‼In 1991, Warren Buffett gifted Bill Gates his favorite book.📚
Gates read it and said:
"This is the best business book I've ever read."
Business Adventures was written in 1969 by John Brooks.
It’s a collection of 12 real-life stories about ambition, failure, greed, and resilience.
Warren Buffett read Business Adventures in the 1960s, and it stuck with him for decades.
Each story in the book is a masterclass in:
• Psychology
• Leadership
• And decision-making
These are my 3 favorite stories & lessons:
1. Markets Are Psychological, Not Logical
On May 28, 1962, a stock market crash sent Wall Street into chaos.
The NYSE ticker ran 82 minutes behind. Trading volume hit 9.35M shares.
Men like Keith Funston, NYSE president, had no answers when reporters asked what was happening:
• No war had started
• No banks had failed
• No pandemic had broken out
Just pure fear spreading faster than the facts.
The S&P 500 dropped 22.5% over six months, and the Dow fell 5.7% on May 28 alone.
The market only recovered after the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis eased investor fears.
2. Vision Beats Validation
In 1957, Ford launched the Edsel after spending $250 million on development.
• 18 consumer research studies
• 2 years of focus groups
• Custom styling
Ford was sure they had created the perfect car.
But by 1960, Ford had discontinued the Edsel after losing $350 million.
Their market research missed something obvious:
Americans' tastes had shifted to smaller cars.
The data told them what customers *said*, not what they'd actually *buy*.
The lesson?
Bold vision beats excessive validation when markets are changing.
3. Experience Transforms Skeptics Into Believers
In 1959, Xerox launched the 914 copier:
• IBM had rejected the technology as unmarketable in 1955
• Banks refused loans, calling it "too complicated" for offices
• It cost $27,500—the same as 5 cars
So Xerox got creative:
Leasing cost of $95/month for 2,000 copies + 5-cent per copy.
Office managers quickly found countless uses for the machine. By 1965, Xerox copiers were producing millions of copies daily nationwide.
Now you know why "try before you buy" works.
In Business Adventures, Brooks' storytelling made complex business ideas unforgettable.
And this is why leaders need writers to turn their insights into relatable stories.
I experienced this firsthand when I made my first $10,000 online as a ghostwriter.
My clients needed someone to tell their stories the way Brooks explained these lessons.
Why?
Because industry leaders want to scale online but don't have the time to write.
This is why ghostwriting is such a lucrative writing opportunity.
#finexecutive