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Aaron Sansoni

Aaron Sansoni

Aaron Sansoni - Learn from Think LIke

What You’ll Learn From Reading Think Like
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I’ve mentioned once or twice now that reading Think Like is not like reading your everyday self-help book. It’s meant to motivate, inspire, and advise on a very real, very professional level. You won’t hear wishy-washy words or vague bits of generic instructions. Instead, you’ll be exposed to the true success stories of some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time in hopes that understanding their mindset helps to condition your own.

When you read Think Like, you should expect to walk away with a better understanding of the following concepts:

How To Think Like A Leader

It is true that leaders are required to think and behave differently. Great leaders are working for their team and not the other way around. And, while leadership goals are usually similar in nature, there are countless different ways to approach achieving them.

Best Practices

Theories are great, but examples are better. Think Like features sample best practices that you can implement on your own as you create your personal entrepreneurial journey.

Obtaining Insights From Various Backgrounds 

 There’s more than one path to successful leadership. Each of the 21 entrepreneurs featured in Think Like took their own path. They all came from different backgrounds, had different life experiences, and mastered different fields, meaning you are benefitting from a comprehensive and diverse range of experience.

Building and Nurturing Business For A Lifetime

Once you’ve decided to commit to yourself and your business, you’ll want to make sure that you are working in ways that ensure long-term success as opposed to short-term satisfaction.

Inspiration and Motivation To Create A Bigger Life For Yourself 

 Motivation is contagious. When you read about the work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit of the world’s top 21st-century business leaders, you can’t help but be inspired to make changes in your own life.

Thinking and Acting For A More Lucrative and Rewarding Professional Life

Think Like guides you in creating a mindset and behavioral patterns that are in line with crushing your goals and obtaining personal and professional satisfaction.

Reading Think Like is a great first step towards creating your own path to entrepreneurial success. Learn what worked for household names like Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffet. Choose recommended best practices that fit your goals and capabilities. And then? Get out there and create your future.

For additional advice on leadership and business best practices, check out AaronSansoniTraining.com.au.

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Aaron Sansoni - Spotlight Oprah Winfrey Blog Header

Think Like Spotlight: Oprah Winfrey
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Think Like contains a wealth of knowledge and tips passed down for world-renowned entrepreneurs to readers like you and me. All of the businessmen and women featured in the book followed their own path to success. It stands to reason that they all have a unique story to tell. Each month, I break down a small bit of the entrepreneurial history of one Think Like entrepreneur here on this blog. This month, we’re looking at Oprah Winfrey!

Claim To Fame: The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oxygen Network, Harpo Productions

Entrepreneurial Highlights

Oprah was born in an extremely impoverished area in rural Mississippi and raised in inner-city Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While her early years were riddled with struggle and strife, Oprah came into her own during high school. She began working in the communications and media industry before she graduated, and very quickly made an impression on everyone she came into contact with. She was setting and breaking records by the age of 17.

Winfrey would go on to work her way up the ranks in the media/communications field, capturing the attention of her viewers. Her first entrepreneurial ventures, Harpo Productions, Inc. and The Oprah Winfrey Show, would stem from this success. The widely popular show debuted in September of 1986 and aired for 25 seasons. Although the show was originally typecast as a tabloid talk show, Oprah soon put her own personal brand on every episode. She pioneered a new form of “public confessional” interview known as Oprahfication. The tv hostess moved to own and produce her own show via Harpo Productions in 1988.

Harpo Productions, Inc. contributed to various media and production projects over the next ten years both in and out of the film industry. In 1996, Winfrey launched a book club that changed the literary sales landscape for many unknown authors. 1998 saw her join forces with Geraldine Laybourne and others to establish Oxygen– a women’s cable television network. She debuted her own magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, in 2000, helped produce a Broadway rendition of The Color Purple in 2005, and started The Oprah Winfrey Network with Discovery Communications in 2011.

Today, Oprah Winfrey is consistently referred to as one of the most powerful women in the world. She influences consumers everywhere whenever she makes an endorsement— a phenomena known as the “Oprah Effect.” And, she’s received countless honorable titles including but not limited to:

  • One of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century – TIME (2004-2011),
  • One of the most influential people – TIME (2004-2011),
  • Most influential woman of the previous quarter century – USA TODAY (2007),
  • Most influential black person of the previous quarter century – USA TODAY (2007), and
  • Most powerful celebrity – FORBES (2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013).

To learn more about Oprah Winfrey and her success mindset, pick up a copy of Think Like.

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Aaron Sansoni - Think Like Spotlight Richard Branson Blog Header

Think Like Spotlight: Richard Branson
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When you read Think Like you are not just reading another self-help book. You are reading over 20 different roadmaps to success. Perhaps one of the most non-traditional roadmaps in the book is that of a well-known entrepreneur from England: Sir Richard Branson.

Claim To Fame: Virgin Group

Entrepreneurial History

Like many other entrepreneurs, Richard Branson developed an early interest in entrepreneurship. In fact, he was just 16 years old when he embarked on his first business venture in 1966: a magazine called Student. With the magazine as his medium, Branson was able to interview and interact with some of the most influential musical names at the time. He also utilized the magazine to sell discounted versions of popular records. It was this success that sparked his first brick and mortar business — Virgin Record Stores.

Virgin started out simple enough. Richard and his business partners were merely selling records after all. But the money was good and the interest was there so, in 1972, Richard Branson launched the very first Virgin Records label. Virgin Records would remain a part of Branson’s repertoire until 1992 when he sold it for £500 million to assist in maintaining another of his more prominent business ventures: Virgin Atlantic Airways.

The airline company was formed in 1984 after a flight Richard was scheduled to be on was canceled. Rather than change his plans, the entrepreneur decided to charter his own plane and offer a ride to the rest of the would-be passengers for a reasonable sum. The company received enough public support and attention to worry other key industry players like British Airways.

Later, Richard would expand his travel interests, which already included air (Virgin Atlantic) and earth (Virgin Trains), to space with the creation of Virgin Galactic. This particular subset of the Virgin group is preparing to offer space tours to the general public.

Always looking to diversify, Branson had also established media group Virgin Mobile in 1999. He owned roughly 75% of the company until 2006 when he executed a sale that would effectively merge the mobile group with a tv/broadband/telephone company called NTL: Telewest. Virgin Mobile “sold” for almost £1 billion, and Richard still owns 15% of the new, merged entity.

The Virgin Group (and Richard Branson) would go on to control more than 400 companies. Some were considered extremely successful, others less so. What’s most important is that Richard’s entrepreneurial brain never stops spinning. He is unafraid to diversify, and he is unafraid to fail. And, in true Richard fashion, he is unafraid to vocalize his thoughts on several modern-day issues like environmentalism and global warming, thereby creating the thin level of transparency valued by modern consumers.

Be sure to pick up a copy of Think Like to learn more about the mindset and practices that enabled Richard Branson to build the Virgin empire.

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Why Think Like is Different
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Self-help books have gotten a rather rotten reputation as of late. If you read them you are lame. If you write them you are crazy. Luckily these labels are generalized stereotypes and can’t be applied to all books in the genre. There are some self-help books out there that eschew the “normal” advice and provide you with the background and motivation you need to move your life in a positive direction. Think Like is one of those books.

Rather than provide you with a list of things you are doing wrong, Think Like focuses on showing you what other people have done right. You can think of it more like a non-fiction account of great successes as opposed to a generic list of advice. What’s more? The successes featured aren’t your everyday wins. No, they are tales of international achievement riddled with information on the habits and practices of the people achieving them.

So, how does this help you? Really the answer is all in how you read the book. If you’re just looking for inspiration then you can page through it much like the year’s best beach read. You’re sure to find words of wisdom. There’s bound to be pages you’ll dog-ear for a valuable takeaway or two. Plus, it’s full of fun facts about all of your favorite celebrity entrepreneurs.  

If you’re looking to make a change, however, you’ll want to make more of an effort to engage with the content. Highlight any of the habits that you practice on a daily basis. Mark the ones you want to incorporate into your routine moving forward. Take some time to really think about the attitude and mindset of each of the individuals featured in this book. How are you alike? How are you different? Can you make those differences work for you?

The best thing about Think Like is that it’s not a one-size-fits-all book. The successes of 21 different entrepreneurs are featured among the pages and I can guarantee you that not a single one of them got to the top by doing exactly what someone else did…or what someone else told them to do for that matter.  They carved their own path, but they did so with a huge breadth of knowledge and best practices tucked away for reference. This book gives you access to that knowledge and those best practices in a single, portable place.

When you get right down to it, Think Like can hardly be considered a self-help book. In fact, it’s probably more of a self-awareness book…or a self-motivation book. You’ve already got what it takes to make it to the top. You don’t really need help. You just need a little bit of motivation and a whole lot of examples. Why not get them from Think Like?

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Entrepreneur Spotlight: Elon Musk
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When you read Think Like you are not just reading another self-help book. You are reading over 20 different roadmaps to success. Not all entrepreneurs travel the same path to success. Each one leverages their unique skills and circumstances to carve out their own path. This business drive is never more apparent than it is with Elon Musk.

Claim to Fame: PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla

Entrepreneurial History

Musk sold his first application, the result of teaching himself programming just out of primary school, at age 12. He later dropped out of a graduate program at Stanford University to capitalize on the rise of the internet with the creation of his first company: Zip2 Corporation. Zip2 was an online version of a city guide. It was purchased by Compaq Computer Corporation in 1999 for $341 million in cash and stock options.

That same year, Elon Musk co-founded X.com and broke into the online payment sector. The company was acquired less than one year later, and PayPal was born. eBay eventually purchased PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock, directly benefiting Musk who owned a casual 11% at the time.

SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, is Elon Musk’s third company. It was founded in 2002 for the purpose of constructing vehicles suitable for commercial space travel and still exists today. Although they’ve had a hand in various projects, SpaceX gained celebrity status in 2008 when NASA awarded them a “contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station.”

In 2012, Musk and his company launched the very first unmanned craft into space. Falcon 9, as the rocket was called, carried 1000 lbs of supplies to astronauts already at the Space Station. Three additional Falcon 9s would also make history with the successful transport of a satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit in 2013, the mission to observe extreme solar emissions affecting power grids and communication systems in 2015, and the noteworthy test flight (and landing) of a version of the rocket made from reusable parts.

Concurrent with the foundation and operation of SpaceX, Elon Musk co-founded Tesla in 2003. He serves as the CEO and product architect for the company, which is most known for its advances in the field of electric vehicles.

Present Day Elon Musk

Today Elon Musk is consistently bringing new ideas and technology to the world of space travel and exploration. His current projects include the creation of a rocket that can carry at least 100 people. Long-term plans include cargo mission to Mars in 2022 and the eventual colonization of Mars. Musk is also returning to his entrepreneurial roots with recent permissions from the U.S. government to launch a series of internet-providing satellites into low orbit. Most recently, Musk announced plans to take Tesla private with funding already secured.

Learn more about the thought processes and success strategies of Elon Musk and other entrepreneurs in Think Like.

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