain. He's built a reputation for very high integrity, so you can trust him. People will throw infinite behind him because of his judgment. Nobody asks leverage him how hard he works. Nobody asks him whe

What I learned from reading The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- Ford generally accepted the responsibilities of his celebrity-he'd worked diligently to cultivate it, realizing early on that his personal fame heightened demand for Model Ts.Ford's Model T changed everything. Thanks in great part to Ford's innovative assembly line, Model Ts were mass-produced on a previously unimaginable scale. In competitors factories, it took workers several hours to assemble an individual car. At the Ford plant, a completed Model T rolled off the line every two and a half minutes.Ford continued tinkering with the manufacturing process, aggressively seeking ways to cut production expenses and Model T prices even more. The best example fostered a popular joke that you could buy any color Model T that you liked, so long as the color was black. Few realized that Ford insisted the cars come in that color because black paint dried quickest, meaning Model Ts could be whipped through the assembly line and off to dealerships at an even faster pace, saving additional time and labor related dollars.The Model T alone would have established Henry Ford as a household name, but he'd further cemented his reputation as a friend of the working man with a stunning announcement. In an era when factory line workers were lucky to earn $2 a day for their labor and toiled through ten-hour shifts six days a week, Ford pledged to pay $5 a day, and to reduce workdays to eight hours. Everyone in America was talking about it.Over the years, as Ford founded and failed with two auto manufacturing companies before succeeding with his third, he endlessly reminisced about the meeting and Edison's words of encouragement: “Young man, that's the thing. You have it. Keep at it.”Ford was a cannier businessman than his hero, much wealthier.They found themselves in complete agreement about the evils of Wall Street and the crass men there who cared only for profit and not for the public. Both were poor boys who made good. Neither had a college degree, and both were disdainful of those who believed classroom education was superior to hands-on work experience and common sense.Like Edison, Ford didn't have many friends. Ford was a prickly man and also a complicated one, burning to make the world better for humanity as a whole while not enjoying personal contact with most individuals.Ford never doubted his own beliefs and decisions, forbidding disagreement from employees and ignoring any from outsiders. Ford's hobby was work. He devoted almost every waking minute to it.When he and the inventor quickly became the closest of friends, Ford felt energized again, thanks in great part to Edison's inspiration.For all of Ford's professional life he'd had to overcome skepticism from other successful men. He had always been the outsider, the one with the crazy ideas and clumsy social graces. Edison sympathized, because in his earliest years of prominence he was criticized for some of the same traits. The inventor not only accepted Ford for the rough-edged man that he was, he recognized in him the fine qualities that offset the carmaker's obvious flaws.Henry Ford was always a man of strong opinions, and one who absolutely trusted his own instincts. He especially disdained anyone identified as an expert: "If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means, I would endow the opposition with experts. No one ever considers himself an expert if he really knows his job."When prominent, better educated men and their hired experts insisted that the future of the automobile market was limited to manufacturing expensive cars for the wealthy, Ford believed that the real potential lay in sales of a modest but dependable vehicle to the growing American middle class; there would be less profit in individual transactions, but the sheer number of sales would yield greater cumulative returns. With the Model T, Ford was proved right, and he reveled in it.Their main goal was to have a good time. But few business magnates in America had a shrewder understanding of marketing than Edison, Ford, and Firestone. If rank-and-file consumers liked what they saw and read about, as they surely would, then sales of cars and light bulbs and phonographs and tires would directly benefit, too.Ford shocked America by resigning as company president. He was going to start an entirely new automobile manufacturing enterprise. Ford Motor Company stockholders assumed the threat was real, and within weeks agreed to sell Ford their shares at a whopping $12,500 a share. (James Couzens, who knew Ford best, held out and received $13,000 for each of his.) Though Ford had to borrow $60 million of the near $106 million total cost, he was still glad to