“It’s the moment when you’re making enough in revenue to pay your rent and eat Top (Location 83)
Ramen. If you can get to that moment, you have an unlimited runway.” (Location 84)
Creators discover what ignites them, then fuel their efforts with a sense of mission that transcends the bottom line. (Location 108)
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Without exception, creators describe their work as doing something much more than achieving financial ambitions—they aim to make a mark on the world. (Location 149)
What makes someone a Sunbird? The first and most obvious criterion is that Sunbirds take something that already exists and transport the model to create something new. They relocate and reshape existing concepts across geographies and industries, and bring old ideas up to date. (Location 252)
Sunbirds identify a working concept and find a way to plug it in elsewhere. They examine how and why it worked initially, and what similarities or differences will make it work again. Sunbirds such as Schultz make the calculation repeatedly. (Location 268)
“If you take a minute to really think about things, to compare and contrast, you are two to three times as likely to apply known principles to discover and connect with future ideas,” (Location 291)
Sunbirds willingly look in places that others dismiss. They gain an advantage from knowing a little bit about a lot of things and repurpose knowledge from seemingly unrelated fields. (Location 367)
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What makes someone an Architect? These creators identify openings, and, as blank-sheet-of-paper builders, they construct solutions from the ground up. Just like professional architects who design skyscrapers, they have a unique ability to see vacancies and envision how separate parts can fit together to form a new logical design. (Location 391)
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Architects start by looking for what is not there. Instead of focusing on existing solutions, they hunt for what is missing. They listen for silence and pay attention to what others ignore. When they detect the slightest anomaly, Architects ask “Why?” Many of us pick up on anomalies or gaps but tend to fit discrepancies into existing frames of reference. Architects don’t dismiss inconsistencies. They seize upon what they detect. (Location 393)
Architects are problem finders. They identify friction points, bottlenecks, and complications, and craft new solutions. (Location 442)
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“Where’s the pain?” Architects ask, believing that once you identify a problem, you’re on the way to solving it. Challenges can be as cosmic as Elon Musk’s quest to “solve problems of humanity”—or as practical as making undergarments more comfortable. Architects uncover opportunity by staying alert to irritations—such as one that was really getting on Sara Blakely’s nerves. • (Location 454)
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Every creator revealed the same determination: each wanted to build something extraordinary. To describe how they managed speed and complexity, creators turned to auto racing analogies. (Location 721)
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“You’ve always got to be able to look forward and drive forward,” Kevin Plank said about Under Armour. “You’ve got to dictate the tempo.” (Location 727)
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people who are pursuing goals focus on either what remains to be done—“to-go” thinking—or how far they’ve come already—“to-date” thinking. (Location 767)
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Although both can increase motivation, researchers say to-go thinking accelerates accomplishment when individuals are committed to a goal. (Location 769)
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Here’s one way to explain it: You’re running a marathon, and you’re at mile eighteen. Your heart is pounding, and sweat is pouring down your face. Your knees, ankles, and feet ache with every lunge forward. Your breathing is getting labored. But you remain on course, determined to cross the finish line. How do you stay motivated? Are you thinking of the eighteen miles you have already completed, or are you thinking of the 8.2 miles to go? If your answer is what’s to go, then you, like other creators, have the mental framework necessary to succeed. (Location 770)
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To-go thinking prompts us to focus on the ground we have left to cover. (Location 785)
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Creators focus on the horizon. They are never complacent. They move quickly to build the next thing. (Location 811)
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“If you start thinking you are good at something, that’s often the day you stop trying to be better and open the back door for someone to come after you,” Houston told me. “For every Google or Facebook, there are also shining stars overtaken—and that’s why we always aim higher. We never feel like we’re done.” (Location 839)
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Creators scan the edges to identify fringe ideas that might move mainstream—in much the same way that race-car drivers anticipate what might emerge in the wider field of vision. And just as auto racers rarely glance at the rearview mirror for fear of sacrificing the split-second opening ahead, creators steer clear of mental ruts and readily jettison old strategies. (Location 908)
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Creators don’t get stuck looking back. They take lessons forward and avoid the trap of regret. They don’t expend effort on what has happened. Instead, they spend all of their energy on what they can do next. (Location 927)
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That’s how creators work. They seize the wheel, their eyes focused ahead, weaving around the potholes of naysayers and distractions. They have one objective: success. Nothing will get in their way. (Location 978)
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The OODA loop consists of four steps. Observe what is happening and process as much information from as many sources as possible. Orient those observations by distinguishing the relevant from the insignificant. Decide on a course of action and select one path. Act to execute the decision—keeping in mind that the action is not an end, because the loop flows continuously. (Location 1031)
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“People are always trying to think about how they’re going to change the world, but in an increasingly globalized marketplace, it has gotten a lot more complicated to map out where something is going just by looking at where it starts.” (Location 1047)
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“One rule of thumb,” Thiel told me, “is to take over a fairly narrow market with a technology that is ten times better than the next best thing. PayPal was valuable to eBay sellers because the next best alternative was a cashier’s check that would arrive in seven to ten days.” (Location 1058)
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The same applies to creators building startups. “The single biggest predictor of attrition—lethal for small companies—is how many friends employees have at work,” Thiel told me. “If we want to use models, you could think of a cult being better than a factory.” (Location 1152)
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