Tools of Titans

completely differently. I’ll give you my favorite example: Tesla. How did Elon start Tesla and build from scratch the safest, most extraordinary car, not even in America, but I think in the world? It’s by not having a legacy from the past to drag into the present. That’s important. “The third thing is when you try to go 10 times bigger versus 10% b

“Make your peace with the fact that saying ‘no’ often requires trading popularity for respect.” —Greg McKeown, Essentialism

Sample Lists for James’s “Daily 10” Practice Not all of James’s idea lists are business-related. In fact, few are. He elaborates: “It’s hard to come up with more than 3,000 business ideas a year. I’m lucky if I come up with a few business ideas. The key is to have fun with it, or else you don’t do it.” In his words, but condensed for space, here ar

What do you wish you had known about business 20 years ago? “If you go back 20 or 25 years, I wish I would have known that there was no need to wait. I went to college. I went to law school. I worked in law and banking, though not for terribly long. But not until I started PayPal did I fully realize that you don’t have to wait to start something. S

year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months? Sometimes, you have to actually go through the complex, 10-year trajectory. But it’s at least worth asking whether that’s the story you’re telling yourself, or whether that’s the reality.”

So I think trends are often things to avoid. What I prefer over trends is a sense of mission. That you are working on a unique problem that people are not solving elsewhere.

Peter will also sometimes ask potential hires, “What problem do you face every day that nobody has solved yet?” or “What is a great company no one has started?”

How has a “failure” set you up for later success? “The hardest decisions to make in business are those that disappoint people you care about. One of the biggest mistakes I made in the early days of Behance was doing too many things. We had multiple products in market, multiple business lines, and our energy was divided across too many things. Final

The Benefits of Thinking 10x Versus 10% “I interviewed Astro Teller [for my book Bold]. Astro is the head of Google X (now called ‘X’), Google skunkworks. . . . He says, ‘When you go after a moonshot—something that’s 10 times bigger, not 10% bigger—a number of things happen. . . .’ “First of all, when you’re going 10% bigger, you’re competing again

Don’t Accept the Norms of Your Time “I was talking with this billionaire friend of mine, and I was saying, ‘I’d really like to write a book about the way your mind works.’ He was [commenting on] the difference between someone who isn’t a billionaire and a billionaire. . . . He said, ‘The biggest mistake you can make is to accept the norms of your t