The 103-Bullet Entrepreneur Brain Upload
How to inhale a lifetime of wisdom in 10 minutes
Imagine if you could sit across the table from the most successful entrepreneurs in history: Carnegie, Estee Lauder, Steve Jobs, Charlie Munger, Phil Knight and just… download everything they learned from decades of building, failing, obsessing, succeeding.
You’d probably have to sit there for, I don’t know, 300 years?
Unless...
You let someone else do the listening, the reading, the digging, and the distilling for you.
Enter David Senra, the creator of the Founders Podcast: arguably the most respected podcast among founders, podcasters, and business nerds everywhere.
David spends all his time reading biographies of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and then obsessively shares their life lessons in long-form episodes that are basically history classes for capitalists.
Then, Eric Jorgenson (yep, that Eric author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant) came along and pulled off a glorious heist: he distilled the timeless ideas David uncovered into 103 maxims.
Short, sharp, unforgettable mental tools.
The result? A kind of cheat code for living and building better.
Why are maxims so powerful?
Because the human brain is basically a glorified pattern recogniser and maxims are high-octane fuel for that process. They’re short, memorable, and they stick. Think of them as little mental landmines: you plant them now, and they explode in moments when you need them most.
You can find the original post here, but for your convenience, I’ve included the full list directly in this newsletter.
Money comes naturally as a result of service.
Ordinary things, done with extraordinary focus, over an extraordinary period of time.
Find an earned secret and exploit it for two or three decades.
Be a professional opportunist.
Opportunity arrives after a loss.
The best financial decisions are not financial decisions.
You don't need to be a genius; you just need to collect more information.
Reading is not hard—pick up a book and stare at it. If you're not doing that, you're not serious.
Wise people don't solve problems; they avoid them.
Genius has the fewest moving parts.
Those at the margins often come to control the center.
Mute the world, build your own.
Don't do anything that someone else can do.
A natural monopoly is ideal, but if not, take an oligopoly.
Invest heavily in the technologies of the day.
Ideas that are easy to understand are easy to spread.
Make yourself easy to interface with.
Relationships run the world.
History doesn’t repeat; human nature does.
Quality of your life is the direct result of the quality of your decisions.
Don't learn to deal with stress; learn to enjoy it.
Belief comes before ability.
Problems are opportunities in work clothes.
Books are made out of books.
Bad boys move in silence.
Learning from history is a form of leverage.
Designing in constraints is powerful.
The world is your classroom.
"Always more audacity." — Winston Churchill
Excellence is the capacity to take pain.
Actions express priorities.
The public praises people for what they practice in private.
There are ideas worth billions in a $30 history book.
Successful people listen. Those that don’t, don’t last long.
If you know your business from A to Z, no problem is unsolvable.
Business is problems; the best companies are problem-solving machines.
Gentlemen, watch your costs.
You aren't advertising to a standing army; you're advertising to a moving parade.
Self-pity has no utility.
Always more audacious.
Wisdom is prevention.
Go for great (Munger).
Go for freedom (Zell).
Making mistakes is the privilege of the active.
Time carries most of the weight.
Incentives rule everything around you.
Find a simple idea and take it seriously.
Good ideas are rare; when you find one, bet heavily.
Genius lies in ignoring the unimportant.
Intensity is the price of excellence.
You can’t save souls in an empty church.
Scale and fanaticism combined are powerful.
If you’re not working on your best idea, you're doing it wrong.
Ease isn’t the goal; excellence is.
Become friends with the eminent dead.
People are power law; the best ones change everything.
By endurance, we conquer.
Keep things simple and remember what you set out to do.
The founder is the guardian of the company’s soul.
In business, the winning system maximizes or minimizes one or a few variables.
Imitation precedes creation.
Focus is saying no.
Optimism is a moral duty.
Intense concentration can bring out hidden resources in people.
If anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess.
Obsess over customers.
Being extreme in your craft is essential in the age of leverage.
Learning is not memorizing; it’s changing behavior.
Repeat, repeat, repeat; volume and consistency win.
If you love what you do, the only exit strategy is death.
The story of the father is embedded in the son.
The hard way is the right way.
Be intolerant of slowness.
Hire a professional critic.
Experts don’t know sh*t.
I love the climb; I don’t care where the summit is.
"If you do everything, you will win."
"Reading is forced meditation."
"Action solves everything."
A great product has to be better than it has to be.
It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it.
"I'm not a businessman; I'm a business, man."
"Forever on the attack."
Life isn't about finding yourself; it's about creating yourself.
Plan B should be to make Plan A work.
The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.
The good ones know more.
Avoid boring people.
The best thing I did was choose the right heroes.
All good things in life come from compounding.
A players hire A players; B players hire C players.
"Search all the parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees."
Have pride in creation, not consumption.
Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
Once you find something that works, shut up about it.
If you know the basics, you have an advantage over others (Kobe).
Apply specific knowledge with leverage, and you’ll get what you deserve (Naval).
There’s no substitute for hard work.
Collect a handful of ideas, then hammer them home repeatedly.
It’s slothful not to compress your thoughts.
A novice is easily spotted because they do too much.
"Repetition is persuasive."
Keep the main thing the main thing.
That’s it for this edition.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just pick three maxims and let them marinate for a week. Or print the whole thing out and tape it on a wall. Either way, your brain will thank you.
Till next week,
Manoj
"1 Idea" delivers interesting insights every week straight to your inbox. If this edition resonated with you, how about sharing it with a friend?
And if you're just diving into my world for the first time, why not hit that subscribe button?