A 90-Year-Old Entrepreneur's Operating Manual

Raymond Plank founded Apache Corporation in 1954 with $250,000. By the mid-2000s, that company was worth $50 billion. But the most interesting thing about his memoir, A Small Difference, is not the company history—it's that Plank kept a daily diary for 60 years and wrote the book at age 90, essentially distilling seven decades of entrepreneurial experience into a collection of maxims, beliefs, and hard-won principles. The book reads like a diary, and what emerges is a clear operating system for building a long-term business in a cyclical, capital-intensive industry.

The Relentless Mindset

Plank's entrepreneurial instincts showed up early. Growing up on a farm near Minneapolis, he sold eggs as a child, then moved into sawing down trees, stacking and selling firewood, and eventually extracting sap to boil into maple syrup—all before high school. He sold to local grocery stores and meat markets. His father praised his entrepreneurial endeavors and grounded him in values of integrity and a strong work ethic.