Biographies The shortcut to hard-won lessons

31 May 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief segment, the speaker shares a lesson attributed to Elon Musk: Musk reads biographies of successful people to learn from their failures and avoid repeating those mistakes. He emphasizes that while technology evolves rapidly, core business strategies and principles remain largely unchanged. By studying historical figures such as the Rockefellers, entrepreneurs can identify timeless lessons and steer clear of past errors in their own ventures.

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One of the best lessons I learned from Elon years and years ago was he reads a lot of biographies. And when he was asked by the interviewer why, he said, I like reading biographies of some of these successful people because I can learn from all their failures and mistakes and avoid making those same mistakes for himself, right? Because if you look at technology, it's changed over time, but business strategy and concepts and principles, they've actually stayed very similar over time. So learning over time from like the Rockefellers and people like that, it can help you figure out what mistakes to avoid going forward in the future.