Founders

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, "

What I learned from reading My Turn: A Life of Total Football by Johan Cruyff.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----[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

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.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[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 ca

What I learned from reading Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans by Paul Van Doren. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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 f

What I learned from reading The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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 h

What I learned from rereading Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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 pr

What I learned from reading Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----[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. Unc

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----[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 t

What I learned from reading Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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 simp

What I learned from reading Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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,

What I learned from reading Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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, paradox

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. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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 I learned from reading Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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 fo

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.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----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 me

What I learned from reading Invention: A Life by James Dyson. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----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

What I learned from reading Inside Steve's Brian by Leander Kahney.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----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

What I learned from reading Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital by Spencer Ante. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----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 appr

What I learned from reading A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----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

What I learned from reading Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Definitive Biography of The Engineer, Visionary, and Great Briton by L.T.C. Rolt.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----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 persi

What I learned from rereading Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson and reading A History of Great Inventions by James Dyson. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----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 i