📕 Book Summary in 3 Sentences
What can I say about the book in 3 sentences?
- It is a story of personal growth and triumph through the American Welfare system.
- The importance of learning and personal growth
- The determination to make a plan and succeed with it
🤔 Major Insights/Ideas
What are the major insights or ideas in the book?
- Insight 1: The importance of having a solid team of people cannot be understated in any industry you find yourself in.
- Insight 2: Having disagreements does not allow a business to grow. Businesses thrive in peaceful times.
- Insight 3: Constantly being on a journey of personal growth through reading is invaluable to success
- Insight 4: Never have a narrow view of people, things, and situations. Treat everything as a “potential opportunity.”
- Insight 5: Have the patience to organize your thoughts. Build a plan from them. Put your plan into steps and action them. One step at a time.
- Insight 6: Cultivate the habit of discipline. It is needed if you want to achieve your plans.
- Insight 7 The importance of having multiple streams of income to hedge your bets against any unforeseen risks
- Insight 8:Drugs are mind-altering substances and should be avoided at all costs.
- Insight 9:You should never get upset with people who do not know any better.
💬 Notable Quotes
What are your top quotes?
- A good hustle starts with a tight team.
- You can’t do anything if you don’t learn to read and write.
✍🏼 My Personal Reflections
How has your life/behavior/thoughts/ideas changed after reading the book?
- It brought home the importance of people and purpose in bringing into life the future you want
💡 Actionable Steps/Ideas (if any):
- Creating, building, and maintaining a solid team as the backbone of my business
🔆Book Highlights
- I overheard my poppa, Ricky Santiaga, say, “A good hustle starts with a tight team.” I got mine. We call ourselves the Gutter Girls, cause one of our teachers said we act like we come from the gutter
- I wanted to be known for making money and moves, not for brawling. Fighting was an interruption to my business. But the better my business, the more the fighting came along with it
- As the best learners and rememberers were rewarded daily and immediately by Ms. Jenkins, I learned the deeper meaning of what she meant when she told us, “If you don’t learn to read and write, you can’t do anything.
- Her question repeated in my mind: Don’t you know that when you’re pretty everyone expects you to be stupid? I sat thinking. Lina is saying that she thinks I’m pretty. That mixed my feelings up for her even more
- “If you are stupid, you would be too stupid to know it,” she said without smiling or laughing. I still didn’t say nothing.
- Riot wouldn’t have chosen you if you didn’t have something to lose, something to gain, and something to protect.
- Data is information. It’s the most important hustle, not only in here, but in total el mundo, the whole world.
- Porsche, look at every place and every person as a ‘potential opportunity.’ Never be narrow. Keep your eyes and your mind open,” Riot said, her face covered with the moisture from the spring warmth.
- I expected my idea to be rejected by the authorities. However, I had learned from my father, as well as from my circumstances and from the Diamond Needles, to look at everything as an opportunity
- They won’t be coming here anytime soon, and probably never. We are on Seneca land. This place is not technically even America. We’re safe here. The New York State Police cannot even come here. Even the hell-copters won’t come here.
- Nana Anna said her strawberries were natural, organic, and precious. She told us that other farms and farmers were spraying poison on theirs and selling them to innocent unaware families and people to eat. She said the chemicals on those other strawberries would kill people slowly as the cancer crawled and creeped, attached, grew, and then exploded in their insides. I never heard nothing like that before until today.
- She hated them as much as she hated the “robots.” She believed that all dumb girls, no matter how good or ugly they looked, were exactly the same, worthless.
- Organize your thoughts, young Santiaga” Mr. Sharp once said to me. “After you organize your thoughts, organize your plans. Knock ’em out in steps, one by one,” he said. “You have to have the discipline to get a plan done.
- He told me I was his second set of eyes, hands, and feet. He paid me sixty dollars a day, not for any reason except cause he wanted to. From age eleven till twelve I was making $240 a week from Sharp, $130 per week from Big Johnnie. My sandwich money was separate from the weekly $130, and that little business was blowing up to be big.
- No human could save her. She gave her life to the drugs. Drugs are mind-altering substances. They alter the mind of the user, most of the time permanently,” he said, sure that all users were hopeless, it seemed
- “You’re right. She doesn’t know,” Siri said. “How could she know? And, Porsche, why do you always get upset at someone who doesn’t know any better?”
