Category: Experiences

The Audacity Of Hope Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: The Audacity Of Hope explains Barack Obama’s personal, political and spiritual beliefs, on which he based his 2008 presidential election campaign, which made him the first African-American president of the United States of America.

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Favorite quote from the author:

The Audacity Of Hope Summary

Have you ever seen the speech that made Barack Obama president? No? First off, it wasn’t any of the speeches he delivered during his campaign. Not the presidential debate or the inaugural address. The speech that really made him president was given long before he ever announced to run.

In 2004, Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, during John Kerry’s presidential campaign. His keynote address, entitled “The Audacity of Hope” was by far the best speech of the convention. The then-senator was suddenly famous. This speech put him on the map as a serious presidential candidate.

The phrase “audacity of hope” is one Obama picked up from his former pastor, who gave a sermon about a George Frederic Watts painting called “Hope” in 1990. The book expanded on his ideas from the speech and laid out much of the topics of what would become his presidential campaign in 2008.

Here are 3 lessons to show you what kind of American politics Barack Obama believes in:

All Americans are united by two central beliefs: freedom and community.

Politicians become a lot like their sponsors, which makes it hard for them to do their job.

Today’s international battles are battles of ideas, which can’t be won with weapons.

Ready for a glimpse into the mind of the skinny kid with a funny name, who’s come a long, long way? Let’s go!

Lesson 1: Freedom and community are the two central beliefs of the American people.

The groundwork for Obama’s political work is based on a solid understanding of what the core beliefs of all Americans are. In the book, he describes how the founding fathers set the tone with the two documents, which describe the American ideal: the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The two major beliefs that both of these documents center around, and that all Americans today hold are:

A belief in freedom. That every man and woman should have the same rights and opportunities.

A belief in community. That working together, be that in family, at work, in church or as a country, is the way to ensure this freedom and keep the democracy alive.

The freedom would be the aspiration. That regardless of race, gender, class, age or religion, you could become anything and anyone in an America that affords everyone the same liberty, rights and chances.

However, the founding fathers knew that ensuring this freedom by sustaining a democracy wasn’t easy – no other country had done it before (and lasted). That’s why the focus on communal values, where family, religion and patriotism are honored, whereas absolute power is rejected and dispersed – no single pope, king or general should ever single-handedly decide the fate of the American people.

Lesson 2: Politicians are forced to hang around rich people all the time, which makes it hard for them to do their job.

It’s any politician’s job to ensure this freedom. But doing that job can be really hard, Obama says, because politicians are constantly influenced by a lot of outside forces, three in particular being money, the media and large, special interest groups and organizations.

For example, since a presidential campaign alone costs millions of dollars (although the budget hardly affects the votes), politicians have no choice but to either be rich themselves already, or getting plenty of sponsors and donors. But hanging around with the top 1%, other rich politicians and flying around in private jets makes it very hard to stay connected to the majority of the ordinary citizens they represent.

It’s the same with labor unions, lobbies, religious institutions and big political committees – a lot of special interest groups want to influence politicians to make sure their own interests are served well.

Lastly, the media control how politicians are perceived publicly, and because neither honesty nor civil behavior makes clicks and headlines, what politicians say gets distorted a lot.

Obama proposed public campaign founding and free media air time for presidential candidates as a solution to these problems. If politicians can’t work in an unbiased way, there’s no way they’ll really represent the true values the country aspires to.

Note: Politicians aren’t innocent, of course. But while I’m the last one to unreflectingly endorse any politician, I think we have to cut them some slack too.

Lesson 3: The battles we fight on a global scale today are battles of ideas and therefore can’t be won with weapons.

The reason the influences politicians face are so problematic is that we now need them to be unbiased and freely speak their mind more than ever before.

Obama says the US missed a real chance when they didn’t change their foreign policy from the ground up after 9/11. Instead of accepting that not states, but ideologies are what threaten countries today, the country dug out its Cold War policy, only focusing on smaller enemies instead of the Soviet Union. Going to war in Iraq cost billions of dollars and worsened America’s reputation – not exactly two accomplishments worth celebrating.

Barack Obama suggests that threats now mostly arise from extreme ideologies, so we’re not battling against other states, we’re battling ideas.

A battle of ideas clearly can’t be won with weapons. Only a social awakening in the places where these ideologies thrive can reform them. Therefore, America must work on its own democracy, upholding the ideal of freedom, to inspire others to voluntarily follow on their own.

This is not only the only sustainable work to resolve international conflicts, it also saves a lot of money and creates much less anti-American sentiment.

My personal take-aways

Sure, not all of the ideas in Obama’s book stand on solid ground, but name one person whose ideas are all great. I still think Obama’s one of the most human presidents the US has ever had. I try to look at the person, not the political agenda, and I’ve never seen anyone in office more sincere than Barack Obama. If you want to learn more about one of America’s greatest presidents, this is the place to start.

 Steve Jobs is the most detailed and accurate account of the life of the man who created Apple, the most valuable technology company in the world.

Favorite quote from the author:

“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, ‘Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.’ And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. (Steve Jobs)”

 It’s a massive read, but a fascinating one.

Written by Walter Isaacson, former CEO of CNN and managing editor of Time Magazine, it is not only the most detailed and accurate book about Steve Job’s life, but also the only authorized one, since he wrote the book with Steve’s consent.

Isaacson conducted over 40 interviews with Steve Jobs over the last 2 years leading up to his death. Here are 3 interesting things I learned from the summary, which you probably won’t find elsewhere:

Steve Jobs’s team invented a name for his most important skill, the reality distortion field.

The Apple name was chosen for a very specific reason.

Apple didn’t make Steve Jobs a billionaire, Pixar did.

Let’s take a good hard look at those facts!

Lesson 1: Steve Jobs’s reality distortion field got its name from his team.

The skill that allowed Steve Jobs to create this huge vision for Apple out of nothing was not his obsession for detail, nor his sense for design, simplicity, or aesthetics.

It was his reality distortion field, or RDF in short. The phrase was originally coined by Bud Tribble, part of Steve’s Macintosh team, who borrowed the term from Star Trek.

Talking about Steve’s RDF became a thing, and what it meant, was this:

Once Steve decided that something should happen, he would bend reality to his will until it came true.

This extended to everyone around him. His RDF is how he could convince a sleepless team of engineers to work another 10 hours on Macintosh fonts, because it would be the greatest computer in the world.

He also used it to make sure anyone who left an official Apple keynote was convinced the product they just saw was the best in its industry.

By using charisma, hyperbole, marketing and persistence, Steve would pull impossible feats into the realm of the possible for himself and his audience, allowing him to create what has become the most valuable technology company in the world.

Lesson 2: There is one major reason for Apple’s name.

The first thing anyone wonders about upon learning about Apple and its products is where the hell it got that name. They’re not selling smoothie makers, after all.

Of course there are several reasons for the name, one being that Steve was often experimenting with fruitarian diets, and, since he really liked apples, had been on an apple farm the same day the name had to be decided for official filing to the government.

Another reason is that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, a quote by Leonardo DaVinci, was the slogan for Apple’s first brochure, and Steve felt the apple symbolized this quote really well.

But the one major reason for Apple’s name has nothing to do with personal preferences and symbolism, it’s a simple, clear-cut business decision: Apple comes before Atari in the phonebook.

Steve had worked at Atari before, and didn’t want people to see his competitor first, when looking for a computer company.

I’m not sure if “Phaser Beam Computers” was ever in play (Matrix Electronics definitely was), but the discussion about the name is also one of the funniest scenes of the 2013 Jobs movie.

Lesson 3: Steve Jobs did not become a billionaire from Apple products, but from Pixar’s IPO.

Have you ever wondered who Steve Jobs became a billionaire? Everyone assumes all of his money came from Apple, but his bank account actually made the biggest jump on a whole other project.

After being fired from Apple in 1985, Steve really sunk his teeth into two projects: NeXT and Pixar.

Teeth in this case also means money. Steve paid a $100,000 flat fee, for the logo design for NeXT alone. That, next to countless delays and some other costly production standard demands made NeXT a black hole where money disappeared like nothing.

In the Pixar case, Steve purchased a majority share of the company (80%) from George Lucas for $5 million in 1986, and invested another $5 million right into the company.

By 1995, Steve’s total Pixar bill had racked up to a grand total of $50 million. He often considered selling it, until a deal with Disney came through to produce and distribute Toy Story in 1995.

Grossing over $350 million, the movie became the most successful movie of the entire year. This of course led to a very optimistic outlook for the company, which held its initial public offering on November 29, that year.

The company’s stock was priced at US$22 per share, giving Steve a 20x return on his initial investment and making him a billionaire over night.

His stocks were now worth $1.2 billion.

My personal take-aways

There are so many details and lessons to be learned from this man’s life, and even though it’s a long read, I can highly recommend the book. If you’re interested in creating a company that outlasts a decade or even a century, making almost addicting products and becoming an awesome CEO, this book is an all-in-one package, just like the Apple II was back in the day.

 Shoe Dog is the autobiography of Nike’s founder Phil Knight, who at last decided to share the story of how he founded one of the most iconic, profitable and world-changing brands in the world.

Favorite quote from the author:

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you withtheir results.”

It’s very rare for a person like Phil Knight to elude the public spotlight for so long. In fact, I don’t recall knowing who founded Nike until earlier this year, when debating the topic with my family and googling it. At the time he founded Nike, back then called Blue Ribbon, in 1964, Phil had no idea what this crazy plan of his would turn into, how much it would change the world and that it’d make him the 15th-richest person on the planet.

However, until now, much of the company’s history, many early decisions and a lot of Phil’s personal life hadn’t been well-covered publicly at all. But as time progressed towards him stepping down as the company’s chairman (which he did in June 2016), he knew a memoir was in order.

This is it, and it was published in April of 2016.

Here are 3 lessons from Phil Knight’s life about how he built Nike, the most valuable sports brand in the world:

If you’re young and don’t have much to lose, it’s best to go for broke.

Get a mentor and partner on board, who will believe in you and complement your skills.

Don’t tell people how to do things. Let them do their thing.

Have a crazy idea for a business to start? Let’s turn to Phil Knight to see how you can make it a reality and have fun along the way!

Lesson 1: You only get a few chances to start something crazy, so go for broke when you’re young.

Phil Knight has always loved sports. He loved following them and he loved doing sports. As a kid he once had a summer job tabulating the day’s sports scores for a newspaper during the night shift, which would then be published in the next day’s paper. Every morning after work, he ran home – seven miles.

After later graduating college and entering Stanford Graduate School of Business, one of his professors described the character of an entrepreneur, and Phil instantly recognized himself. As the class required writing a business plan to pass, Phil wrote a paper called  “Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?”

Even though nobody was all that impressed with the paper, Phil became obsessed with the idea of selling Japanese, high-end, low-cost running shoes in the US, so on his post-graduation trip around the world, he made a stop in Japan. There, in Kobe, he discovered the Tiger brand, made by Onitsuka (you know, the ones Uma Thurman wears in Kill Bill), and fell in love with it.

Figuring he was already there, young, and had nothing to lose, he made a cold call to the CEO, Mr. Onitsuka, who agreed to meet with him – and gave him the distribution rights for the western United States to sell Onitsuka Tiger shoes. Startled by his own success, Phil randomly blurted out “Blue Ribbon,” when Onitsuka asked him for the name of his company.

And just like that, he was in business.

It sure doesn’t happen often this way, but when you’re young, don’t know what else to do, you might as well go for broke and give your craziest idea a shot – it just might work.

Lesson 2: Get someone, who can be your mentor and partner and will believe in you and bring valuable skills.

While sealing the initial deal had been as simple as showing up at Mr. Onitsuka’s door, getting the initial samples wasn’t. The first 300 pairs took over a year to be delivered, during which Phil worked as an accountant. When Phil finally got the shoes, one of the first people he mailed two pairs to was Bill Bowerman, his former running coach at the University of Oregon, hoping to get a sale and a powerful testimonial.

To Phil’s surprise, Bill didn’t stop at that and instead offered to become his partner and take care of product design. Having his mentor now as a partner and seeing that he too believed in Phil’s idea was one of the things that gave Phil the confidence to create the company exactly as he saw fit – and that’s what made it the honest, hard-working, caring brand we know today.

The first year, Phil sold the shoes out of the trunk of his car, a green Plymouth Valiant, at track meet ups across the country and grossed $8,000 in 1963. Bill didn’t just help with encouragement though.

Soon it would become clear that Bill’s skill set would be crucial for the company’s success too.

Lesson 3: Just tell people what to do and let them figure out the how. Encourage everyone to be themselves.

When working with people, the most successful ways seem to lie at the extreme ends of the spectrum: tell them how to do everything, or don’t tell them anything, except the result you want.

Phil Knight chose the latter, something he learned from General Patton: “Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”

Phil always wanted to let people be themselves. And Bill? He was a true shoe dog. He was obsessed with shoes and making them better. When Phil was running for Bill, Bill would always use him as a guinea pig to test new shoe materials, tweaks and improvements. Bill would tear apart a shoe, piece it back together, and try to make it lighter, better and more of an asset to the runner, rather than a necessary liability.

He even built a shoe with fish skin instead of leather once!

At the time, Bill also started coaching popular runners and future Olympians, helping to sell more shoes, and when Phil mailed Bill’s first modified shoe prototype, the Cortez, to Onitsuka, suggesting they manufacture it, they landed their first big, commercial hit.

This hands-off management style would continue to add to Blue Ribbon and then Nike’s success. Hiring great people and letting them do their thing is one of the core parts that made Nike, well, Nike.

My personal take-aways

I could go on and on about this book, I love a good autobiography, especially from people like Phil, who have built their empire on good. Can’t think of any reason for anyone not to read this, especially if you like stories about Richard Branson, you’ll love this.

Buy this book– https://amzn.to/2GvIC46

Sam Walton: Made In America shines a light on the man behind the biggest fortune ever amassed in business and explains how he built Walmart into a billion-dollar empire with hard work, incessant learning and an unrivaled resolve to make every single customer as happy as can be.

You can’t turn a page in this book without a learning something. Seriously. It’s the best auto-biographical book I’ve read so far. Delivering not only a great view of the historic development of retail business throughout the industrial revolution, but also many perspectives on Sam via quotes from his family and employees, it wraps an entire life into one invaluable business education.

Some of the values you can learn from Sam Walton are: frugality, creativity, confidence, a competitive spirit and, most importantly, always putting the customer first.

Nobody knows whether they’re about to embark on what might become a billion-dollar empire, not even Sam did, but either way, learning a few lessons from this man can’t hurt.

Here are 3 which struck me in particular

• Good artists copy, great artists steal.
• Always put the customer first. Always.
• Share your financial success with your employees.

Whether you’re up to building a retail store chain, a brick and mortar store, or something else entirely, I hope you’re ready to learn a lesson from a true original – made in America!

Lesson 1: Good artists copy, great artists steal.

Sam was never reluctant to copy a great business strategy. The truth is he was always experimenting, sometimes with his own ideas, sometimes with practices he saw his competitors use successfully.

In fact, he was so obsessed with observing the competition that he once ended up in jail! On a trip to Brazil his hosts suddenly got a call from the police that they’d locked him up. When they got to the station the policemen informed them that they’d found this “old man” crawling around the floors of a retail store with a tape measure.

Sam had been measuring the width of the aisles to determine whether Brazilian retailers knew something he didn’t. That’s how dedicated he was to learning from the competition.

He often took competitor’s strategies and improved them, for example displaying items on wooden shelves was a new practice in many stores. To save money, Sam bought metal ones instead, thus saving enough to reduce prices even further.

The Walmart cheer, two cashiers at the front of the store and the fact that Walmart employees are to this day called “associates” are all strategies Sam learned from his competitors, so take a look around what your competitors are doing!

Lesson 2: Always put the customer first. Always.

Sam really had only one goal for all of his stores: to make each and every single customer as happy as possibly can be.

Whether that meant buying an $1,800 ice cream machine, lowering prices, keeping the store open longer, or driving 50 miles just to buy women’s stockings on sale and broaden the selection of his stores, so people would have to stop by less shops on their Saturday afternoon shopping trip.

Sam’s had to take his fair share of criticism over the years, being accused of driving local stores out of business hundreds of times. But Sam thought that that’s just the nature of the business. After all, the market decides what’s good, and if people shopped rather at Walmart than at 5 different local stores, then that probably meant Walmart served them better.

This competitive attitude didn’t mean he was desperate to serve everyone though. A paint shop owner once came into Walmart and thanked the store manager, because all employees had recommended his store to anyone who didn’t find what they needed at Walmart.

As James Altucher would say: “Be like Google. Be the source.” Google just recommends things. Even their own competitors, if that’s what they think you’re really looking for. Don’t be afraid to send people another way, as long as you believe it’s what’s best for the customer.

Lesson 3: Share your success with your employees, not just psychologically, but also financially.

Sam was an incredibly frugal guy. Yes, he did take out a loan to start his first store, but whenever he could afford to pay for things out of his own pocket, he did.

He ran Walmart with as tight a budget as you can imagine. In 1955 minimum wage was $0.75 an hour ($4.39 in today’s dollars), but Sam still held on to $0.50 an hour for a long time afterwards, even though store managers already tried to raise employees’ wages against his will.

The famous Walmart profit-sharing plan was only put in place in 1971, after Sam got the “associates” idea on a trip to England. However, Sam thought it was one of the best decisions he ever made.

Since then, every single employee can directly participate in Walmart’s financial success with stock options and cash bonuses – some employees have amassed million dollar fortunes this way, just by keeping their stocks over the time they worked there.

Whatever you do, don’t be afraid to let your employees partake in your business’s financial success – it’s the best incentive you can give them.

My personal take-aways

If you’re more of a skeptic about Sam Walton and his business philosophy, the summary will rather confirm your hunch – I think it’s fairly critic of the man (although not neglecting to highlight his good sides). The book sheds a much more positive light on him.

The summary gives a rough idea of Sam Walton’s business practices, but you can learn so much more from the book. His 10 rules at the very end of the book are worth twice the price of the copy alone. Plus, since it’s an autobiography, it puts all lessons in the context of his own life’s story, which lets you get a lot better grasp on everything.

Buy this book–https://amzn.to/2U0KW5S

Napoleon The Great is the definitive, modern biography of legendary leader, French idol and European visionary Napoleon Bonaparte, detailing his life from his early years as an immigrant, over his rise through the military ranks, all the way to his greatest battles, political achievements and ultimate exile.

Of course, whatever you learn about Napoleon in England will be very different from what you learn about him in France – that day we were told about how the Brits kicked his ass back to St. Helena in the Battle of Waterloo. While this was his biggest loss, it was also one of only few.

This book recounts his life objectively, but I’m not going to bore you with historic facts. Instead, let’s look at what you can learn from Napoleon to become a better person!

Here are my 3 lessons from his life:

• Napoleon was (almost) an immigrant, which turned out to be a huge advantage.
• He had a truly Stoic philosophy about life.
• Like all great leaders, Napoleon was ahead of his time.

Angry, neurotic little man or courageous, visionary leader? Let’s look at what you can learn from Napoleon, regardless of the answer!

Lesson 1: Napoleon was of Italian descent, which gave him a competitive edge.

Napoleon was born in 1769, but not, as you might expect, in France. He was born on the island of Corsica, halfway between France and Italy, next to Sardinia. His full name at birth? Napoleone di Buonaparte. Yes, Napoleon was of Italian descent.

Corsica had been under Italian control until 1755 and only integrated into France one year before he was born. Luckily, one month after his birth, his father Carlo secured himself a job with the new French government, which further elevated their societal status, though they had been in good standing before. In 1771, Carlo successfully managed to apply for the newly minted Corsican Order of Nobility, which made the family aristocrats.

Only thanks to his dad’s hard work was it possible for Napoleon to get into the Royal Military School of Brienne-le-Château, located in mainland France, at ten years old.

So technically, Napoleon was an immigrant, and he got a lot of flack for it: the other students teased him about being the first Corsican in the school, being of fake nobility and made fun of his Corsican accent (which he’d keep for the rest of his life).

As often happens to immigrants, this early adversity only made him tougher, stronger and work harder than all of his peers. The result? At 16 years, he became one of the youngest officers in the French army, and the only Corsican to be in charge of artillery.

Lesson 2: His philosophy about life was a truly Stoic one, focused on interdisciplinarity and what he could control.

We talk a lot about Stoicism on Four Minute Books, and I think Napoleon is a good example of one. In particular, he did two things very characteristic of this ancient, Greek philosophy:

He believed in an interdisciplinary education.

He only focused on the things he could control.

The first one becomes clear when you look at his letters, which were very prolific, the craft of a good writer, and often full of ideas from the Enlightenment movement. He tried to spread this new era of knowledge as much as possible, bringing with him hundreds of scientists, artists, botanists, zoologists and geographers on his military campaigns. In 1798, he even established an institute of science and art while fighting in Egypt – which would go on to discover the world-famous Rosetta stone a year later.

Sadly, on that same campaign, he also found out his wife Josephine had been cheating on him for years. She’d married him more out of practicality, rather than love. Having been really in love with her, he didn’t let the news deter his focus though: he was in Egypt, so what could he have done anyway? Instead, he did what he could: trying to make the campaign a success.

When lived consistently, these two traits have a huge potential to make you happier (and probably also more successful) in life.

Lesson 3: Napoleon’s vision was too early for his time, but that’s a price all great leaders pay.

One of Napoleon’s biggest goals was to beat the British by getting most of the other European states to cooperate and shut them off economically. This kept backfiring however, and instead he saw himself faced with the “Coalition Forces” in 1813, which consisted of the united armies of the United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Italy, Prussia, Russia, Portugal, Sweden and a few others.

Even the gigantic French army didn’t stand a chance and so, when they marched on Paris, Napoleon was forced to surrender, and thus sent into his first exile on the island of Elba in 1814. Cunning as he was though, he escaped a year later, rounded up a few soldiers, and made his way towards Paris via the Route Napoléon – a 190 mile distance he covered in just six days.

Upon his arrival, the reinstated monarch Louis XVIII showed zero resistance and fled in his carriage (after his servants carried him to it, because he was too fat to walk). The very next day, Napoleon took the lead of the nation again, and instantly drafted a new constitution, which abolished slavery in all forms, forbade censorship, split the power between the emperor and legislature and ruled out all desires of France to build an empire.

Sadly, this visionary reign was short-lived and only lasted about 100 days, after which Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo and was exiled to St. Helena. I say sadly, because the new constitution was truly visionary for its time, and when Louis XVIII returned, it was back to square one.

Being alone with your vision is the price all great leaders must pay, but if the world eventually catches up, it’ll still be worth it!

My personal take-aways

I really enjoyed this one. Learned more from this than all of French history we had in school, which is a good sign you’ll enjoy it too.

Losing My Virginity details Richard Branson’s meteoric rise to success and digs into what made him the adventurous, fun-loving, daring entrepreneur he is today and what lessons you can learn about business from him.

I was startled when I just found out that this book was originally published in 1998. I never would’ve thought that even Sir Richard Branson had done THIS much by age 48. Magazines, record stores, labels, signing artists, airlines, balloon races, islands, the list goes on and on. It’s tougher to find something the man hasn’t done than what he’s already been through.

Today, at age 65, his sense of adventure and his love for life itself keep him as young and vibrant as ever. Most recently he’s pledged $3 billion to fight climate change. Needless to say, there’s a lesson or two to learn from this man.

Since the blinks and book mostly detail specific adventures, I thought I’d take one step back and look at which general lessons you can learn about entrepreneurship and life from the way he does things.

Here are 3 lessons to keep in mind when losing your business virginity:

• Don’t feel bad if you haven’t been born and bred as an entrepreneur.
• Always look out for the next thing, but take it one adventure at a time.
• The number one skill you should practice is creativity.

Ready for some adventures in the world of business? Screw it, let’s do it!

Lesson 1: Don’t feel bad if you haven’t been born and bred as an entrepreneur.

With the way Richard Branson was raised, there’s no way he could’ve been anything else than an entrepreneur. Reading about some of the challenges his parents gave him (on purpose) as a kid, you can instantly see where he got his relaxed attitude towards taking risks from and how that made it easy for him to bet thousands, even millions of £ on a single event.

For example, when he was just 11 years old, his mum sent him to visit his grandparents, who lived 50 miles away – on a bike and without directions. Without really knowing how, he gloriously returned to his home the next day, feeling like a champ, only to be told that some logs of wood were waiting to be chopped.

There are stories like this about many well-known entrepreneurs, like Gary Vaynerchuk, Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sam Walton. The bigger lesson here is: Don’t let yourself get discouraged if your parents didn’t instill a sense of entrepreneurship in you.

Thanks to the internet, even people like you and me, who just exhibit entrepreneurial tendencies, and are not pure-bred entrepreneurs, who completely sucked in school and couldn’t bear to work for someone else, can have their own, thriving business. The road might be a little different and maybe longer, but it doesn’t disqualify you from the race.

Lesson 2: Always be on the lookout for what’s next, but keep things one adventure at a time.

As I read through the blinks, I noticed something. Richard Branson is one of the most adventurous entrepreneurs out there and many of his now successful companies began with challenges that were completely outside of the scope of business, like his airline, Virgin Atlantic.

When visiting Necker Island as part of a ruse to impress his future wife (he snatched an all expenses paid for trip by claiming to be interested in buying the island, which he had no money to do so), his return flight to Puerto Rico was cancelled. After chartering a plane for $2,000 and selling out all seats on it for $39 a piece, he not only had his flight home free of charge, but also booked out the very first flight he’d ever offered.

Oh and after being thrown off the island for making a low-ball offer of £150,000 for what should cost £3 million, he ended up getting that island a year later for £180,000, because the seller needed money.

Many of his adventures first seem unrelated and thus you might feel he just has his hands in everything, all the time, and that’s why he’s so successful. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Branson is always on the lookout for the next opportunity, but when he seizes one, he seizes it with all he’s got. Only when his magazine business was a success did he start the mail order business. Only when that took off did he start opening record stores. And so on.

So keep your eyes open, but don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking you can do many things at once. One adventure at a time, that’s how you build an empire.

Lesson 3: Practice being creative every single day.

The only reason so many of Richard Branson’s businesses work out is that he sees profits where most people don’t even see business. He turns his own quagmire into cash, and the only way you can do that is by being incredibly creative.

The truth is most people could not have thought of renting a plane and selling the seats when they were stuck on that remote island, because they wouldn’t have been creative enough by the time they were in the situation.

You can’t make up stuff like this on the spot, unless you’ve practiced the creativity you need way before even getting there.

Therefore, if there’s one thing you should take away from Richard Branson, it’s practicing your creative muscles, every single day. Social media makes this really easy, and being creative on there every day could even make you rich. James Altucher’s practice of writing down 10 ideas a day is a great start.

My personal take-aways

I could go and on. Reading about Richard Branson’s life is too much fun. The focus is on the story and tell many great stories. It’s a very long summary too, so this is really well worth the time spent reading, and many of the examples stick, because they’re so catchy. If you don’t know the first thing about him, this is the place to start learning.

The book is a whopping 600+ pages, so the summary gives you an easy in before diving deeper.

Long Walk To Freedom is the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, South African anti-apartheid activist, national icon and the first South African black president, elected in the first, fully democratic election in the country.

I have a lot of heroes. Writers, creatives, entrepreneurs, actors, academics, you name a field, I can tell you a person I admire in it. People who chose themselves. There’s no shortage of them and plenty of opportunity to get inspired.

However, sometimes, maybe once or twice a year, I learn about a person who did something I can’t even comprehend. An achievement so big, an act of defiance so massive, I can’t even remotely understand how a human being can do such a thing.

Earlier this year, Viktor Frankl was one such example. Surviving for over three years in places where every day, dying was more likely than living, I can’t even imagine the scenario.

With Nelson Mandela, it’s the same. In his struggle against apartheid (the racial segregation of blacks and whites in South Africa), he spent 26 years in prison, from 1964 to 1990. That’s almost 10,000 days. Can you imagine going to sleep in a place that has nothing but a mat on the floor and a bucket in the corner, and waking up every morning to grueling work (mostly crushing stones) for 10,000 days and nights in a row?

Me neither. That’s why there’s so much to learn from the life of Nelson Mandela and that’s exactly what we’ll do. I tried to draw 3 high-level lessons from his biography, here they are:

• Your best bet at finding true freedom is education.
• If you want to be remembered, you must learn to challenge authority.
• It’s most important that you don’t give up right after your biggest setback.

Would you like to be mentored by Nelson Mandela? Well, this is as close as it gets, let’s do this!

Lesson 1: Education holds the key to freedom.

As I was reading through these blinks, the theme of violence vs. non-violence kept coming up. It probably feels natural to focus on the violent protests and Nelson Mandela’s attitude towards violence as a justified means in desperate times, but if you look beyond those, you’ll see that Nelson Mandela was as committed to education as very few people are.

He was the first person in his family to go to school, which is also where his teacher Miss Mdigane gave him his British name Nelson – the reason for which he never found out (but guessed it had something to do with Lord Nelson).

From the very start of his education, Nelson Mandela realized that this was the true path to freedom.

He studied so hard that he finished his junior certificate at Healdtown College within two years, instead of the usual three. At 19 years old, he then attended Fort Hare College, where he studied English, politics, anthropology, native administration and law.

That is, until he got expelled for supporting a major student boycott two years later. Speaking of which…

Lesson 2: The only way to be remembered is to learn to challenge authority.

Having learned and developed strong opinions about social injustice as a little child already, while attending tribe meetings with his father, it wasn’t long before Nelson started challenging authority.

For example, at Fort Hare, he and fellow students decided freshmen weren’t represented well in the House Committee, so they elected their own. After garnering support from other freshmen, they told the warden they would resign if he overruled them, causing a riot among students, so their committee was granted to stand.

Nelson was lucky in that he learned this lesson very early in his life, so challenging authority came natural to him. For most of us, it doesn’t. I swam with the current for most of my life, so the habit of breaking the status quo was one I acquired (and still am learning).

However, if you think about the people you admire, how many of them would you describe as obedient, normal, authority-abiding people? Zero.

We don’t remember the yes-men and the quiet followers, we remember the rebels, the ruckus-causers, the troublemakers. If you want to be remembered after your gone, you’ll have to learn to challenge what’s the norm.

By the way, Nelson Mandela’s real, African tribe name was Rolihlahla – which means troublemaker.

Lesson 3: The most important time to practice is right after your biggest loss.

In 1964, after being convicted of high treason for conspiring to violently overthrow the government, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison. A “lucky” outcome, considering high treason was usually punished with the death sentence at the time.

And this is the unfathomable part of Mandela’s story: Right after his most devastating setback, the ultimate failure, the moment most people would give up and say it’s all over, he got right back to practice. He kept up the fight.

Over the 26 years he spent in prison, he’d never stop educating himself and he’d never stop challenging authority.

Initially, he was allowed just one visitor and one letter every six months, but Nelson held on to his beliefs. For example, when all prisoners were given shorts to wear, Mandela spoke to the warden in protest, as he thought shorts were indecent clothing for African men. After two weeks of heavy protesting, the guards gave in.

Over time, the prisoners managed to get their hands on books and magazines too, eventually even getting the guards on their side in protests about the horrible conditions in the prison, which lead to improvements for everyone.

My personal take-aways

Biographies can be hard to learn from, because it’s very easy to get sucked into the personal story, but difficult to zoom out and see the high-level lessons from a person’s life, as they’re usually not spelled out plainly in the book. However, I’m still happy how this one came out, and I hope Long Walk To Freedom will make you want to learn more about Nelson Mandela too. There’s even a movie, which looks interesting.

Buy this book– https://amzn.to/2SFtNCk