I’m rereading Junk to Gold: From Salvage to the World’s Largest Online Auto Auction. It’s the autobiography of Copart founder Willis Johnson. Johnson is worth roughly $3 billion today, most of which is his stake in Copart. I listened to an interview he gave recently, and it made me want to read his book again. He founded Copart in 1982 as a salvage yard. He purchased wrecked cars and sold the parts and scrap metal for a profit. The company has expanded. It’s now a global online auction market for used and repairable vehicles. As of this writing, it has a market capitalization (i.e., valuation) of over $56 billion.

In his book, Johnson describes himself as rough around the edges. He isn’t polished and doesn’t always use the “right” words. He attended community college for one semester on the GI Bill and then dropped out. So, how did Copart become a massive company?

As I shared last year when I read the book, Johnson didn’t have a big vision for the company. He didn’t even have a plan. But he knew he wanted to grow. The key to Johnson’s success was his ability to master two things.

He was a cloner. He paid close attention to what was happening around him and what others had done. If he liked an idea and thought he could make money with it, he tried it out. He learned about a new model involving people pulling parts off cars themselves called “Pick-A-Part.” He studied it closely and copied it by creating “U-Pull-It.” The idea was a massive success. When he heard a competitor was raising capital to expand rapidly by doing an IPO, he paid attention. Two years later, Johnson’s company was trading on the stock market too.

Johnson also was an astute student and avid reader. He believed he could teach himself anything. For example, to figure out how to do an IPO, he started by trying to get a basic understanding of IPOs. He read the IPO prospectus of his competitor many times to understand what the IPO involved and to understand the Wall Street terminology. He then went to his local library to find books that explained the IPO process and all the terminology in more detail. He had trouble finding a book because nothing came up when he searched for “IPO.” He went to three different library branches. It wasn’t until someone at the third library branch told him that “IPO” stands for “initial public offering” that he found a helpful book from Ernst & Young, which he studied extensively.

Being an avid learner and reader is a great way for entrepreneurs to get ideas and strategies to grow their businesses. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs and investors didn’t invent new ideas or strategies; they copied other people’s great ideas. For example, Warren Buffett got the idea to have an insurance company (and maybe decentralization too) as part of Berkshire Hathaway from Henry Singleton and Teledyne. Henry Singleton got the idea by reading the book My Years at General Motors by former General Motors chairman Alfred Sloan.

The beauty of both of these—copying others’ good ideas and self-learning—is that anyone can do them. They don’t require permission or consent from anyone else. Not sure what to do to solve a problem? Not sure how to grow your business? No problem; start reading biographies of credible entrepreneurs. Learning about their journeys to build their companies is bound to give you some ideas about how to grow yours.