I am a willing participant in our capitalist system. Despite that, I’ve not studied intently past participants in this system to look for skills worth copying and any decisions to avoid.
The book American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism 1865-1900 seemed as good a place as any to work on that study. The book lays out the basic history of capitalism in America immediately following our Civil War.
The book’s focus is frequently the men who had an outsized influence on the country through their businesses. Men like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie.
What do you call people like these men?
Entrepreneur or business owner are accurate but seem incomplete.
I like the term industrialist. Being an industrialist is at least a portion of what I aspire to be when I grow up.
Definition of industrialist
: one owning or engaged in the management of an industry
Lesson #1 from Vanderbilt: figure out estate planning, or your grandkids will spend the results of your hard work on a big house.
Who are the other industrialists I should study?