9. The reason why Elvis Presley gave 50% of his earnings to his manager: Colonel Tom Parker
10. The Story of the Vagabonds The story of 5 men: Henry, Tom, Harvey, John and Luther
11. Fast Forward 20 Years • Henry Ford becomes the richest person living. • Thomas Edison earns the most number of patents any individual ever has. • Harvey Firestone creates the biggest tire manufacturing company • John Burroughs becomes a famous author and naturalist. • Luther Burbank – a botanist – invents over 800 strains and varieties of plants!
14. The Graham Group Warren Buffer & Charlie Munger – Berkshire Hathaway Tom Knapp & Ed Anderson – Tweedy, Browne & Co. David "Sandy” Gottesman – First Manhattan. $2billion. Bill Ruane – Sequoia Fund Walter Schloss – Graham-Newman
16. “If each of us hires people smaller than ourselves, we shall become a company of midgets. But if each of us hires people bigger than ourselves, we shall become a company of giants.” – David Ogilvy.”
17. Always surround yourself with people smarter than you Start a mastermind Attend events Organize an annual dinner meet Write thank you letters to your heroes Hire people better than you
21. Aim to be the Opposite List your competition. Rate them on 5 elements: Product, Price, Accessibility, Service, Experience. Aim to become better at the element they are worst at.
33. Getting things done! Write down your goals to help you focus Focus on one thing at a time Go from the periphery to the center, from easy to difficult Use competition to motivate you
34. Action Summary “In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits.” - Lee Iacocca
37. Before After Ankesh Kothari http://www.AnkeshKothari.com genesis@ankeshkothari.com Work: http://SuccessNexus.com ecommerce + affiliate management app
Editor's Notes
Canada 2004 Gallup poll. The more friends you have, the richer you get.
11th century: England is an island filled with misfits, barbarians and losers. To inspire his country mates, Welsh Monk Geoffrey of Monmouth writes a book about English Heroes: “The History of the Kings of Britain” – stories about King Lear and Cymbaline.15th century: Thomas Malory, while in prison – resurrects one of Geoffrey’s stories. LeMorted’Arthur. The tale of King Arthur and his knights of the roundtable.King Henry VII read this book. And got inspired. Built a navy. Conquered the world.But here is the rub: not a word written by Geoffrey of Monmouth was true!
When other managers and agents were simply doing their best in getting good recording contracts and booking live events, Col Parker hustled. He got a merchandising deal that turned Elvis into a brand and put his photo on posters and bracelets. And earned $22 million in the year 1956! He got the idea to sell “I hate Elvis” badges to earn from people who otherwise would have been left out.
Similarities between Edison and Burbank’s techniques. Edison earned 1093 patents. Burbank created 800 new strains and varieties of plants.
Annual dinner hosted by Warren Buffet for all the followers of Benjamin Graham’s value investment strategy
Akio Morita & Masaru Ibuka started Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo in 1946. They started by repairing radios. Akio saw that very smart engineers were coming back after the end of ww2 – but didn’t have any job prospects. And so started hiring the best ones even before he had a place for them. These initial engineers are the ones because of whom TTK became one of the biggest companies in the world. In 1958, TTK was renamed as Sony.
Each of the 217 times David Ogilvy opened a new office for Ogilvy & Mather he’d leave a set of Russian nesting dolls on the desk of the incoming manager. When the manager removed the top half from the largest of these bowling pin-shaped dolls, he or she would find a slightly smaller doll inside. This would continue until the manager came to the tiniest doll and retrieved from its interior what looked to be the note from a fortune cookie: “If each of us hires people smaller than ourselves, we shall become a company of midgets. But if each of us hires people bigger than ourselves, we shall become a company of giants. – David Ogilvy.”
Ram & Shyam are two entrepreneurs both living in a town where the nearest well is 10 miles away.Ram sees an opportunity. And charges people to get their water for them. He starts earning money from day 1.Shyam sees an opportunity too. But he doesn’t do what Ram does. And doesn’t spend time going back and forth everyday. Instead, he sacrifices money that can be earned today to build a pipeline. When the pipeline is built, Ram is out of business.One of the obvious things to do is make your product better than an already existing hit product. Google did that. They came up with a much better search engine.
Interesting point: Steve Jobs cut off the palm pilot division. And people called him an idiot. But if he would not have cut off palms and focused on ipods – Apple wouldn’t be so successful today. To become better, you have to tell NO a lot. And focus your energies.
In Judo, you use your opponents weight and momentum to your advantage. That’s what you do with counter branding too.
Kevin Eastman is brainstorming with his friend Peter Laird about comics in 1983.While brainstorming, they ask a question: what could they do to improve their chances of coming up with a hit comic? And the solution they come up with is ingenious!They start counting their inspirations.1. Cerebus the Aardvark is a surprising cult comic of the time. Its about a pig superhero who drinks and cusses. But is very smart. Misfit animal superhero.2. Ronin by Frank Miller is also a hit comic of the time. Ninja movies are doing well too. Ninjas.3. Daredevil is another hit comic. It’s about a blind mutant whose other senses are heightened beyond normal human ability because of radio active exposure. Mutants.4. The New Mutants is another comic they are inspired by. It’s about teenage mutant superheroes undergoing training. Teenage mutants.Eastman and Laird mix all of these 4 inspirations together. And come up with teenage mutant ninja misfit animals undergoing training.They come up with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Which becomes a huge hit!
Asimov read: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Then began writing Foundation.
Memory experiment. Take 20 seconds. And try to remember everything you see in the colour blue.
"For two decades, Charles Darwin suffered crippling anxiety whenever he so much as imagined publishing his theory of natural selection. The quiet naturalist agonized about how his true beliefs on speciation would affect his standing among his Victorian peers and super pious wife: "It is like confessing a murder," he wrote to a friend.Only when the young scientist Alfred Russel Wallace nipped at his heels with a nearly identical theory did Darwin set aside his work on barnacles and publish On the Origin of Species, securing his place in history with the slenderest of leads.The greatest thinker of the 19th century came close to being remembered as a footnote in the study of arthropods, solely because he feared disapproval."Charles Schwab: poorly performing factory. Asks day shift how many units did they finish today. Wrote 2 on the wall. Night shift erased and wrote 3. Day shift erased and wrote 4. Pretty soon – that factory became one of the most productive factories out there.Toyota’s 2 word motto: Beat GM
Experiment end. Remember all the blue things in this room?Ok – do you remember any brown things in the room?In 1953, a survey was conducted with the graduating class of Yale. The question in the survey?“Do you write down your goals?”The response showed that only 4% people wrote down their goals.In 1973, 20 years after the initial survey, the researchers track down the surviving members of the class of ’53 to see how successful they were. And what they found astounded them. 4% people who wrote down their goals were worth more than the other 96% put together!
