Anyone can become an expert in anything in six months, whether it is hydrodynamics for boats or cyclonic systems for vacuum cleaners. After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology.
Sir James Dyson OM CBE RDI FRS FREng FCSD FIEE( born 2 May 1947) is a British inventor, industrial designer, landowner and entrepreneur who founded Dyson Ltd.
According tothe Sunday Times Rich List 2020, he is Britain’s richest person with an estimated net worth of £16.2 billion. The 73-year-old engineering entrepreneur, whose groundbreaking vacuum cleaner launched in 1992 led the way for his subsequent redesign of hairdryers, air purifiers, and fans, admitted that his team could not find a way to make the car commercially viable.
William Vincent Campbell Jr. (August 31, 1940 – April 18, 2016) was an American businessman and chairman of the board of trustees of Columbia University and chairman of the board of Intuit. He was VP of Marketing and board director for Apple Inc. and CEO for Claris, Intuit, and GO Corporation.
Bill Campbell called “The Coach” as he was coach to some of the brightest minds in silicon valley such as Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Sundar Pichai at Google, Susan Wojcicki at YouTube, Steve Jobs at Apple, Brad D. Smith at Intuit, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, John Donahoe at eBay, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Jack Dorsey and Dick Costolo at Twitter, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook.
Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American Internet Entrepreneur, Media Proprietor, and Investor. He is the founder and CEO of multi-national technology company Amazon. According to the Forbes wealth index, Jeff Bezos is the first centi-billionaire and he has been the world’s richest person since 2017 and was named the “richest man in modern history” after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018.
According to Forbes, Bezos is the first person in history to have a net worth exceeding $200 billion. Jeff Bezos is one of my favorite people worldwide for his relentlessness, curiosity, initiative, and sense of adventure. Jeff has a continuous improvement orientation and often finishes his letter to shareholders with “It is always Day One.”
Bezos came across the statistic that the web had been growing by more than 2,300 percent each year. He decided that he wanted to get aboard that rocket, and he came up with the idea of opening a retail store online, sort of a Sears catalogue for the digital age.
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. – Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) is considered the father and founder of modern management. He was an Austrian-born American management consultant, author, and educator, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation.
He is one of the best-known and most widely influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management theory and practice. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning.
‘In most areas of intellectual life nobody can quite agree who is top dog. In management theory, however, there is no dispute. Peter Drucker has produced groundbreaking work in every aspect of the field.’ – Good guru guide’, Economist, 25 December–7 January 1994.
All results are on the outside. The inside is only cost and effort. – Peter Drucker
From 1971 until his death, he was the Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont. Claremont Graduate University’s management school was named the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management in his honor in 1987 (later renamed the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management). He established the Drucker Archives at Claremont Graduate University in 1999; the Archives became the Drucker Institute in 2006. Drucker taught his last class in 2002 at age 92. He continued to act as a consultant to businesses and nonprofit organizations well into his nineties.
“With the possible exception of Henry Ford, Sam Walton is the entrepreneur of the century.”- TOM PETERS, co-author of In Search of Excellence
Henry Ford was a man of vision who revolutionalized the automobile industry with Model T and, in the process becoming one of the richest men in America.
Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, he converted the automobile from an expensive curiosity into an accessible conveyance that profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.
His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As the Ford Motor Company owner, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with “Fordism”: mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers.
‘Whether you think you can, or you think you can‘t–you‘re right.- Henry Ford
In his great seminal book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill writes on some of the qualities that made Henry Ford one of the most influential entrepreneurs of the 20th century.
Determination
A few years back, Ford decided to produce his now famous V-8 motor. He chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder gas engine block in one piece.
Patrick Collison (born 9 September 1988) is an Irish billionaire entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Stripe, which he started with his younger brother, John, in 2010. Patrick is one of my favorite silicon valley entrepreneurs, not only because he and his brother are building something great but because he is one of the most voracious reader in the valley.
In November 2016, the Collision brothers became the world’s youngest self-made billionaires, worth at least $1.1 billion, after an investment in Stripe from CapitalG and General Catalyst Partners valued the company at $9.2 billion.
Here are some thoughts of some other entrepreneurs on Patrick Collision:
Chris Sacca
“Patrick is quite literally one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. Like, he puts Larry Page on his heels smart. I don’t know anyone who has 1) read more books and 2) has the near photographic memory for what he has read. His thoughts are provocative and challenge the status quo. His success is no accident.”
If you were to look at my cheat sheet, there wouldn’t be a lot on it. There would be a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000.
Drew Houston of Dropbox is one of my favorite silicon valley entrepreneur; he attributes a lot of his success to his belief that everything is figouratable. In the early days of starting dropbox, when he needed to figure something out, he went to amazon.com and bought the top-rated books on the subject, he read the books, and he then tried to apply the principles to his business.
Andrew Houston is an American Internet entrepreneur, and the co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, an online backup and storage service. According to Forbes, his net worth is about $2.2 billion. He attended Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in the 1990s. He later graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. It was there that he met Arash Ferdowsi who would later go on to be co-founder and CTO of Dropbox.
During his time in college, Houston co-founded a SAT prep company. Houston and Ferdowsi co-founded Dropbox in 2007. Houston currently is CEO and 25% owner of Dropbox. In February 2020, Houston joined the board of directors of Facebook, replacing Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who left in May 2019.
“With the possible exception of Henry Ford, Sam Walton is the entrepreneur of the century.”- TOM PETERS, co-author of In Search of Excellence
One of my favorite entrepreneurs of all time is Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. Sam was a visionary, cheerleader, great salesman, serial borrower, tough competitor, relentless entrepreneur who built a retail empire without losing his common touch. One of the most interesting things about Sam Walton was his vision for Walmart and his focus on generational wealth. As long have observed the Forbes list of the richest people globally, his offsprings have always been in the top 20 Forbes richest list, which is very impressive.
The Walton family held five spots in the top ten richest people in the United States until 2005. Two daughters of Sam’s brother Bud Walton—Ann Kroenke and Nancy Laurie—hold smaller shares in the company. The Walton family is an American family whose collective fortune makes them the richest family in the United States of America and the richest family in the world.
Samuel Moore Walton (March 29, 1918 – April 5, 1992) was an American businessman and entrepreneur best known for founding the retailers Walmart and Sam’s Club. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. grew to be the world’s largest corporation by revenue as well as the biggest private employer in the world. For a period of time, Walton was the richest man in America.
Walmart is the world’s largest retailer, one of the world’s largest business enterprises in terms of annual revenue, and with just over 2.2 million employees, the world’s largest private employer. As of December 2014, the Waltons collectively owned 50.8 percent of Walmart. In 2018, the family sold some of their company’s stock and now owns just under 50%. In July 2020, the annual Sunday Times Rich List reported that the Walton family’s net worth was $US225.2 billion.
Sam Walton’s Autobiography: Made in America is one of my favorite business biographies as it contains lots of wisdom, insights, anecdotes, in the trenches advice, a very good read. The book chronicles his starting out, major tough early business lessons, borrowing ideas from others, customer obsession, Small Town Strategy, battling cancer, raising kids, understanding the value of a dollar among other insights.
If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you’re headed the wrong way.
Ms. Amina J. Mohammed is the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group.
Prior to her appointment, Ms. Mohammed served as Minister of Environment of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where she steered the country’s efforts on climate action and efforts to protect the natural environment.
Ms. Mohammed first joined the United Nations in 2012 as Special Adviser to former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with the responsibility for post-2015 development planning. She led the process that resulted in global agreement around the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Ms. Mohammed began her career working on the design of schools and clinics in Nigeria. She served as an advocate focused on increasing access to education and other social services, before moving into the public sector, where she rose to the position of adviser to three successive Presidents on poverty, public sector reform, and sustainable development.
Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it. – Frances Hesselbein
Frances Hesselbein (born 1 November 1915) is the former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, from 1976 to 1990, and is the president and CEO of the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum, at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA), Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership.
Leadership is the art of getting people to do what they might not otherwise do, and to like it.- Harry Truman
Between 1965 and 1976, she rose from volunteer troop leader to CEO and held the position of CEO for thirteen years until 1990. During her tenure, the Girl Scouts attained a membership of 2.25 million girls with a workforce of 780,000, mainly volunteers. In 1990, Hesselbein left the Girl Scouts to run the Leader to Leader Institute (formerly known as the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management). After Drucker’s death in 2005, the foundation was renamed after Hesselbein in 2012.
In 1998, Hesselbein was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work with the Girl Scouts of the USA. She turned 100 years old in November 2015. Hesselbein was denoted a Pitt Legacy Laureate of the University of Pittsburgh in 2000. She has received 22 honorary doctoral degrees.
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time-none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads-and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
Charlie Munger is the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett. He is an American investor, businessman, former real estate attorney, architectural designer, and philanthropist. Munger served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011. He is also chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation.
Charlie is a proponent just like Warren Buffet of Life Long Learning. As a teenager he worked at Buffett & Son, a grocery store owned by Warren Buffett’s grandfather.
Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not something you do just to advance in life. As a corollary to that proposition which is very important, it means that you are hooked for lifetime learning.
And without lifetime learning, you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You’re going to advance in life by what you learn after you leave here.
Another idea that I got, and this may remind you of Confucius too, is that wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not something you do just to advance in life. Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty.
“Life’s a lot more fun if you treat its challenges in creative ways.”
Bill Gates is an American Entrepreneur, software developer, investor, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates co-founded Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it went on to become the world’s largest personal computer software company.
Bill Gates is one of my favorite people in the world; I grew up adoring Bill not only for his wealth but also for his relentless learning habit and work ethic. He has attributed his success to his relentless learning curiosity and maniac hard work. Bill Gates is one of the biggest testaments to the truism: “To earn more, you must learn more.
The most significant investment you can make in your lifetime is on yourself by becoming a lifelong learner and be curious to figure things out like Maria Forleo argued in her excellent book: Everything Is figureoutable. Someone might say that Bill can read that many books because he is Bill Gates, which I would say; instead, he is Bill Gates because he read important books voraciously.
He spends as much as 80 percent of his day reading.
Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930) is an American investor, business tycoon, and philanthropist, who is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is noted for his adherence to value investing and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth.
Warren Buffet has been the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway since 1970. His business exploits have had him referred to as “Oracle” or “Sage” of Omaha by global media outlets. He is considered to be one of the most successful investors in the world.
Warren starts every morning by poring over several newspapers and estimates he spends as much as 80 percent of his day reading.
Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.
I read and think, So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.
Don’t sleepwalk through life. Don’t say it’s all going to be great. I’ll do this and I’ll do that, I’m just marking time until I get to be older. That’s like saving up sex for your old age. It is not a good idea.
Muhammadu Sanusi II was the 14th Emir of Kano, he ascended the throne on 8 June 2014, following the death of his grand-uncle Ado Bayero. He was dethroned on 9 March 2020 by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje.
Prior to his accession, Sanusi was an economist and banker. He served as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2009 to 2014, when he was suspended by President Goodluck Jonathan after raising the alarm on the US$20 billion NNPC scandal.
Growing Up
Sanusi was born on 31 July 1961 in Kano to a ruling class Fulani family of the Sullubawa clan. His father, Aminu Sanusi, was a career diplomat who served as the Nigerian Ambassador to Belgium, China, and Canada, and later served as the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was also the Chiroma of Kano and son of Muhammadu Sanusi I, who was the 11th Emir of Kano from 1953 to 1963, when he was deposed by his cousin Sir Ahmadu Bello.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a Nigerian-born economist and international development expert. She sits on the Boards of Standard Chartered Bank, Twitter, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), and the African Risk Capacity (ARC).
Previously, Okonjo-Iweala spent a 25-year career at the World Bank as a development economist, scaling the ranks to the Number 2 position of Managing Director, Operations (2007-2011). She also served two terms as Finance Minister of Nigeria (2003-2006, 2011-2015) under the leadership of President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan respectively.
She is renowned as the first female and black candidate to contest for the presidency of the World Bank Group in 2012, backed by Africa and major developing countries in the first truly contestable race for the world’s highest development finance post.
Currently, Dr Okonjo-Iweala is Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation. Since its creation in 2000, Gavi has immunized 680 million children globally and saved ten million lives. She is also a Senior Adviser at Lazard and sits on the Boards of Standard Chartered PLC and Twitter Inc.
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