A good friend of mine who knows I am interested in entrepreneurship sent me a small article about a new book: Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers. I liked the crispness and directness of the lessons mentioned in the article, so I knew I would enjoy the book. I really enjoyed reading Derek's account and hearing about how things went for another entrepreneur -- one who has a pretty concrete, no-BS outlook on life and knows what he wanted and didn't want out of his business. I enjoyed his focus on the many things that didn't go right and the mistakes he learned from. The book is very concise and to-the-point and is basically a summary of Derek's biggest takeaways from creating and selling a successful business -- one he didn't even plan on starting. Below were my own biggest takeaways from the book and the ones that rang most true for me.
0 Comments
I just finished reading my first book by Richard Branson: The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership. I've been impressed by how prolific Branson is and the breadth of successful businesses he has started; it's also great to see how supportive he is of the global entrepreneurship scene. It was interesting to read about his upbringing and the founding stories of many of the Virgin companies. I thought the leadership lessons and takeaways were pretty conventional (I didn't find much new in this book), and I thought that too many sections of the book read like advertisements for Virgin companies. But the stories of the unconventional strategies used by Branson and his various executive leaders were fun to read. Branson is definitely a great role model for someone who can have a ton of fun while building an enormous empire according to his own rules. I also collected a few pithy quotes that Branson included in his book like, "A good speech is like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject but short enough to create interest" (Winston Churchill), "Leadership is the ability to hide your panic in front of others" (Lao Tzu), and "Live as if you're going to die tomorrow. Learn as if you're going to live forever" (Gandhi).
|
Archives
February 2023
Categories
All
Subscribe |