October 3, 2015

The Big Idea: The media lies to you about success.  Success takes years of focused work towards a wisely-chosen goal.

• The media lies to you about success
• The media doesn’t emphasize Bill Gates worked 7 days a week for ten years.  Arnold Schwarzenegger worked out 4 hours a day during his teens.
• Overnight success takes years
• Learn to love the grind, because life is a grind, don’t wait
• Love your life, perfect your life —Tecumseh
• Sculpture Approach: identify a rock (goal) and chip away (work) until it becomes a sculpture (success)
• Understand your strengths and choose goals that build upon your strengths
• Jeff bezos embraces the truth
• The narrative bias oversimplifies things
• Magazines are the worst at oversimplifying things
• Media bias will lead to the lottery bias (overnight success)
• It took Warren Buffett 49 years to go from first stock purchase (1941) to billionaire (1990)
• Spend a day trying to go to bed a little wiser than when you woke up —Charlie Munger
• At the end of the day, if you live long enough, most people get what they deserve.  —Charlie Munger
• Pick the rock of your health, wealth, love, and happiness and chip away
• The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit. —Moliere

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.

The Big Idea: Study how successful people think.  

• Don’t pick your friends based on their success, but be selective about which friend’s advice you listen to.
• Pay attention to how your more successful friends think and how your less successful friends think.
• Like parrots, successful people repeat quotes all the time (not their own opinions.)
• Successful people ask for other people’s opinions all the time.
• I’ve never had an original idea in my life.  I just go to smart people and copy their ideas. —Joel Salatin

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.

The Big Idea: Use mentors to shorten your learning curve.

• Good artists copy and great artists steal. —Picasso
• If I’m great it’s because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. —Einstein
• To get what you want you must be a learning machine.
• Poor people should take rich people to dinner.
• 70% of communication is nonverbal.
• Find a mentor for every goal you want, who are 10-20 years ahead of where you want to be.
• Ellen Degeneres had Oprah as her mentor.
• Draft behind your mentors like race cars or geese in formation.
• Law of 33%: 1/3 of time with people below your level (good for your self-esteem and good for their development), 1/3 with people at your level (good for friendship and loyalty), 1/3 with people above your level (good for your development).
• Don’t seek professional mentors, seek professional doers and learn from osmosis (even if difficult).
• I don’t mind carrying a man but I don’t want him dragging his feet. –Joel Salatin
• You want it to be tough.  You want it to be hard.  The hard is what makes it worth it. — Tom Hanks
• Jeff Bezos was mentored by Sam Walton through Walton’s autobiography.
• To learn from a mentor, you’ll absorb by osmosis not by direct teaching.
• Make a list of mentors to meet who are 10-20 years ahead of you.
• Be persistent in trying to contact mentors.
• Half of success is just showing up, but that means showing up over and over.
• Email + handwritten letter >> email alone.
• Be patient when cultivating mentors because people need time to trust you.
• Mentors can weave in and out of your life, keep in touch.
• LPT: become a blogger in order to interview possible mentors, then always give them a small gift.
• Reciprocal bias/reward bias: buy mentors small gifts and they will remember you.
• LPT: give an assistant automated instructions to send potential mentors small gifts (eg coffee table book of their city).
• Also add value to your mentor’s life.
• Great books can be mentors but in-person mentors are preferred.
• Try for the top guys in your field first.
• Add value 3 times before asking for value 1 time.
• Read great books to make you worthy of mentorship.

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.