What I learned from reading Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow.
There's two things that Charlie Munger said one time that I think almost all of history's greatest entrepreneurs understood intuitively, and that's learning from history as a form of leverage.
And the second thing he said was that there's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book.
If you've been listening to these episodes I've been making about the filmmakers recently, like Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, this idea comes up over and over again.
Both Tarantino and Spielberg actually studied Walt Disney and learned from him as well.
But they would watch and rewatch old movies that they loved, and then decades later, entire scenes from those movies would actually appear in Steven Spielberg's movies.
They'd appear in Quentin Tarantino's movies.
It's the exact same idea behind a young Steve Jobs studying Edwin Land.
And then you see Edwin Land's ideas show up in Steve Jobs companies and products.
Jeff Bezos was famous for passing out Sam Walton's autobiography to the early employees and the top executives at Amazon.
You see that Sam Walton's ideas would show up in Jeff Bezos companies and products.
And that is a main theme that reappears over and over again.
For anybody that gets to the top of their profession, whether it's in business and art and sports and music, you see it over and over again.
Anybody who becomes great at what they do, they are seeped in the history of their industry.
They talk about it over and over again.
They don't just read a book one time.
They don't just watch a movie one time.
They don't just have one conversation.
They do it over and over and over again.
That is why, if you have not done so already, I'm going to highly recommend that you subscribe to founders notes.
For six years, I've been cataloging all of my notes and all of my highlights for every single book that I've done for the podcast.