Founders #168 Larry Miller (Driven: An Autobiography)
From Parts Manager to Billionaire
- Larry Miller, a D student with no business training, built a multi-billion dollar empire.
- Starting as a Toyota parts manager, his 90-hour workweeks propelled him to extraordinary success.
The River of Failure
- Failure can be a catalyst for entrepreneurial success.
- Larry Miller's career started with three failures: dropping out of college, a layoff, and a demotion.
Childhood Hardships
- Larry Miller's difficult childhood included being kicked out of his home and sent to juvenile detention.
- These experiences fueled his drive to control his destiny and never be vulnerable again.
What I learned from reading Driven: An Autobiography by Larry Miller.
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[1:01] I decided I had to be extremely good at something.
[2:47] I’m sorry to say, neglecting my family to do all of the above. I worked and worked and worked, day after day, night after night, dawn to bedtime.
[5:23] He owned movie theaters, auto dealerships, a motorsports park with a world-class racetrack, a movie production company, an advertising agency, ranches, restaurants, TV and radio stations, a real-estate development company, an NBA franchise, a professional baseball team, an NBA arena, sports apparel stores—nearly 90 companies in all, in six states, with 7,000 employees, all under the umbrella of The Larry H. Miller Group, which produces $3.2 billion in sales annually, ranking it among the 200 largest privately owned companies in the United States.
[7:23] The chain of events that began my entrepreneurial career was sparked by three failures: I dropped out of college, got laid off, and got demoted.
[35:22] It’s excellence for the sake of excellence. It just feels good being excellent, doing your best, learning everything you can about anything to which you apply yourself and then doing that thing well.
[38:40] The insanely long hours that I worked were driven by fear, but then the success became intoxicating. Clearly, my motivation to work like that shifted from fear-driven to success-driven.
[40:36] A bunch of people say, “I wanna have . . .” and “I wanna be . . .” but they’re not willing to pay the price. The price is time and effort and being a student of what you’re doing.
[48:15] https://patrickcollison.com/fast.
[56:15] Working all the time made me successful. It made me a failure, too. I missed most of my children’s youth. I missed ball games and science fairs and back-to-school nights. I missed the first day of kindergarten and playing catch in the yard. I missed dinner at home with my wife and kids.
[1:00:53] I try to pass these painful lessons to others who might be tempted by the allure of professional success. Mine is a cautionary tale.
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