Episode · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2026-03-05
Books mentioned on #856: Jim Collins — What to Make of a Life and How to Maximize Your Return on Luck
Jim Collins has published multiple international bestsellers that have sold in total more than eleven million copies worldwide, including the perennial favorite Good to Great. His new book is What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
-
Good to Great
Good to Great by Jim Collins is a highly influential business and management book that investigates how ordinary companies manage to transition into sustained market leaders through disciplined leadership and strategic focus.
Discussed“I was looking at a reference to the Good to Great acknowledgements. This was also something that I think you may have brought up and I'll just read the line”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (12) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Own book Good to Great
“I was off working on Built to Last and Good to Great.”
Own book Built to Last
“I was off working on Built to Last and Good to Great.”
Own book Built to Last
“Back in Built to Last, which was about visionary companies and enduring great companies and all that, Jerry Porras and I set out and our original question was to study the concept of corporate vision”
Own book Good to Great
“And so, I've essentially is very similar to what happened with Built to Last, with Good to Great, whatever. I started with a narrower question.”
Own book Built to Last
“And so, I've essentially is very similar to what happened with Built to Last, with Good to Great, whatever. I started with a narrower question.”
Own book Good to Great
“And one way that it has really affected me is we talked about the right people on the bus from Good to Great. Still true.”
Own book Great by Choice
“the first time that I began to see this distinction between luck and return on luck, well, goes all the way back to when Morten Hansen and I were doing our book Great by Choice.”
Own book Good to Great
“In my prior work, Good to Great, Built to Last, Great by Choice, How the Mighty Fall, so forth, where I was doing match pair studies”
Own book How the Mighty Fall
“In my prior work, Good to Great, Built to Last, Great by Choice, How the Mighty Fall, so forth, where I was doing match pair studies”
Own book Built to Last
“In my prior work, Good to Great, Built to Last, Great by Choice, How the Mighty Fall, so forth, where I was doing match pair studies”
Own book Great by Choice
“In my prior work, Good to Great, Built to Last, Great by Choice, How the Mighty Fall, so forth, where I was doing match pair studies”
Own book Great by Choice
“Company standpoint, what Morten and I found in Great by Choice is that the only mistakes you can learn from and the only bad luck events you can learn from are the ones you survive.”