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 ...
Jul 27, 2021•1 hr 18 min
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, excep...
Jul 22, 2021•59 min
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 ...
Jul 19, 2021•1 hr 8 min
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...
Jul 13, 2021•1 hr 6 min
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...
Jul 10, 2021•1 hr
What I learned from reading The Unpublished David Ogilvy by David Ogilvy. ---- 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] Will Any Agency Hire This Man? He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college. He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer. He knows nothing about marketing, and has never wr...
Jul 05, 2021•59 min
What I learned from Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. ---- 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 wrote this book to help entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. That's why there's a lack of miracles and a surplus of marketing details including buyin...
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 15 min
What I learned from reading Einstein: His Life and Universe 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 . ---- [0:01] In a drama that would seem fake were it not so horrifying, Einstein’s brain ended up being, for more than four decades, a wandering relic. [4:22] Einstein remained consistent in his willin...
Jun 22, 2021•1 hr 25 min
What I learned from rereading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. ---- 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 . ---- [2:02] I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Ab...
Jun 16, 2021•1 hr 43 min
What I learned from reading Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class by Luke Barr. ---- 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 . ---- [1:00] The words echoed in his head, even now. The idea that they should be seen as servants was the cruelest of insults. César Ritz, Auguste Escoffier, se...
Jun 10, 2021•1 hr 22 min
What I learned from reading Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. ---- 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] When I built my first hotel I knew nothing about the hotel business. [4:28] He refused to settle for the pragmatic dictum of maturity. Issy also skipped skepticism and "Let'...
Jun 06, 2021•1 hr 17 min
What I learned from reading Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin. ---- 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 . ---- [13:50] He often told me that all it took to turn the most electrifying film stars into dullards was to be around them for a while. But he felt that way around everybody. There were very few social scenes in which h...
Jun 04, 2021•1 hr 18 min
What I learned from reading Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein. ---- 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 . ---- His talent sprang from his unrivaled independence of mind and ability to focus on his work and shut out the world, yet those same qualities exacted a toll. He emerged from those fi...
May 29, 2021•1 hr 13 min
What I learned from reading Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea. ---- 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 . ---- [4:23] I've never met a more circular, out-of-the-box thinker. It's often exhausting trying to keep up with him. [5:21] I graduated from hig...
May 23, 2021•1 hr 13 min
What I learned from reading Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [1:47] Every interesting thing I've ever done, every important thing I've ever done, every beneficial thing I've ever done, has been through a cascade of experiments and mistakes and failures. I'm covered in scar tissues as a result of this. [6:19] I absolutely know it's ...
May 17, 2021•1 hr 4 min
What I learned from Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. ---- [3:58] What is best for the customer? Do that : "Amazon believes that long-term growth is best produced by putting the customer first. If you held this conviction, what kind of company would you build?" [7:05] Jeff skips the conferences and dinners: "95 percent of the time I spent with Jeff was focused on internal work issues rather than external events like conferences, pu...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 3 min
What I learned from The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. This is part one of a three part series on Jeff Bezos. The next two books are Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon and Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire . ---- (0:54) It may very well be that the absolute intensity of drive and focus is essential and incompatible with all of the nice management thought about consensus and gentle demeanor. (2:07) ...
May 10, 2021•1 hr 21 min
What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. ---- [4:43] Mike Ive influence on his son’s talent was purely nurturing. They were constantly keeping up a conversation about made-objects and hw they could be made better. [6:39] I came to realize that what was really important was the care that was put into it. What I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product. [9:24] Take big chances. Pursue a passion. Respect the work. [11:...
May 03, 2021•1 hr 22 min
What I learned from reading Going for Broke: How Robert Campeau Bankrupted the Retail Industry, Jolted the Junk Bond Market, and Brought the Booming Eighties to a Crashing Halt by John Rothchild. ---- [0:01] A stranger comes to Wall Street, borrows nearly $4 billion to acquire a company that six months earlier he'd never even heard of. This transaction is scarcely settled before he's allowed to borrow $7 billion more to acquire a bigger company, making him a major force in retailing, an industry...
Apr 26, 2021•1 hr 9 min
What I learned from reading Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond. ---- [0:01] From a party of one it now counted millions of users on every continent, including Antartica, and even outer space, if you count NASA outposts. Not only was it the most common operating system, but its very development model—an intricate web of its own, encompassing hundreds of thousands of volunteer computer programmers—had grown to become the largest collaborative...
Apr 18, 2021•53 min
What I learned from reading The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. ---- 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 us...
Apr 11, 2021•1 hr 20 min
What I learned from reading Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace. ---- There would be an industry breakthrough unimagined at the time, and it would be made by a company that didn’t yet exist. [7:55] Another corollary to Joys Law of Innovation was that the number of bright people in any company went down as the size went up. [10:47] As Apple founder Steve Jobs liked to say: When you are at simplicity, there ain’t no complexity . [12:49] Gates looks at everythi...
Apr 05, 2021•48 min
What I learned from reading Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer by Bosley Crowther. ---- The reason so many people showed up at his funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead . [0:50] He is in that phalanx of men of aggressive bent who seized on the opportunities that an expanding civilization exposed. With them, he ascended to high places along an upwardly spiraling route that was there to be ascended by those who had the necessary stamina and drive. And, with so...
Mar 28, 2021•1 hr 9 min
What I learned from reading Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger. ---- [12:38] Numerous other entrepreneurs had tried playing at rocket science before, Musk well knew. He wanted to learn from their mistakes so as not to repeat them . [20:55] He could be difficult to work for, certainly. But his early hires could immediately see the benefits of working for someone who wanted to get things done and often made decisions on the spot. When Musk decided t...
Mar 21, 2021•1 hr 6 min
What I learned from reading The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O'Clery. ---- He celebrated having divested himself personally of the vast wealth with which fate and his genius for making money had burdened him. [0:01] Feeney was already showing a trait that would assert itself throughout his life: thinking big and aiming to achieve the best result, even if it seemed unattainable. [3:27] I all of a sudden realized, shit, you can sell this t...
Mar 15, 2021•1 hr 9 min
What I learned from reading My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins. ---- Any man who by a lifetime of excessive application learns more about anything than others owes a statement to successors. The results of research should be recorded. Every pioneer should blaze his trail. That is all I have tried to do. [0:19] There are few pages in “My Life in Advertising” which do not repay careful study—and which do not merit rereading . Before your eyes, a successful advertising life is lived—with all ...
Mar 08, 2021•1 hr 19 min
What I learned from reading The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising by Kenneth Roman. ---- One characteristic of geniuses, said Einstein, is they are passionately curious. Ogilvy’s great secret was an inquiring mind.In conversation, he never pontificated; he interrogated. There were piles of books all over his house, most about successful leaders in business and government. He was interested in how they used their leadership. How they made their money. He wa...
Mar 01, 2021•1 hr 28 min
What I learned from reading Driven: An Autobiography by Larry Miller. ---- [1:01] I decided I had to be extremely good at something. [2:47] I’m sorry to say, neglecting my family to do all of the above. I worked and worked and worked, day after day, night after night, dawn to bedtime. [5:23] He owned movie theaters, auto dealerships, a motorsports park with a world-class racetrack, a movie production company, an advertising agency, ranches, restaurants, TV and radio stations, a real-estate devel...
Feb 21, 2021•1 hr 8 min
What I learned from reading Jackie Cochran: An Autobiography by Jackie Cochran. ---- [4:37] At the time of her death on August 9, 1980, Jacqueline Cochran held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other pilot, male or female, in aviation history. Her career spanned 40 years, from the Golden Age of the 1930s as a racing pilot, through the turbulent years of World War Il as founder and head of the Women's Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) program, into the jet age, when she became the f...
Feb 19, 2021•57 min
What I learned from reading The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by Leslie Berlin. ---- [0:01] Bob Noyce took me under his wing,” Steve Jobs explains. “I was young, in my twenties. He was in his early fifties. He tried to give me the lay of the land, give me a perspective that I could only partially understand.” Jobs continues, “ You can’t really understand what is going on now unless you understand what came before .” [2:00] He inspired in nearly everyo...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 13 min
