Transcription
This might just be the single best book on business I have ever read. The thing is, it has absolutely nothing to do with business. It is not a business manual; it doesn't talk about how to be an entrepreneur or anything like that. But the lessons inside this book are phenomenal, and it's from a source that you would not necessarily think would have a lot to say on the topic of starting a business, running a business, or any of that stuff.
It might be a person that you're inclined to not want to learn from because, depending on what kind of history you've read, you might have it in your mind that this person was evil, a warmonger, or a world conqueror. You'll hear this person's name mentioned quite often in the same breath as Hitler. When we talk about bad people, we also put ourselves in this box of saying, "Oh, we can't learn anything from bad people." If you want to learn something from them, that must mean you're a bad person. The only lessons you're going to derive from a bad person are bad lessons, right?
I don't believe that. I believe there are lots of valuable lessons to learn from people that you don't necessarily agree with, people that you would consider to be evil. This understanding can help you grasp how they think about the world and how they move through it, so you can be better guarded against falling for their traps in the future.
This reflection comes off the back of the 2016 election. When Donald Trump won, a lot of people just wanted to dismiss him and say, "This was a fluke; people are stupid; they voted for him for blah, blah, blah, XYZ reasons." At that time, I didn't support Trump. I was firmly in the camp that Bernie Sanders got robbed, and if he had run against Trump, he would have made a great president. But he got robbed by the Democratic Party, and Hillary was the person who ran and got beat. I was more pro-Democrat at that point, though I was very upset with the way they treated Sanders.
Anyways, I'm getting political here. The point being, at the end of that election, when Trump won, I got really curious about why he won. I went and read a book called "Win Bigly" by Scott Adams, who is the author of the Dilbert comics. He painted a very compelling picture of the fact that we wrote off Trump as being this idiotic buffoon, but really, when you peel back the layers, you realize he was a master manipulator, a master of persuasion and influence. When you start to strip back and see how he did it, you go, "Oh, it's very obvious now."
So we take that same application: there's something to be learned from this person who might have done things you don't agree with, who might have done objectively bad things, but there are lessons here that we can take away. This book, this person, is Napoleon Bonaparte. The book is called "The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection from His Written and Spoken Words," edited and translated by J. Christopher Herold.
Now, the thing is, this is a very hard book to come by. If you go on Amazon right now, it's probably like $400. It's a very hard, expensive book; there weren't very many copies that came out in the first edition of this thing. So I'm going to read you a couple of passages from it because you're probably not going to be able to get your hands on it. There are a couple of lessons here that I just quickly scrolled through that I want to share with you, and then I'll unpack a little bit about how we can apply this to our business and to our life in general.
Okay, so buckle up. Let's go to lesson number one. He says, "Why and how are such useful questions that they cannot be asked too often." Why and how? Why did this thing happen? How are we going to do this? How did this come to be? Asking those questions over and over again is what allows you to learn, iterate, and reach mastery all the sooner.
In a previous episode, I don't know when it came out necessarily or what it was titled, but I was talking about this book in one of the lessons from him and the idea of—oh, actually, no, it was a completely different podcast. I'm so sorry. This is where we talked about the DBQ, the "Do Better Question." Go watch that episode; it's very good. What I shared in there is that you can never ask the question, "What can I do better tomorrow or today?" or "What could I do better in the next hour?" You can never ask that question too much. So this is straight from the mind of Napoleon, and therefore, I take it as gospel. Just kidding; I don't take it as gospel.
Let's go to the next lesson. Okay, this one's very interesting. He says, "Is it because they are lucky that great men become great?" Then he says, "No, but being great, they have been able to master luck." What is luck? Well, it's the ability to exploit accidents. One of the really interesting things is that later in life, when he lost the battle at Waterloo, he asked this question: "Have I failed my luck?" He didn't say, "Has my luck failed me?" He said, "Have I failed my luck?" Because he considers luck the ability to exploit accidents.
For him, that was tied to this other quote on the very next page. He says, "In general, and at every step, destiny must be fulfilled by the exploitation of every opportunity, every accident, by the exact computation of all the chances, including imponderables, by the precise determination of the decisive moment for action." Think about that. To be a master of your luck requires that you exploit every opportunity, every accident, that you compute every probability, even the imponderables.
He is so exacting in his ability to plan, calculate, and prepare that by the time he goes into battle, he has already considered all the variables within his control. They are accounted for. Now all that's left is for him to focus the entirety of his focus and abilities on seeing and then exploiting the opportunities that arise inevitably in the moment. That right there might be the most powerful lesson that you can apply to your life and to your business: to be so overprepared in your calculations and computations that you've left nothing to chance. So that when chance does appear, you're ready to exploit it. I love that! I love the idea that great men are great not because they're lucky, but because they've learned to master their luck.
Okay, next one. There are a lot of quotes on this one. Which one was I going to—oh, this one! Oh yeah, "The great majority of men attend to what is necessary only when they feel a need for it, the precise time when it is too late." I learned this lesson the really hard way, right? So let me read that again: "The great majority of men attend to what is necessary only when they feel a need for it, which is the precise time when it is too late."
I've told a story of how I lost my tooth when I was in my 20s. I didn't brush my teeth; I didn't have good oral hygiene. I wasn't flossing nearly enough, and it wasn't a problem. I didn't attend to my teeth until it was the precise moment when it was too late, which is when it started to hurt. Suddenly, your tooth starts to hurt, and you're like, "Oh, now I'm going to brush three times a day; I'm going to floss five times." You think you can fix it, but it's too late. The damage is already done, and I had to lose the tooth.
Now, I was able to take that lesson and apply it to the rest of my teeth and keep them. Huzzah! So we learn from our mistakes, but I was that person. I was the great majority of men who only attend to what is necessary when they feel the need, and that is the precise moment when it is too late. If you want to be successful, if you want to be a great person and achieve great things with your life, you have to be able to attend to the things that are the most important but not necessarily the most urgent. You have to be able to show up and do the work despite the fact that the world is not forcing you to do the work in that moment. That is the only way to win that game. Ah, so good!
Next, this book is so good. I'm sorry; if you can get your hands on this book, I spent like $300, $350 on this book, and I think it's worth every single penny. But I understand if you do not want to spend that much on a book.
He says, "I can only hear words; I don't read people's hearts. I pay attention only to what people say, not to what they think." So often, we try to get inside people's minds; we read their intentions. We take their words, but he was a man that only looked at actions. He's like, "Your intentions mean nothing to me; only your actions, only the result of your actions." I judge successful men based on the success of their actions. That is the only barometer he cared about.
That's the meritocracy of being an American, of being an entrepreneur. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the results of the inputs that you put in. I phrase this as, "The universe does not care how you feel; it does not care what you intend; it only cares what you do." So do more, do it better, and you'll win more.
Okay, next one. Last one, man! This book—I love this book! I got to be careful, though, because it's like falling apart here. He said this: "Frederick was great above all at moments of great crisis." This is the highest praise that can be given his character: simply that he was great above all at moments of great crisis.
I think about that a lot as a leader, as an entrepreneur. You're going to be put into countless situations of great crisis, and it is in those moments that your character will be revealed. My hope, my prayer for you, is that you are a person who is at their best, whose character is at its best in those great moments of crisis because that is what people will look back on, and they will judge you for.
So take these lessons from the great Napoleon. Go get this book, "The Mind of Napoleon." It's a fantastic read. That's all I got. I'm really jazzed about this book; I've really quite enjoyed it a lot. I love reading not just biographies of people and the actions they had in their life and the things they did, but I love reading people's words and their thoughts, which is why I make these videos so that you can hear my thoughts, and I can hear them as well. In the future, I can look back and be like, "Damn, young Anthony was an idiot."
Anyway, that's going to do it for me, guys. I'll see you in the next episode!