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 inefficient.
3. I like to keep everybody guessing. I don't want our competitors getting too comfortable with feeling that they can predict what we're going to do next.
4. 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.
5. Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else.
6. One way I’ve managed to keep up with everything on my plate is by coming in to the office really early. (4:30am) That early morning time is tremendously valuable: it’s uninterrupted time when I think and plan and sort things out.
7. It’s generally my gut that makes the final decision. If it feels right, I tend to go for it, and if it doesn’t, I back off.
8. 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.
9. We just got after it and *stayed* after it.
10. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.