Reading Reflection No. 1

1. The thing that surprised me the most about Andrew Carnegie came from a very poor immigrant family and literally had to work his way up from poverty to become one of the most successful businessmen of all time. The thing that I admired the most is that Carnegie was very frugal with his money early on. He realized the key to getting rich was to live below your means early on in order to have money to save and invest to make more money. The thing I least admired about Carnegie was that a lot of the ways that he made money later on were shady and unethical. Carnegie encountered failure when he bought two English Patents to make strong railroads. After costly implementation, it turned out that these patents were actually useless and didn't help him. 
2. Carnegie was very successful at making money no matter what it took. He was also very good at structuring deals to his favor so that he would profit the most from his endeavors. A lot of the things that he did would be illegal today, such as insider trading, but Carnegie was able to find inefficiencies in the market and loopholes in laws and exploit them for profit.
3. There was no part of this reading that was confusing to me. Based on the character of Carnegie, many of the things he did to exploit people and the businesses aligned with his values and were not confusing at all.
4. 
   
1. What do you think the main thing that sets you apart from other entrepreneurs?
2.  If you could go back in time, would you do everything you did exactly the same?
5. I think that Carnegie's vision of hard work was that of natural selection. Those who worked the hardest and tried to learn as much as they could about a certain industry would be the most successful people. And those that weren't able to put their head down and do anything they possibly could to be successful would quickly fail and be weeded out. I share his view in that hard work is very important.