September 27, 2023
Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. History likes winners. 2. At the heart of his story is an irrepressible spirit. 3. Little men let events take their course. I like things to happen, and if they don't happen I like to make them happen 4. While other politicians were content to get their information from a scattering of newspapers,...
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September 25, 2023
Hero of the Empire: The Making of Winston Churchill
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Always more audacity. (A maxim Churchill repeated to himself.) 2. The first time you meet Winston you see all his faults and the rest of your life you spend discovering his virtues. 3. I have faith in my star. I am intended to do something in the world. 4. Beyond the vaguest of outlines, he didn't...
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September 20, 2023
The Forgotten Highlander
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Invaders are always organized. 2. Every morning I would tell myself over and over: Survive this day. Survive this day. Survive this day. 3. On countless occasions I've seen two men with the same symptoms and same physical state and one will die and one will make it. I can only put that down to she...
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September 13, 2023
Creativity, Inc.
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better. 2. Everything associated with our name needs to be good. Quality is the best business plan. 3. Every time ...
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September 4, 2023
Bugatti
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. A human life, by its very nature, has to be devoted to something or other, to a glorious or humble enterprise, an illustrious or obscure destiny. This is a strange but inexorable condition of things. 2. His starting point was always to create the most extraordinary things. 3. You get the feeling o...
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August 27, 2023
Balenciaga
My top 10 highlights from Balenciaga and Dior (Chapter 13 of Creators) 1. Dior dressed the rich, Balenciaga the very rich. 2. Of all the creative people I have come across, Cristóbal Balenciaga was easily the most dedicated to the business of making beautiful things. 3. From the age of three to his mid-twenties he learned every aspect ...
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August 17, 2023
Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best
I'm telling you first -- before this is announced publicly! I'm doing a live show at Webster Hall in New York City on October 19th. It will be me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best and Positive Sum. Patrick has interviewed the world's best investors and founders on his podcast. I've read 300 biographies of history's gr...
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August 6, 2023
Paul Graham (How to Do Great Work)
My top 10 highlights from the essay: 1. If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work and the oracle replied with a single word, my bet would be on "curiosity." 2. Being prolific is underrated. 3. Seek out the best colleagues. 4. If you're interested you're not astray. 5. If you don't try to be the best you won't even be good. ...
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August 1, 2023
Christopher Nolan
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Nolan does not have an email account or a cell phone. 2. He dreams with his eyes open. 3. Memento was borne into the world on the back of obsession. 4. Nolan made it because he had to. 5. Minds don't wander on a Chris Nolan set. 6. Every film I do I have to believe that I'm making the best film th...
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My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Doors open at 7 o’clock. The trouble will begin at 8. 2. The ad itself became legendary: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” 3. His death would not have lengthened the life of the Confederacy or the Union b...
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July 16, 2023
James Cameron: The Futurist
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. He's a truck driver who directed the highest-grossing movie of all time and then ditched Hollywood to spend a decade of his life exploring the deep ocean and the heights of science. 2. It was plain to see that Cameron was a man on his own mission. 3. A man who seemed interested only in doing thing...
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July 5, 2023
Walt Disney and Picasso
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Disney put excellence before any other consideration. 2. Disney had the American entrepreneurial spirit to an unusual degree. 3. By the age of twenty he had already run his own company, gone bankrupt, and set up again. 4. Disney had a very hard time getting work in the movie industry, trudging fro...
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June 26, 2023
Arnold Schwarzenegger Before He Was Successful
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. No one could restrain his mutinous energy. 2. What separates the champion from the guy that is the second best or the loser is the person who has the psychological advantage. Everything is the mind. I had a psychological advantage. 3. Not even his peers could understand the enormity of his lifetim...
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June 24, 2023
The Founder of Glock
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Quality will always bring you more money. 2. He evolved from a provincial manager of a radiator factory to a world traveling industrialist. 3. Glock started with a blank sheet of paper. As a result, he came up with something original. 4. Glock's gross margins exceeded 65%. The Glock's simple desig...
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June 13, 2023
Dynasties: The World's Great Family Businesses
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Good was never good enough. The company's slogan was kaizen: continuous improvement. 2. It is impossible to create an innovative product unless you do it yourself, pay attention to every detail, and then test it exhaustively. Never entrust the creation of a product to others, for that will inevita...
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June 5, 2023
Confessions of an Advertising Man: David Ogilvy
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. 2. I admire people who work hard, who bite the bullet. 3. Don't bunt. Aim out of the park. Aim for the company of immortals. 4. Only First Class business, and that in a First Class way. 5. M. Pitard did not tolerate...
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May 29, 2023
Robert Caro on the relationship with your father, power, poverty, ruthlessness, obsession and running
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. He was a guy you couldn't deny anymore. 2. I asked Tommy the Cork what had changed Lyndon Johnson's status in October, 1940, he said: "Money, kid, money." 3. Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamned page. 4. Power doesn't always corrupt. But what power always does is reveal. 5....
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May 22, 2023
Sol Price: The Founder who taught Jim Sinegal, Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton, and Bernie Marcus
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. You train an animal, you teach a person. 2. If you’re not spending 90% of your time teaching, you’re not doing your job. —Jim Sinegal. 3. If you want to be successful just put yourself in the place of a cranky, demanding customer. See your business through the eyes of the customer. 4. We have said...
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May 15, 2023
Warren Buffett's Favorite Founder: Rose Blumkin
My top 10 highlights from the book: Listen to the Founders episode on this book 1. There are several "Going Out of Business" advertisements from competitors's stores framed and hanging on the wall. 2. What is your favorite thing to do on a nice evening? Drive around to check the competition and plan my next attack. 3. The woman who nev...
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May 11, 2023
The Mind of Napoleon
My top 10 highlights from the book: Listen to the Founders episode on this book. 1. All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. 2. He knows that men have alway...
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April 4, 2023
Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. I may lose once but I never lose twice. 2. He had such an appetite for victory and such a capacity for work that he was bound to succeed. 3. Arnault is an iron fist in an iron glove. 4. He did not stray from his path. Relentlessly he pursued his ascent and seized every passing opportunity. 5. It i...
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March 30, 2023
The Tao of Charlie Munger
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Munger is a deeply perceptive observer of human nature. 2. In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables—like the discount warehouses of Costco. 3. The one thing that all of Berkshire's businesses have in commo...
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February 13, 2023
The Founder of Rolls-Royce
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Henry Royce had known poverty and hardship all his life.The only university he had graduated from was the one of hard knocks. 2. Henry Royce ruled the lives of the people around him, claimed their body and soul, even when they were asleep. 3. Many times our position was so precarious that it seeme...
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January 25, 2023
Buffett and Munger: A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Wisdom is prevention. 2. The fundamental algorithm of life: repeat what works. 3. Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. 4. The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful pe...
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April 25, 2022
The Wright Brothers
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Neither ever chose to be anything other than himself. 2. What the two had in common above all was unity of purpose and unyielding determination. They had set themselves on a mission. 3. A man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool. 4. Wilbur was little ...
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April 14, 2022
Jay Z: Decoded
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Even back then I thought I was the best. 2. I would practice from the time I woke in the morning until I went to sleep. 3. 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. 4. I believe you can speak th...
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April 7, 2022
The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. He was an individualist who did not spare himself any sacrifice to attain his objectives. 2. I will not whine, he once said, business is not a kissing game. 3. 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. 4. Lobo's...
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March 28, 2022
Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. We worked as a small expedition unit, in teams of three, four, or five, but we moved with the power of 10 bulls and the heart of a hundred men. 2. Walking out on my career felt risky, but I was prepared to gamble everything for my ambition. 3. From an early age, I believed in the power of positive...
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March 14, 2022
To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Steve had an almost permanent intensity about him, like he was always in top gear. 2. 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. 3. Once Steve decided what ...
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March 7, 2022
Sam Walton: Made In America
My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. We were serious operators who were in it for the long haul. We had a disciplined financial philosophy and we had growth on our minds. 2. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too ...
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