Tools of Titans Book Summary

Introduction

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s the book summary of “Tools of Titans,” written by Tim Ferris. 

Why this Book?

If you could have the possibility to have a chat with the most successful people of our recent years, what questions would you ask them? 

Synopsis

“Tools of Titans” is a book that does that, in an easy format. Interviewing more of the 200 successful “Titans” of our world. Anyway, is it really possible to become successful, also for you, by adopting the favorite strategies of those masters? Let’s discover it together.

Who’s it for? 

  • People that have a burning desire to become successful;
  • Ambitious people that hate failure and have high projects that want to bring to life;
  • Entrepreneurs, personal development freaks, and everybody that loves implementing life hacks.

What You’ll Learn from it

  • The best winning practices from the most successful people in the world;
  • What mindsets are more likely to make you thrive in business and life;
  • Strategies to become happier, more fulfilled, and productive. 

In a Nutshell

Success always leaves clues, and those are the clues that Tim Ferris wants to teach us with his book. The secret of success, anyway, doesn’t lie only is knowing what those clues are but in implementing them on a regular basis. Then, you’ll probably make it as the Titans did.

3 Sentence Summary

  • Sometimes bad life experiences can teach us we don’t want and propel us towards a better life. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations where you embrace fear and go out of your comfort zone consistently. Growth will be a natural byproduct of such an attitude.
  • Most of the time, entrepreneurial success requires staying focussed in the face of distractions and pressure from other people. Thus, having the ability to keep on going even when others criticize, you will be essential for your success.
  • If you want to make it with a business, acquire the trust of 1000 people, make them your core fans, and serve them the best you can. Then they will purchase almost everything from you and, if you do the math, making them spend $150 a year will make you earn a huge profit.

Big Ideas

Those are the most relevant ideas expressed in the book that we’ll explore together.

  1. Model & Contribute
  2. Discomfort is a Teacher
  3. Adopt Long-Term Systems
  4. Get 1000 True Fans
  5. Be Focussed
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Time to learn more about them now!

Big Idea #1: Model & Contribute

Success always leaves clues. If you want to become successful, the best thing you can do is take the example of the people that have already gotten to where you want to get. The route has already been paved, so why not modeling their behavior? 

If you don’t know what to do with your life, anyway, I’d suggest you follow Tony Robbins’ advice and contribute to people’s lives.

Tony says that the majority of unhappiness comes because we put too much focus on ourselves, rather than thinking about how we can help others. 

Moreover, he advises to ask yourself quality questions because they force you to think about quality answers that, ultimately, will bring you a high-quality life. 

A Relatable Example

If you find yourself stuck in a particular position where you don’t know what to do, the best thing you can do is act the shit out of you. 

In the book, here’s this story of a donkey that couldn’t decide between drinking water or eating hay. He stood still in front of the two for hours until he died of thirst. 

If he drank water, he could have gotten more time to eat hay and have both of them. Many people act like this donkey, not knowing what to do with their lives and ending up doing nothing. 

Start doing something, whether that’s writing one word instead of a book, making a video instead of getting 1 Million subscribers, or going to the gym once instead of seeking the perfect body right away. The rest will come.

Big Idea #2: Discomfort is a Teacher

Everybody knows that hard work brings to success, but what about having a hard job? That’s the case of Chris Sacca, a successful investor in the area of San Francisco as things haven’t always been nice roses for him.

When he was young, Sacca used to work at very bad jobs, like cleaning septic tanks full of excrements while his superiors were giving him rough orders.

Shocked by this experience, he used it as a momentum to create a different life for himself. This shows how, sometimes, the bad experiences we get in life can serve us as a reminder for what we don’t want and propel us towards what we want. 

Live a life where you put yourself in uncomfortable situations, where you embrace fear and go out of your comfort zone consistently.

A Relatable Example

I never personally cleaned septic tanks, but I remember summer 2015 working in Ibiza as a party ticket seller. 

It was a cool job, but when you had to stay 10 hours under the boiling sun, talking to hundreds of people every single day, it can be an exhausting task even for the most social person (me). 

From that experience, I understood that I didn’t want a job that, after it was done, all I dreamed of doing was sleeping. That gave me the motivation to pursue my entrepreneurial career where even if I work a lot, I have the freedom to manage my life as I want.

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Big Idea #3: Adopt Long-Term Systems

Rather than setting short term goals, go for long-term systems. Many entrepreneurs fail with their businesses because they only set goals that, by nature, foresee a specific result to be reached. 

Sometimes, anyway, reaching those results doesn’t depend only on you, and whenever you don’t reach the goal that you’ve set for yourself, you can end up thinking of yourself as a failure. 

Instead, if you practice a skill consistently and make it a part of your routine, you are building a system to success because it’s inevitable that the more you practice something, the more successful you’ll become at it. 

A Relatable Example

Years ago, when I started approaching women cold, I used to set specific monthly and yearly goals, determining how many women I should have slept by that time. 

This process ended up to be detrimental both for my wellbeing and for the enjoyment of meeting women, as I would never meet my goals. 

Nowadays, instead, I just have a very simple system where, whenever I see an attractive woman, I go talk to her, regardless of the outcome. 

By adopting this system, not only I relieved myself of all the unnecessary pressure coming from having specific goals set, but it kept me consistent and helped me build solid cold approaching skills over the course of the latest years.

Big Idea #4: Get 1000 True Fans

If you can make 1000 people happy and get them to spend $150 every year on your products, you have a six-figure income every year. Sounds crazy? 

Yes, a little, but it’s actually like that. Many business starters think that the only way they can make it is by going huge and targeting hundreds of thousands of people when, in reality, you just need a solid fan base to make it. 

That’s how niche products or services keep thriving. They focussed on building a trustworthy fan base that keeps coming over and over again. 

It’s important, anyway, that you manage to inspire trust in those people and keep serving them at your best as core fans will do almost anything to get your products or services. 

A Relatable Example

Many musicians believe that in order to make a living with music, they need to have a huge fan base. 

The reality is that if you have 1000 true fans and can get them to pay you $5 a month to support your creations (on Patreon for instance), you’d have high enough income to make a living; apart from all the money, you can make on Spotify, Youtube, etc. 

This is just an example but works well also for other businesses, as well as it’s actually a principle that can be applied almost everywhere. 

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Big Idea #5: Be Focussed

Most of the time, entrepreneurial success requires staying focussed in the face of distractions and pressure from other people. When you start thinking with your own head and do unconventional things, then people will most likely start to put pressure on you. 

Maybe you want to start a new business, but your friend tells you not to do it because it’s too risky. Or, maybe, you started your business for some months, but you didn’t see any money coming in, and so your parents put pressure on you. 

Whatever the case, having the ability to stay focused on your path will be essential for your success.

A Relatable Example

It took me a long time to become comfortable staying focussed on my path without caring for what people said about me. 

The biggest risk I’ve taken so far has been to quit the corporate career (for which I devoted 5 years of my life) to go solo and work as a freelance coach and entrepreneur. 

Today almost live the life of my dreams, and every day, it’s a great opportunity for me to learn, grow, and experiment. 

Anyway, along the path, I got criticized a lot for my choices (and I still do) from my family, colleagues, and distant friends. Imagine how much would I have missed out of I listened to what they told me?

Conclusion & Takeaway

There’s no single path to success, you can only take inspiration from others but never replicate another’s path. Anyway, if you implement the habits that helped the titans of the world to make it, you will most likely than not make it as well. 

My Advice for You

My personal advice today is that you get a mentor that has already achieved the results you want. This way, it will be easier for you to discover what he has done to get to where he is in a more direct way rather than taking information online. 

About The Author

Tim Ferris, an American Entrepreneur, Investor, and Podcaster from New York. After getting a degree from Princeton University in East-Asian studies, he started his own company that then sold making huge profits. 

During that period, he started writing his first book, “The 4-hour workweek,” that has been one of the many successes that brought him to become a multi best-selling author. 

“Tools of Titans” is the byproduct of various conversations with nearly 200 world-changers and personalities of different backgrounds like billionaires, celebrities, and other influential figures.  

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