Child pages

Related Pages

People & organizations of interest (I generally keep notes from (auto)biographies I read in this section.)

Books to check out

Check out "David Frost’s Book of Millionaires, Multimillionaires, and Really Rich People", mentioned in "The Success Principles"
https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf

10 Mistakes Businesses Make - And How To Avoid Them

Amazon
Louis Rossman says this is one of his favorite books in this video.

101 Things I Learned in Business School

This is a very light book; more like a bunch of flash cards in book form. I like it because a lot of the ideas it mentions are ones I haven't learned about yet in depth, and I figure it will be a good way to refresh my memory after I learn about them. On the other hand, the author went to Harvard Business School and I was hoping for more "wow! that's really insightful!" moments while reading. I also wish he had listed books/articles that you could read for more information about a particular idea.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

Main Lessons

- Figure out how to be happy now rather than later. Change your life (job, etc.) so that you are happy now, rather than allowing yourself to be miserable while you hope to be happy later.
- Beware following the crowd. “The commonsense rules of the ‘real world’ are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions”
- Promote Yourself. He sold 32 spots
- Constantly weigh your effort against the profit you're realizing from it: while he was running his vitamin company he was spending 80% of his time on a few small problematic customers while he had other great customers who gave him no trouble. He was going crazy until he decided to do the unthinkable and just turn away customers who weren't worth the trouble and focus on increasing orders from the good ones.

Notable Quotes

p.8
People don’t want to be millionaires—they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy. […] $1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows. The question is then, How can one achieve the millionaire lifestyle of complete freedom without first having $1,000,000?
[hmm...it seems like having others know that you have a lot of money can carry social status with it, though. i think the real fantasy is the social status that comes from having the money. so pick your friends wisely or you may end up in a rat race you don't want to be in.]

p.8-9
[After being asked to speak to Princeton undergraduates about how to build a successful company]
Over the ensuing days, however, I realized that everyone seemed to be discussing how to build large and successful companies, sell out, and live the good life. Fair enough. The question no one really seemed to be asking or answering was, Why do it all in the first place? What is the pot of gold that justifies spending the best years of your life hoping for happiness in the last?
[I think it's peer pressure; they live in a social group that values people who follow that path successfully, so to gain the admiration of their peers they need to do just that]

p.14
1991 – My first job. Ah, the memories. I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, “Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.” It seems I still don’t.

p.14
[describes his first business attempt: an audiotape that teaches people to get into the Ivy league; it failed]

p.15
[describes his second business attempt: a speed reading course. Plastered hundreds of posters with outrageous claims and got 32 people to pay $50 for a 3-hour course.]

Contents

First and Foremost
FAQ – Doubters Read This
My Story and Why You Need This Book
Chronology of a Pathology [VERY USEFUL TIMELINE OF HIS SUCCESS]

Step 1: D is for Definition
1. Cautions and Comparisons: How to Burn $1,000,000 a Night
2. Rules That Change the Rules: Everything Popular is Wrong
3. Dodging Bullets: Fear-Setting and Escaping Paralysis
4. System Reset: Being Unreasonable and Unambiguous

Step II: E is for Elimination
5. The End of Time Management: Illusions and Italians
6. The Low-Information Diet: Cultivating Selective Ignorance
7. Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal

Step III: A is for Automation
8. Outsourcing Life: Off-loading the Rest and a Taste of Geoarbitrage
9. Income Autopilot I: Finding the Muse
10. Income Autopilot II: Testing the Muse
11. Income Autopilot III: MBA—Management by Absence

Step IV: L is for Liberation
12. Disappearing Act: How to Escape the Office
13. Beyond Repair: Killing Your Job
14. Mini-Retirements: Embracing the Mobile Lifestyle
15. Filling the Void: Adding Life After Subtracting Work
16. The Top 13 New Rich Mistakes

The Last Chapter: An Email You Need to Read

50 management ideas you really need to know

...

Business: The Ultimate Resource by Basic Books

This book is HUGE (2000 pages). I'm sure most, if not all, of the information in this book could be found online for free, but the opportunity cost from having to hunt around for it seems to be higher than the cost of this book.

Entrepreneurship by Bruce Barringer and R. Duane Ireland

I think this is the first time I've ever thought that a 600-page book didn't go into enough depth. It seems they were aiming to write an introductory-level textbook, as they skim over some things I was hoping to get deeper answers to; I'd need to get other books to learn more about specific strategies for each of the topics it discusses. They also seem to fluff up the text at times, which makes alarms go off in my head about the author's intentions (i.e. are they motivated by a desire to inform or by a desire to make money?). Nevertheless, there's good information in here that I didn't know about before, and the book is giving me a clearer idea of what else I need to learn.

Notable Quotes

p15
As you might anticipate, the passion an entrepreneur has about a business idea, rather than fancy offices or other material things, is typically the number one predictor of a new venture's success. Conversely, a lack of passion often leads to entrepreneurial failure. [this is exactly what I said in my thoughts on the LSAT]

p35
Just because people say they're concerned about something doesn't mean they'll spend money to do something about it.

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Contents

1. Good Is the Enemy of Great
2. Level 5 Leadership
3. First Who … Then What
4. Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)
5. The Hedgehog Concept
6. A Culture of Discipline
7. Technology Accelerators
8. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop
9. From Good to Great to Built to Last

*********
Main Ideas [adapted from wikipedia]
*********

Seven Characteristics of Companies that went from Good to Great

1. Level 5 Leadership: Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what's best for the company.

2. First Who, Then What: Get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to go. Finding the right people and trying them out in different positions.

3. Confront the Brutal Facts: The Stockdale paradox - Confront the brutal truth of the situation, yet at the same time, never give up hope.

4. Hedgehog Concept: Three overlapping circles: What makes you money? What could you be best in the world at? and What lights your fire?

5. Culture of Discipline: Rinsing the cottage cheese.

6. Technology Accelerators: Using technology to accelerate growth, within the three circles of the hedgehog concept.

7. The Flywheel: The additive effect of many small initiatives; they act on each other like compound interest.

********************************
Chapter 1 - Good is the enemy of great
********************************

"Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the reasons that we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, precisely because it is easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great precisely because they become quite good. - and that is their main problem."

*************************
Level 5 Leadership [Chapter 2]
*************************

“Level 5 leadership” refers to what Collins considers the highest level of leadership: those who create a successful company that does not depend on a single person’s brilliance. This is in contrast to Level 4 leaders who can single-handedly make a company successful but do not set the company up for success after that leader’s departure.

*****************************
First Who … Then What [Chapter 3]
*****************************

I found this to be one of the most significant insights of the book because I immediately saw the advice of this chapter mirrored in the autobiography of Sam Wyly (1000 Dollars & An Idea). Wyly would meet someone he knew was a top-notch talent and offer him a job without any idea of what the guy would do. If Wyly offered someone a job in a particular role and the other guy instead wanted to do something else within the company, Wyly would let him do as he pleased (this is described in Good to Great as “getting the right people on the bus and getting the right people in the right seats”).

*************
Notable Quotes
*************

******************************
Other people's thoughts on the book
******************************

(1) a series of CEOs (promoted from within) who combined "personal humility and professional will" focused on making a great company;

(2) an initial focus on eliminating weak people, adding top performing ones, and establishing a culture of top talent putting out extraordinary effort;

(3) then shifting attention to staring at and thinking unceasingly about the hardest facts about the company's situation;

(4) using facts to develop a simple concept that is iteratively reconsidered to focus action on improving performance;

(5) establishing and maintaining a corporate culture of discipline built around commitments, with freedom about how to meet those promises;

(6) using technology to accelerate progress when it fits the company's concept of what it wants to become; and

(7) the company builds momentum from consistent efforts behind its concept that are reinforced by success.

***********************

1. Their leaders are less differentiated by charisma or brilliant vision and more by humility and unrelenting will.

2. Their focus is first on WHO (i.e., getting the right people through the door and in the right position, and the wrong people out door), then WHAT (i.e., figuring out and building the strategy)-- not the other way around.

3. They confront the brutal facts and deal with them directly and decisively by "shining a light" on the key issues impacting the business and taking a "need to know" perspective at all times to reality as it really exists. At the same time, this pragmatism is counterbalanced by an unrelenting guttural belief that they will prevail in the end (called the Stockdale Paradox).

4. They build their strategy around three core circles (target markets they realistically believe they can dominate, ones with compelling economics, and ones they can be truly passionate about), and then come up with a crystallizing concept (called the Hedgehog) that flows from a deep understanding of the dynamics of the three circles.

5. The hedgehog concept's power is less a function of one big transformation and more a product of many incremental improvements, culminating in the breakout success (debunking the myth of the overnight success). Ironically, to those inside the company the magnitude of the transformation is often unclear at the time.

6. They depend on building a culture of self-disciplined team members around the three circles (disciplined people, practicing disciplined thought and translating that into disciplined action) to the point of avoiding any "once in a lifetime opportunities" that fall outside the hedgehog concept. Also, as a result, they are able to avoid bureaucratic corporate structures.

7. They embrace new technologies solely as accelerators of the three circles and not creators of them, and avoid investments that don't specifically feed the three circles.

8. There are no inconsistencies with reconciling short-term financial performance pressures and maintaining long-term adherence to working the flywheel of the hedgehog concept to create a virtuous cycle of growth and sustenance. In short, these companies embrace the paradox that managing for both short-term and long-term success simultaneously is challenging but part of the "problem" being solved by the business.

***************************************

1. Put a Level 5 leader in place:
This person should have intense ambitions for the company, rather than for themselves. They also should be an effective leader, competent manager, contributing team member and a highly capable individual. If you can't do this first, start working on the other steps and a Level 5 leader may emerge.

2. Get the right people on your bus before you make other key decisions:
Decisions about vision, strategy, organizational structure and tactics cannot be made until you have first made sure you have the right people on your team, and that they are in the correct positions. You also need to get rid of people who should not be there.

3. Confront the brutal facts:
When you work hard to understand the reality of your current situation, the correct decisions often emerge. Great companies tend to have cultures in which people have many opportunities to be heard.

4. Understand three critical areas:
Understand three things: in what areas can your firm be the best in the world; what are you passionate about; what are the drivers of your economic engine? Set your goals based on in-depth understanding of these areas, not on what Collins calls bravado.

5. Create a culture of discipline
Sustained success depends on "building a culture full of self-disciplined people who take disciplined action, fanatically consistent with the three circles."

**********************************************

The change from "good to great" is guided by, what the author calls, a level five leader. The common characteristics of level five leaders are: modesty, humility, willfulness, courage and company orientation. Level five leaders are unselfish.

Executive compensation plans don't matter between good and great companies. The important thing is that they are reasonable and fair. Executive compensation has to make sense, but will not move a company from "good to great".

Great companies place more emphasis on character than on skills, education, special knowledge or work experience. Skills can be taught.

Great companies are tough places to work. Great companies are rigorous, but not ruthless. Managers and employees are held to high standards. Standards are ferocious and consistent. Great companies seldom have cost cutting layoffs, but underperformers are fired.

Practical disciplines for being rigorous rather than ruthless:
1. When in doubt, don't hire - keep looking. Place tremendous emphasis on finding the right people.
2. When you know you need to make a people change, act instead of delay. If you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake. Do not hire a lot of people and keep the best.
3. Put your best people on the best opportunities and not the biggest problems.

Breakthrough results come about by a series of good decisions, diligently executed and accumulated, one on top of another. Start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of the current situation. The right decisions often become self-evident. You absolutely cannot make good decisions without first confronting the brutal truth.

Four principles of creating an atmosphere where the truth is heard:
1. Lead with questions, not answers.
2. Engage in dialog and debate, not coercion.
3. Conduct autopsies without blame. With the right people it's not necessary to assign blame, but only to search for understanding and learning.
4. Build red flag mechanisms.

Organize the entire world into simple ideas. All the "good to great" companies had simple strategies. The simple strategy guided all their actions.

The simple strategic concepts come from three ideas:
1. Discover what the company can be best in the world at. Focus on this world-class strength.
2. Use insight into what drives your economic engine. Determine what single thing dominates profit and cash flow.
3. Decide what you are deeply passionate about.

Just because you have done something for a long time doesn't mean you can be best in the world.

A culture of discipline
1. Build a culture of freedom and responsibility within a framework.
2. Fill the culture with self disciplined people willing to go to extreme lengths to fulfill their responsibility.
3. Don't confuse discipline with being a tyrannical disciplinarian.
4. Exercise focus.

Freedom and responsibility together allow management to manage the system and not the people. People in great companies go to great extremes to fulfill their responsibilities, bordering on fanaticism. Interview and secondary sources made continual use of words like disciplined, dogged, rigorous, determined, diligent, precise, fastidious, systematic, methodical, workmanlike, demanding, consistent, focused, accountable and responsible.

The fact that something is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is irrelevant unless it fits into the corporate focus.

On the use of technology, the author quotes Bertrand Russell: "Men would rather die than think, many do." Technology, when used correctly, is an accelerator of momentum and not a creator of momentum.

Personal reaction to "Good to Great"

This entire study is just the sort of thing a statistician is trained and inclined to do. It was highly dependent on good experimental design, data collection and statistical technique.

Most readers want to be level five leaders and will see some of the traits in themselves. Most readers will realize that they are not yet there.

Jim Collins found quite a list of differences between his great companies and typical companies. In my opinion the most important difference is in leadership. The one most obvious difference between the two types of companies is the magnanimity of their leaders. Company executives usually rise within an organization by personal ambition. A level five leader makes the company great for the enhancement of the company, not for personal gain.

This book forces the reader to confront realities. Some common uncomfortable realities are:
- Most hiring policies will not get a company from good to great. Most hiring is based too much on skill and not enough on character. The level five leader needs to find people with the passion for the business.
- Focus is crucial and every leader knows it. However, many of us still allow ouryselfs to take on projects for reasons that seem good at the time and bad later. I call these projects one-off projects. They always take on far more energy and resources (especially time) than expected at the start. One-off projects sometimes are good opportunities, but they always take too much time and delay more strategic projects.

**********************************************

The particular power of the process is that it unearthed some results that defy conventional wisdom as well as Collins' own preconceptions. For example, Collins was surprised by what he didn't find in good-to-great companies:

- No charismatic, celebrity leaders
- No link to executive compensation
- No correlation with strategic planning efforts
- No focus on actions -- success was more dependent on deciding what not to do
- No innovative technology
- No mergers and acquisitions
- No change efforts or initiatives
- No fortunate positioning

Instead Collins and his team found that the 11 companies had 7 key concepts in common:

1) Level 5 Leadership -- "We were surprised, shocked really, to discover the type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great one...these leaders are a paradoxical blend of humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Ceasar."

2) First Who...Then What -- "We found that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats -- then they figured out where to drive it."

3) Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet never lose faith) -- "Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox. You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality."

4) The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the three circles) -- "If you cannot be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business absolutely cannot form the basis of a great company. It must be replaced with a simple concept that reflects deep understanding of three intersecting circles [What you can be the best in the world at, what you are deeply passionate about, and what makes enough money]"

5) A Culture of Discipline -- "When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance."

6) Technology Accelerators -- "Good-to-great companies...never use technology as the primary means of igniting a transformation. Yet, paradoxically, they are pioneers in the application of carefully selected technologies."

7) The Flywheel and the Doom Loop -- "There was no defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather the process resembled relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond."

Modern Monopolies

This is a great book relative to the other internet-company-related books I've seen. They did a great job of compiling examples.

8. The chicken-and-egg problem, and some ways to overcome it. (Actual chapter name: 'Why Platforms Fail, and How to Avoid It')
- Opening example: the failure of Color.com
  - Summary of the story: An experienced entrepreneur raised $41 million (including from Sequoia) to start a new social network. The product was heavily hyped. It immediately crashed-and-burned when they tried to launch.
  - Main idea: There was no content for initial users to consume, so people would try it and immediately leave. The founders tried to fix the problem but it didn't work.
- There is a chicken-and-egg problem when creating a platform. (Actual section name: 'Which came first?')
  - Initially, the cost of users of joining a platform exceeds the value they can get out of it.
  - The goal is to reach the point where the value of the network will exceed the cost of joining for most users.
  - Platforms' struggles with early growth are the result of what economists call a coordination problem.
  - This coordination problem must be solved by incentivizing users to join.
- Three ways to subsidize value
  1. Monetary subsidies
    - Referral fees
      - Ex: Uber - If you invite a friend to join Uber, you and your friend each get your next ride free, up to $30.
      - Ex: PayPal offered a $20 bonus both to the new user and to the referrer. (They decreased this bonus over time.)
    - Lowering prices to one side of the platform (producers or consumers)
      - Ex: The console industry: consoles are sold at-or-below cost.
    - Providing guarantees to producers
      - Ex: Uber and Lyft offer minimum-earnings guarantees to drivers.
      - Ex: Handy offers a guarantee to producers from other on-demand services marketplaces who join its network.
  2. Product features subsidies
    - Create special functionality for power users.
      - Ex: When Instagram started it was known for its free fancy filters, which attracted producers. They got the idea to offer those filters from another app ('Instamatic'?) which charged for that functionality.
      - Ex: Twitter's Verified User program. It's offered to high-profile users like celebrities and public figures, and comes with various perks.
  3. User sequencing
    - Deliberately prioritize the acquisition of certain user groups that others will want to interact with.
- Seven ways to solve the chicken-and-egg problem
  - Monetary subsidies
    - 1. Provide a feeling of security to producers through a large, up-front investment.
      - Ex: Xbox - Microsoft made a big deal about its commitment to spend $500 million promoting its platform, thereby signaling that the company was fully committed to the platform for the long haul.
      - Ex: Tencent - Tencent spent heavily to promote the WeChat payment system. (I'm not sure this is a good example of this particular idea.)
    - 2. Cooperate with industry incumbents (NW: I don't see how this falls under 'monetary subsidies'.)
      - Ex: Android - Google created the Open Handset Alliance with handset manufacturers and telecoms to prevent Apple from dominating the market.
  - Product features
    - 3. Act as a producer of content
      - Ex: Uber - Uber started out by paying drivers to wait around until they got a call.
      - Ex: Quora - When Quora was getting started, the founders and employees seeded the site with content.
      - Ex: Reddit - The founders of Reddit seeded the site with fake profiles and content.
    - 4. Tap into an existing network
      - Ex: Airbnb - Airbnb tapped into Craigslist's network. (They had a computer program that was automatically emailing everyone who posted an apartment / home listing on Craigslist, inviting them to post on Airbnb.)
      - Ex: Tinder kick-started its network by building on top of the existing social networks of Greek organizations on college campuses.
  - Monetary subsidies and product features
    - 5. Attract high-value or 'celebrity' users
      - Ex: Dating websites - They let women join for less than men or design the experience to appeal to women.
      - Ex: Twitter - They went out of their way to attract celebrities and public figures to their platform.
      - Ex: Sina Weibo - They went out of their way to attract celebrities.
      - Ex: Youku Tudou - They went out of their way to attract celebrities.
      - Ex: Uber, Lyft, and Handy - They all have programs that incentivize producers to take more jobs on the platform.
      - Ex: Yelp - They created the 'Yelp Elite Squad' for the best reviewers. Those reviewers have their reviews highlighted, and Yelp hosts events and parties for members.
    - 6. Target a user group to fill both sides
      - Ex: Etsy - The buyers were also likely to be sellers.
      - Ex: Most social networks and communication platforms (Facebook, Snapchat, etc.)
    - 7. Provide single-user utility
      - Expl: Attract one side of your multisided platform by offering that user group value even if the other side never shows up.
      - Ex: Instagram's filters were useful even aside from the social network (there was actually an already-successful app that was just offering the filters, and charging for them).
      - Ex: OpenTable - They 'built a software application to handle electronic booking and targeted the top twenty restaurants in San Francisco, offering to help them set the system up. After these restaurants were on board, others soon became interested. Once OpenTable had this core group of restaurants, it was able to open its platform to consumers.'
      - Ex: Paying users - The danger here is that when the payments disappear, the users will too.

The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun

*******
Contents
*******
***Preface***
- The goal of this book is to understand how innovations happen.
- The author will be using examples from history to get at the truth.

***Chapter 1: The myth of epiphany***
***Chapter 2: We understand the history of innovation***
***Chapter 3: There is a method for innovation***
***Chapter 4: People love new ideas***
***Chapter 5: The lone inventor***
***Chapter 6: Good ideas are hard to find***
***Chapter 7: Your boss knows more about innovation than you***
***Chapter 8: The best ideas win***
***Chapter 9: Problems and solutions***
***Chapter 10: Innovation is always good***
Appendix: Research and recommendations

The Richest Man in Babylon

This is one of Freeway Rick Ross's three favorite books.
You can find a summary on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Richest_Man_in_Babylon_(book)

The tale of the man who desired much gold

The richest man in Babylon tells his system

A part of all you earn is yours to keep

The tale of seven remedies for a lean purse

Start they purse to fattening
Control thy expenditures
Make thy gold multiply
Guard thy treasures from loss
Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment
Insure a future income
Increase thy ability to earn

The debate of good luck

The tale of the five laws of gold

Gold cometh gladly and in increasing quantity to any man who will put by not less than one-tenth of his earnings to create an estate for his future and that of his family.
Gold laboreth diligently and contentedly for the wise owner who finds for it profitable employment, multiplying even as the flocks of the field.
Gold clingeth to the protection of the cautious owner who invests it under the advice of men wise in its handling.
Gold slippeth away from the man who invests it in businesses or purposes with which he is not familiar or which are not approved by those skilled in its keep.
Gold flees the man who would force it to impossible earnings or who followeth the alluring advice of tricksters and schemers or who trusts it to his own inexperience and romantic desires in investment.

The tale of the gold lender of Babylon

The tale of the walls of Babylon

We cannot afford to be without adequate protection

The tale of the camel trader of Babylon

Where the determination is, the way can be found

The tale of the clay tablets from Babylon

The luckiest man in Babylon

Strangely, this isn't in my Amazon copy of the book. I found out about it from Wikipedia.

The Success Principles

I. The fundamentals of success

1. Take 100% responsibility for your life

2. Be clear why you're here

3. Decide what you want

4. Believe it's possible

5. Believe in yourself

6. Use the law of attraction

7. Unleash the power of goal-setting

8. Chunk it down

9. Success leaves clues

Look for and learn about people who have already accomplished what you want to accomplish.

10. Release the brakes

Instead of using increased willpower to power your success, it's easier to "release the brakes" by letting go of and replacing your limiting beliefs, changing your self-image, and releasing negative emotions.
- Get out of your comfort zone.
  - Your comfort zone is defined by limiting beliefs that you received and took on when you were young.
- Use affirmations and visualization.
  - Review your affirmations 1-3 times per day; best is morning / middle-of-the-day / around-bedtime.
  - Close your eyes and visualize yourself as the affirmation describes. See the scene as if you were living it.
  - NW: I have a vivid memory of my dad leading me through an exercise like this (I don't think he knew it was a thing), and I remember it having a strong impact on me.
  - He tells a really good personal story of how he almost quadrupled his income from $25k/yr to $92k/yr.
    - Summary: He affixed a replica $100k bill above his bed. He would repeat his affirmation and visualize his life at $100k/yr. He then started getting lots of ideas for how to increase the sales of a book he had written. One money-making venture that he executed on would lead to others revealing themselves. He asked others for advice and used it to increase his prices.

11. See what you want, get what you see

12. Act as if

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail. Act as if you already are where you want to be. This means thinking like, talking like, dressing like, acting like, and feeling like the person who has already achieved your goal.

13. Take action

14. Just lean into it

15. Experience your fear and take action anyway

16. Be willing to pay the price

17. Ask! Ask! Ask!

18. Reject rejection

19. Use feedback to your advantage

20. Commit to constant and never-ending improvement

21. Keep score for success

22. Practice persistence

23. Practice the Rule of 5

24. Exceed expectations

II. Transform yourself for success

25. Drop out of the "Ain't it awful" club...and surround yourself with successful people

26. Acknowledge your positive past

27. Keep your eye on the prize

28. Clean up your messes and your incompletes

29. Complete the past to embrace the future

30. Face what isn't working

31. Embrace change

32. Transform your inner critic into an inner coach

33. Transcend your limiting beliefs

34. Develop four new success habits a year

35. 99% is a bitch; 100% is a breeze

36. Learn more to earn more

37. Stay motivated with the masters

38. Fuel your success with passion and enthusiasm

III. Build your success team

39. Stay focused on your core genius

40. Redefine time

41. Build a powerful support team and delegate to them

42. Just say no!

43. Become a leader worth following

44. Create a network of mentors and others who will up-level you

45. Hire a personal coach

46. Mastermind your way to success

47. Inquire within

IV. Create successful relationships

48. Be hear now

49. Have a heart talk

50. Tell the truth faster

51. Speak with impeccability

52. When in doubt, check it out

53. Practice uncommon appreciation

54. Keep your agreements

55. Be a class act

V. Success and money

56. Develop a positive money consciousness

57. You get what you focus on

58. Pay yourself first

59. Master the spending game

60. To spend more, first make more

61. Give more to get more

62. Find a way to serve

VI. Success in the digital age

63. Master the technology you need

64. Brand yourself with an online persona

65. Use social media in a way that enhances your reputation

66. Use the exponential power of crowdfunding

67. Connect with people who can expand your vision

Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

This really is a fantastic book, mostly because of the stories that Colvin has collected. Mozart, Tiger Woods, Jerry Rice, etc. There are many, many books' and articles' worth of useful anecdotes in here.

Check out this great article that summarizes the research:
The Making of an Expert by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely
- he mentions that he developed acting exercises that could make CEOs more persuasive / charming. It'd be interesting to know what those were.

Contents
1. The Mystery
2. Talent Is Overrated
3. How Smart Do You Have to Be?

Summary: Colvin relates the story of a number memorization study in which regular-IQ people were able to achieve seemingly-amazing levels of ability (in this case, memorizing a list of single-digit numbers given at a rate of 1 per second; with hundreds of hours of practice they were able to get up to 80+ numbers). Colvin then briefly describes how successful people are famous for their intellects (w/ examples), but goes on to say that general IQ is actually not very predictive of success. He explains the idea of general IQ on pp40-41, then gives examples of people where IQ doesn't matter (42-44). He says that memory is task-specific and developed over time, rather than an innate ability (45-47). He says this view is confirmed by what companies look for in employees/leaders (47-48). He also says that you can change your personality (48-49). You can't change some physical limitations at the moment (49-50), but everything else seems up for grabs. He ends with a summary of the things that don't seem to be the essential ingredients to success (experience, inborn abilities, general IQ/memory).

4. A Better Idea

Summary: Colvin relates the story of Jerry Rice (and how he trained), the Berlin violinists (and how they trained), and then they talk about Anders Ericsson's new framework for learning based on that Berlin study. Basically, the old view (of a genetically-set maximum ability) was replaced with a new view in which the important thing was accumulating hundreds/thousands of hours' worth of deliberate practice.

Jerry Rice

the difference between the best pianists and "good" pianists:
- IMPORTANT: practicing alone was identified as the most useful way of improving your skill
- the best pianists practice alone for 2-3 times as long as simply good pianists
- the best pianists tend to practice in the morning or early afternoon, when they're still fresh, while good pianists tend to practice in the late afternoon
- the best pianists sleep more, both at night and by taking naps during the day (sleep is extremely important for learning)

5. What Deliberate Practice Is and Isn't

the key aspects of deliberate practice are:
- it is specifically tailored to improve a particular skill
- immediate feedback on your performance is available

6. How Deliberate Practice Works
7. Applying the Principles in Our Lives
8. Applying the Principles in Our Organizations
9. Performing Great at Innovation
10. Great Performance in Youth and Age
11. Where Does the Passion Come From?

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Apparently this book was an influence on Mitt Romney:
The Mission by Ryan Lizza
The New Yorker
October 29, 2007
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007 ... z1iFqE41TI

According to McBride, one of the most important reading assignments Romney had as a missionary was the 1937 best-seller “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill. [...] During a visit to Romney’s mission, Howard W. Hunter, a member of the Church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles and later the president of the Church, advised Romney and his colleagues to study Hill’s book. [...] According to McBride, he and Romney became diligent students of “Think and Grow Rich.” “We read it, we studied it, we discussed it together—we were into it,” he told me. “It wasn’t Romney’s Bible through life or something like that, but those were concepts and ideas that we got early on, and they did have an impact on us and we did study it, and it became a part of our mentality.”