1: It was 6 AM, and more than fifty people were standing in line outside the Au Bon Pain bakery cafe in Boston’s Copley Place mall.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Ron Shaich writes in his terrific book Know What Matters. “I’d spent months desperately trying to figure out how to get people to stop walking past our door.
“And now, here they were, waiting in line,” he recounts. … continue reading
1: “Excuse me, sir, would you like to try a cookie?”
The year was 1980. Future Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich, then 26 years old, was standing on the sidewalk of a busy street in downtown Boston.
“I held out a tray of chocolate-chip cookies to a square-jawed gentleman,” Ron recalls in his excellent book Know What Matters.
The man hesitated, then he took a cookie.
“We’re testing … continue reading
1: “The first time my boss saw one of those spoons, she narrowed her eyes and asked me what they had cost,” Will Guidara writes in his amazing book Unreasonable Hospitality.
When Will told her the price, her eyes got even narrower: “We’ll talk about this later,” she said.
The year was 2004. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City was reopening after a two-year-long, $450-million renovation … continue reading
1: Our brains are uncomfortable with the in-betweens.
“Imagine, for a moment, that we are traveling alone on a long-leg airline flight with no onboard Wi-Fi,” Anne-Laure Le Cunff writes in Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.
“There we are at 30,000 feet, suspended in the sky, transitioning from one place to another, neither here nor there,” she writes. “The places and people who normally … continue reading
1: According to an MIT study, six out of ten jobs today didn’t exist in 1940.
“Technology changes the skills required and the processes we follow,” Geoff Woods writes in The AI-Driven Leader. Our “opportunity is to develop the skills and processes for an AI-driven world.”
As leaders, we are responsible for training and supporting our people along the way.
What makes AI different?
“The sheer volume … continue reading
1: The year was 2007. Nokia controlled an astonishing 49% share of the mobile phone market.
Wowza.
What else happened that year? The iPhone was introduced.
Nokia’s “inability to adapt to swift technological changes ultimately led to their downfall, serving as a cautionary tale for leaders in the AI era,” Geoff Woods writes in The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions.
Nokia was unable to adapt … continue reading
1: Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors in history. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, is valued at more than $1 trillion.
His business partner and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger describes what Warren tells business school students about his approach to investing: “I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only 20 slots in it so that you had 20 punches, representing all … continue reading
1: The year was 2002. Chad Willardson was one of 100 trainees who started the financial advisor training at Merrill Lynch in Southern California. He was 24 years old.
The success metric was clear: Achieve $15 million under management within 18 months or be fired.
“It was a brutal and intense growth curve,” Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy write in 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More … continue reading
“Every next level of your life will require a different you.” -Leonardo DiCaprio
1: Most people get stuck in a 2x mindset. They struggle to manifest 10x in their lives.
They have it backward, Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy write in 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less.
When we choose a 2x goal, we choose “doing the same things we’re doing now, … continue reading
1: “Our first and most obvious wish is to avoid getting cancer at all,” Peter Attia writes in his powerful book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.
“But cancer prevention is tricky,” Peter notes, “because we do not yet fully understand what drives the initiation and progression of the disease with the same resolution that we have for [heart disease].”
Peter defines the four deadly diseases that will … continue reading
