Jeff Hirsh Read: May 2020
Inspiration: How do Trappist Monks operate successful businesses? (recommended by a friend)
Summary
Written with the help of ChatGPT, below is a brief summary to understand what is covered in the book.
“Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks”, published in 2015, tells the first-hand story of August Turak, a successful entrepreneur, corporate executive, and author who attributes much of his success to living and working alongside the Trappist monks of Mepkin Abbey for seventeen years. As a frequent monastic guest, he learned firsthand from the monks as they grew an incredibly successful portfolio of businesses.
Service and selflessness are at the heart of the 1,500-year-old monastic tradition’s remarkable business success. It is an ancient though immensely relevant economic model that preserves what is positive and productive about capitalism while transcending its ethical limitations and internal contradictions. Combining vivid case studies from his thirty-year business career with intimate portraits of the monks at work, Turak shows how Trappist principles can be successfully applied to a variety of secular business settings and to our personal lives as well. He demonstrates that monks and people like Warren Buffett are wildly successful not despite their high principles but because of them. Turak also introduces other “transformational organizations” that share the crucial monastic business strategies so critical for success. (source)
Unedited Notes
Direct from my original book log, below are my unedited notes (abbreviations and misspellings included) to show how I take notes as I read.
***Disclaimer: notes taken before realizing I needed better notes
Aim Past the Target – Mepkin Abbey Monastery, profits follow if do right by people, What is the Business of the Business? – overall mission trying to accomplish, not just money, Do right by people even at expense of self, will pay off
