BOLD: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World

This is a really cool book by two people who really know what they’re talking about.  Peter Diamandis is the founder of the XPRIZE, and he’s also an MD with a bonus degree in aerospace engineering.  Steven Kotler is a New York Times-bestselling author, among other things.  In both cases, their bios go on and on and on, to the point where you start asking, “Is this the cumulative CV of everyone in your family, or did I miss something?  Because how is all this humanly possible for one individual?”  That’s what this book is about.  Do everything that seems cool, work hard to make it all happen, and enlist other people.

BOLD is not a motivational book.  Well, it is, but it’s really a how-to manual.  When they say “go big,” they mean “change the world, become a billionaire, keep going.”  Lather, rinse, repeat.  The world has changed really quickly, and now the bar is very low for someone from anywhere on the globe to get into any sort of business.  It’ll happen at an increasingly rapid rate because better technology and communications are spreading as fast as they can go.  The book begins with the concept that linear companies are being disrupted (read: made extinct) by exponential technology.  Rather than sell doom and gloom about this pessimistic scenario, the authors make a solid case that exponential business creates growth and opportunity.

I stopped and took a lot of notes while reading BOLD, because it kept introducing websites and online communities that I had never heard of, but appear to be thriving outside my awareness.  Diamandis and Kotler are not making this stuff up.  You can take an idea in any field, go online right now, and start turning it into A Thing.  Crowdfund and/or crowdsource anything.  Start your own online community.  Create your own XPRIZE.  The easy stuff includes getting your invention designed, built, and sold (quirky.com); designing t-shirts (threadless.com); and I’m tossing in one I just discovered, which is submitting your screenplay to Hollywood (blcklst.com).  We’ve been at the point for several years now where nobody should be saying, “There are no jobs out there.”  Create your own job!  Who’s going to stop you?

As a little treat, here are Peter’s Laws.  http://www.diamandis.com/peters-laws/

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