From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
When you're young, you're trying to earn a living- that's the most important thing. But alongside trying to earn a living, you're trying to find a voice and make films about things that interest you- you have an intentionality to your work. As you get more mature, gain trust and success- you get more freedom to make what you want- but those first-principles still apply; you are making a film that speaks to the things you're interested in.
The average pay, inflation adjusted, has dropped more than 40% – yet the Gretchen Morgenson's of the world want to write that it's going up and up… that's just wrong.
The basics of this are to understand what your interests actually are and what your priorities are—what your hierarchy of interests is. What are the things that really matter to you? What are the things on which you can be prepared to compromise?
Every business makes money as a secondary purpose. It's the coincidental result of creating customer value and changing the world in some way that people are willing to pay for and find valuable.
India's 'un-bankable' millions are not only better re-payers than their 'banked' counterparts in the west, but their demand for credit is outstripping supply by a great degree.
I invested most of our money, not in marketing, but in service. That was crucial to our early growth- starting in Europe, but then in America, Japan and the USA.
Self-awareness—the ability to emotionally self-regulate, which is the number one skill of the world's best negotiators. It's about tapping into your red centre and asking, 'What's really showing up for me right now?' It's about recognizing your biases, unhelpful thinking, or negative intentions.
The factory isn't something to hide away or outsource to the cheapest option. It's something to cherish, to be proud of. We can be trendy, we can be a brand, but it means nothing if the product that goes out the door isn't exceptional.
I think the people who are larger or those who have more resources like to think they're the ones who have greater power… and they have benefited from that illusion.
Most great sellers and leaders figure out the things they love about their job – what they would do for free – and set up the infrastructure to intentionally avoid the parts that force them to show up inauthentically.
We compute some level of default and losses because of those defaults- and perform IRR calculations to create yields and then we haircut it some more because, in truth, we have no idea!
Elizabeth Holmes is the product of a culture that has brought up young entrepreneurs to say, and believe, that 'moving fast and breaking things' is cool, that disrupting now and worrying about the consequences later is fine and that breaking laws and regulations is something to be proud of.