What I learned from rereading The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie.
Nothing stranger ever came out of the story of this poor scotch boy who came to America and step by step through many trials and triumphs, became the great steelmaster, built up a colossal industry, amassed an enormous fortune, and then deliberately and systematically gave away the whole of it for the enlightenment and betterment of mankind.
Not only that, he established a gospel of wealth that can be neither ignored nor forgotten and set a pace in distribution that succeeding millionaires have followed as a precedent.
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is written over 100 years ago, which is the autobiography of Andrew Carnegie.
This is my second time reading the autobiography of Andrew Carnegie.
A few years ago, I did a three part series on Andrew Carnegie and his partner, Henry Clay Frick.
If you're interested in diving deeper into that, it's episodes 73, 74 and 75.
To prepare for this podcast, not only did I reread Andrew Carnegie's autobiography, but I reread all my notes and highlights from the fantastic book which I did on episode 73, which is called meet you in hell.
Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the bitter partnership that transformed America.
And so it occurred to me last night as I was rereading my highlights from each you in hell.
There's a handful of highlights that I think I should tell you first before we jump into Carnegie's autobiography that I think will give you context in how he approached building his businesses and what he had in common with some of other history's greatest entrepreneurs.
Henry Clay Frick obviously being one of them, which is his partner, but also Jay Gold and John D.
Rockefeller.
And it's this idea that they started out learning bookkeeping because they thought that was the language of business.
And what these guys all had in common is they were hell bent on knowing their business down to the last cent.
They were obsessed with having the lowest cost structure out of anybody in their industry.
And so here's a few highlights from meachu and hell.
The first one is this mantra that Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick would repeat.
They said, cut the prices, scoop the market, watch the costs, and the profits will take care of themselves.
And this autobiography does not go into nearly the detail that I think is required to understand the success of Carnegie and how important his partnership with Henry Clay Frick was.
So I'll be rereading meet you in hell in the next few weeks and making another podcast on it because it's just, there's so many lessons in the book and it's just an absolutely fantastic written book.