A Month’s Study Of Books

There is an old Chinese proverb that says:

A single conversation across the table with a wise person is worth a month’s study of books

This pretty much sums up Gary Hoover’s presentation at RISE Austin.

I captured just a few of the many solid words of advice he shared during his presentation on 8 keys to creating and building lasting enterprises:

Nothing that matters in business is new.

Be incredibly curious.  There isn’t a person in the world that you  can’t learn something from.

Remember at one point of time, Sears had the best of everything.

The only reason why a business is in existence is to provide good and services to people.  The minute an enterprise forgets that, it’s all over.

Do one thing (or a small few) extremely well and don’t let up on your focus.

With SXSWi right around the corner and the incredible amount of hype around what’s coming  next, I felt that Gary’s next point was especially timely.  Gary comments,

Studying the present doesn’t give you time to see what worked and what didn’t.

Gary does not take studying business history lightly and has made it one of his lifetime passions (as you can see for yourself  in his History of the Airline industry presentation).  Gary went on to add that everything goes in cycles and through study of the past, along with trend analysis, the future can be yours.

So, while I am off to SXSWi tomorrow, and will mostly like post about it next, I am going to promise to spend more time in the near future looking backwards.

Thanks for the great presentation and words of wisdom Gary!