Review by Julie Anne Eason
http://JulieAnneEason.com

Would I recommend?

I highly recommend Yes to anyone who has to convince anyone to do something. Whether you’re in a boardroom or a playroom, the techniques you learn in this book help you be more persuasive in all aspects of life.

Application: 5

Yes gets a 5 sticky rating for application because the authors flat out tell you how to apply the concepts—primarily in business situations, but also in your family life, school, lots of other situations where you need to persuade people.

Ideas: 4

I’m giving this one a 4 sticky rating only because I’ve read the ideas in Cialdini’s previous book, Influence. However, if you’ve never read anything about the psychology of influence and persuasion, you’ll probably rate it a 5. The ideas are that powerful. What I love about this book over Influence is that the authors go one step further and explains how using the techniques can backfire. So you get both the Dos and Don’ts.

Style: 5

I love how short the chapters are. Just a few quick pages and you have the gist of the concept as well as how to apply it to your life. Where Influence had a tendency to go on and on, Yes gets right to the point. Each chapter is a self-contained idea. So, you can flip through the pages and start reading at any point. If you have an instance where you need a persuasive technique, you can just thumb through the book and get lots of solutions.

My Biggest Insight:

Persuasion techniques can backfire. You may know everything there is to know about social proof, but do you know how it can make someone say “No Way” instead of yes?

Some of the Powerful Concepts in This Book (and how you start applying them right away):

The chapter titles say it all:
-When does offering people more make them want less?
-Does fear persuade or does it paralyze?
-How can you become a Jedi master of persuasion?
-When can the right way be the wrong way?
-Which single word will strengthen your persuasion attempts?
-How do you get to yes in any language?

And there are 50 of them!

Where to Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
http://www.amazon.com/Yes-Scientifically-Proven-Ways-Persuasive/dp/1416576142/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269899949&sr=8-1

•  Paperback: 272 pages
•  Publisher: Free Press; Reprint edition (December 29, 2009)
•  Language: English
•  ISBN-10: 1416576142
•  ISBN-13: 978-1416576143
•  Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches

Thanks to Julie Anne Eason
http://JulieAnneEason.com

Review by Sarah Louise Ferrara

Sticky Rating:

Application Rating: Two stickies
Ideas Rating: Five stickies
Style Rating: Four stickies

Would I recommend Linchpin?

I don’t just recommend it. I insist on it. Linchpin is my first experience with Seth Godin, now legendary in marketing circles. Having heard and read such raving from his fans, I was curious to read his most recent publication in the wake of the publicity surrounding its release.
It took a few chapters to get used to his style, which is direct, easy to read and extremely passionate, with a free, almost stream-of-consciousness style. You can feel his energy, enthusiasm and passion on each page. The book is all about one question: Are you indispensable? And if I’m to judge the author on the criteria he himself sets out in this book, Seth Godin is definitely, absolutely a linchpin. The question is: are you?

Overall stickiness:

I’d rate Linchpin as a five-sticky book, despite having only given two stickies for application and four for style. It gets a full five stickies overall simply because this could be the book that changes your life, for ever, and for the better. Even if you think you already know about the concepts explored in Linchpin (and I’m betting that you will; he has a special knack for creating new vocabulary – “emotional labour”, “the lizard brain”, “thrashing” and, my favourite, “ship” – to concisely define concepts and phenomena almost everyone will have experienced in their lives), his words will jump out from the page and speak directly to your soul until you feel the irresistible urge to do something about them.

Application:

It’s a two-sticky on application. Although highly inspirational, this is not a how-to manual. Godin even tell us why not:
“There is no map. No map to be a leader, no map to be an artist. I’ve read hundreds of books about art (in all its forms) and how to do it, and not one has a clue about the map, because there isn’t one.”
Simply put: if there is a map, there is no art. So no step-by-step instructions to follow here, I’m afraid, although the chapter on Resistance does offer some excellent tips on how to fight the Lizard Brain (more on that later).

Ideas:

The magic of this book lies in the ideas, and the way they are expressed. As you read, you might feel (as I imagined I did) the synapses in your brain sparking and crackling as new connections and neuropathways are born and formed. The author’s own passion for his “art” is palpable and infectious. Linchpin is thought-provoking on a grand scale: on my Kindle I made notes on or highlighted no less than 38 sections. Not one paragraph, not one sentence goes to waste. Page after page, he fires ideas at you with little or no time to digest the last before another one is heading your way. For this reason, you might find it easier to read in short bursts, to give the ideas time to settle in your brain and make themselves at home before you move on to the next section, because there’s no respite. And you’ll definitely want (and need) to read it more than once.
It must be said that none of the ideas are particularly new. It doesn’t matter. You need to hear them again, and Seth’s passionate style will tug at your heart and soul, forcing you see the ideas and concepts from a fresh angle: your own.
The author has a specific talent: he takes a generic idea, but will make you, the reader, feel as if he has been looking over your shoulder and is now speaking directly to you, about your situation. Throughout the book I found it to be specifically, spookily applicable to the situation I find myself in at this very moment and my niche; other reviewers have said the same. This ability to speak directly to the heart and guts of the reader means everyone gets to take away something different from the experience (and it is an experience) of reading the book.

Style:

Seth Godin’s style is wonderfully direct, conversational, and alive. You won’t nod off with this book;  his words reach out, grab you by the throat and won’t let go until you get as excited and  passionate as he is that being indispensable is vital. It doesn’t matter if you are a CEO, small business owner, artist, author, store assistant or waitress. His message is direct, loud and clear: be a linchpin, not a cog. Be indispensable, and make it meaningful.
Having said that, the book is lacking a rock solid structure, and seems to consist of a series of stream-of-consciousness blog posts strung together. I can’t call them articles or essays: they just don’t have the form. I don’t necessarily consider that to be a negative point, as the author’s passion and drive make it flow. His habit of repeating himself works – in its own way – to drive the point home, and overall it all fits together well to provide a unique, signature style.

My Biggest Insight:

My favourite part of the book, and biggest insight, is the chapter on the Resistance and the Lizard Brain. This is not a new concept; the term “resistance” was coined and the concept covered in detail by Steven Pressfield in The War of Art, and Godin refers to this book and its author several times. If you’ve read The War of Art, you’ll know exactly what the resistance is. Seth Godin takes it one step further, providing us with some powerful imagery (the Lizard Brain, anyone?) and the definitive advice on how to fight the resistance, advice that is both the goal of resisting the resistance and the cure.
Simply: get it shipped.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):

Shipping means getting a project finished and out there. It means having the courage to share your vision and creativity with the world. Shipping means getting your product  – be it a blog post, ebook, website design or proposal – out the door on time, even if it’s not ready or perfect. The Lizard Brain (the author’s term for the brain stem, that prehistoric part of the brain we have in common with reptiles and which ensures our survival by forcing us to seek shelter against risky situations) wants you to tweak the project and polish it, rearrange it, rewrite it, start again, or preferably just rip it up and go home: anything other than actually getting it out there and exposing yourself to the world. Shipping is the antidote to the resistance. Godin says it over and over again: “Real artists ship”, and “as every successful person will tell you, the ideas aren’t the hard part. It’s shipping that’s difficult”. The only solution “is to start today, to start now, and to ship”.

Introductory concepts:

1) The old system of finding a safe job, following instructions, getting paid and being taken care of is gone. The old system consisting of factories and cogs within them who followed orders. The industrial age is over, and the rules have changed. Now talent and creativity, not obedience, are rewarded.

2) The new rules reward artists, or linchpins. A linchpin is someone who does work that matters, who is indispensable. They are someone we can’t do without.

3) Linchpins don’t wait to be told what to do next. They figure it out for themselves and do it.

4) Linchpins are in control of their Lizard Brains. The Lizard Brain is the part of the human brain stimulated by fear, and its job is to protect its owner from being laughed at or criticised. The Lizard Brain hates creativity and vision. The Linchpin’s biggest challenge is overcoming the primal instinct of the Lizard Brain to convince you to just keep your head down and survive. Otherwise known as the resistance, self-sabotage, fear of success, fear of failure, or fear of being laughed at.

5) Linchpins ship. They get the product out the door and into the world, and then they start work on the next. Linchpins hit the “publish” button even if it feels uncomfortable.

6) Linchpins are generous, sharing their art in the form of gifts. This can mean simply going over and above the call of duty, or literally giving away their art – not in a callous attempt to exploit the law of reciprocity, but out of generosity and a desire to create change in others.

7) Art is defined as “the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person”, and “a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another”. Art has nothing to do with paintbrushes and canvases; linchpins are artists, not painters. “If art is a human connection that causes someone to change his mind, then you are an artist”

Emotional labour is needed now. Emotional labour is doing something that is mentally or emotionally difficult: creating something that might attract criticism, engaging in personal relationships when you don’t feel like it, starting a difficult conversation when it could be avoided.

9) Linchpins are indispensable, and linchpins do work that matters: their “art”.

10) How do you know if you are indispensable? “If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensable”. In other words, use initiative to create something unique, or if you are just going to carry out a task to order, make sure you do that task exceptionally well.

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
http://www.amazon.com/Linchpin-Are-You-Indispensable/dp/0749953357/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270899261&sr=8-1
Author: Seth Godin
Kindle Edition: 256 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group (February 4, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0749953357 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-0749953355 (paperback)
ASIN: B00371V91S

Thanks to Sarah Louise Ferrara

Review by Jon Pietz

http://www.brandxco.com

Sticky Rating: 4.5

Application Rating: 4-sticky
Ideas Rating: 5-sticky
Style Rating: 4.5 sticky

Would I recommend Drive?

I’d highly recommend this book. For a compact volume, it yields quite a lot to consider. As an employer, parent or person that simply needs to motivate oneself, you will never think about motivation the same way again after reading this book. It gives you the theory, the cases and the exercises to take motivation from the old carrot-and-stick 2.0 model to a new 3.0 model, based on what drives people now, and get better results wherever motivation is a factor. (Which is pretty-much everywhere.)

Overall stickiness:

On a scale of 1-5, I’d rate this book 4.5 on stickiness.

Application:

It’s a 4-sticky on application. We can use the principles and included examples as parents, teachers, and employers in large or small companies. There are a number of exercises included within the book to help you understand how to apply the principles on your own. The author has also pledged to follow up using examples collected from his community of readers to update the book in the future. So this application rating will likely go up over time.
Wherever creativity and right-brain type of activities are part of the mission, these techniques and ideas can be successfully applied. However, motivation 3.0 techniques tend not to work well with repetitive, analytical or left-brained types of tasks which are subject to little interpretation. These types of jobs—and activities require a rigid adherence to prescribed processes, and as the author points out, the principles here are less valid.

Ideas:

The ideas in this book are current, relevant, and will have a huge impact on the business world in the years to come. 5 stickies for this category

Style:

Dan Pink’s style is terse and to the point while still being user-friendly. I rate his style in this book 4.5 stickies.

My Biggest Insight:

The ideas in this book defy our current notion of work. Imagine having employees or partners who never need to be “managed” or motivated because they are so passionate and in-tune with what they are doing that they are pushing the company. The competitive advantage that could be derived from this book has the potential to change your business, your classroom and your life if you spend some time thinking deeply about how to apply it.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):

In many cases “Intrinsic” motivation is more powerful than “extrinsic” motivation in achieving organizational goals. When people are motivated by their internal desires of creativity and innovation, they often outperform those who have been trained to focus external motivators, such as money, or punishment. If you follow the three main components of motivation 3.0 as suggested by the author—autonomy, mastery and purpose—and build them into your processes, you have a roadmap for motivating effectively in today’s world, and outperforming your competitors.

Introductory concepts:

1) R.O.W.E. – Results Only Work Environment —used by Best Buy Corporate and other organizations to free up their workers and produce better results. The only thing that matters with your work is the results: the company does not track where, how, or how often you work—only the results. For Best Buy it meant a 15-20% increase in results, with a large increase in employee retention.

2) If-then rewards—if you do this, then you get that. The carrot and stick approach is losing its effectiveness as a tool. Offering more pay as an incentive—beyond what is the industry norm or what is considered a fair salary has little effect on happiness or productivity. But when bonuses and rewards are given after the fact (they must not be expected for this to be effective) they have a much more positive effect on productivity and happiness than if-then rewards.

3) Fedex days—giving employees one day to do nothing else but deliver one great big idea to improve your business. Also related to: 20% time —Successful organizations such as Google recently, and 3M historically, allow their employees to spend a percentage of their time working on projects of their own choosing which may ultimately become company products. Somewhere in the range of 80% these companies’ new innovations come from that free time.

4) Motivation 3.0.—Beyond survival (1.0), rewards and punishments (2.0), humans also have a third drive: to learn, create, and better the world (3.0).

5) Goldilocks tasks—work tasks which are neither too rote or to easy, nor too far above one’s head or too esoteric. When you hit the sweet spot where a job is challenging, yet attainable with hard effort, you are getting maximum motivation from your employees or students.

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)?

Author: Daniel Pink
Hardcover: 256 Pages
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; 1 edition (December 29, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594488843
ISBN-13: 978-1594488849

Thanks to Jon Pietz

Brand X Communications http://www.brandxco.com

Reviewed by Suzanne Abate

http://www.bodisonb2bmarketing.com

Would I recommend Positioning: The Battle for your Mind?

First, some context.  I would recommend red wine over white (which is for cooking).  And that you watch all of Werner Herzog’s documentaries, especially Encounters at the End of the World.  I would recommend that you pay more to fly Emirates and that you don’t pass up the chance to dine at Bhukara, if you should find yourself in Cape Town.
I would not recommend this book if you like your information delivered with diplomacy and delicacy. But if what you like is unabashed conviction and history as persuasion, then this marketing classic is your compulsory reading.

Overall Stickiness:

Five.

Application:

Industry veterans (which I am not) will all tell you that in the nineteen seventies Al Ries and Jack Trout forever changed the way people think about marketing.  And the proof is in the circulation pudding – with millions of copies in print more than thirty years since its original release.
But the dedication (to the second best advertising agency in the world, whoever they might be) is somewhat restrictive.  This book belongs to every small entrepreneur and C-level executive.  To genius inventors and the world’s investors.  To all the ad agencies big and small, and, of course, to all of us marketers whose job it is to create compelling stories.

Ideas:

The idea is this: in today’s over-communicated society how do you create messages that get heard? By linking products (people, ideas, and services) to meaning in the mind of the consumer.  That’s positioning.
What follows are some monoliths: in the battle between “first” and “better,” first always wins.  Strategies for being a leader are fundamentally and always different from strategies for followers.  If you can’t find a hole in the market (to be first in) you must re-position how people perceive the competition. And, what’s in a name? Everything.

Style:

Each chapter of this book is like a shot of espresso: goes down fast and spins your wheels.  The core ideas are repeated like mantras and endlessly supported by historical case studies and comparisons.  When tallied, what results is a bible of common sense.  We are the disciples; and taking up these ideas is not only easy to do, it feels like a professional obligation.
But if you don’t want to take my word for it you can simply open up the table of contents.  Each chapter is named by its thesis and the summary overviews – written with the same candor and cut-to-it approach that governs the entire book – say it all.

Chapter 10. The No-Name Trap. Companies with long, complex names have tried to shorten them by using initials.  This strategy seldom works.

Chapter 11. The Free-Ride Trap. Can a second product get a free ride on the advertising coattails of a well-known brand? In the case of products like LifeSavers gum, the answer is no.

Chapter 20. Positioning a New Jersey Bank. One of the best ways to establish a position is to find a weakness in your competitor’s.

My Biggest Insight:

Bright minds repeat common and painful mistakes.  This continues at an alarming rate and on enormous financial scales.  The mistakes themselves are evidence that positioning works.  Old beliefs are seductive misleadings – we have to change the way we think about marketing.
My second biggest insight: Platforms evolve; principles endure.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):

-To be heard you have to find a new path into peoples’ minds.

-Marketing must be part of the plan from the outset; by the time you’ve named your product it may already be too late.

-When you’re leading never stop looking behind you and always be ready to defend your position.

-Creativity is alive in well in the concept of positioning; to apply it successfully you must learn to think from every angle.

Introductory concepts:

1) Positioning: the fifth “P” that intersects Product, Price, Place, Promotion.
2) Anyone can use positioning strategy to get ahead in the game of life.
3) Advertising cannot save a product that is improperly positioned.
4) The easiest way into the mind is being first.

Thanks to Suzanne Abate

Bodis On B2B Marketing http://www.bodisonb2bmarketing.com

Review by Melinda Brennan

http://superwahm.com

Would I recommend Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion?
Absolutely.  I have already recommended this book to many people, both for personal and business use and will continue to do so.  This is one of my favourite books that I read a couple of times a year for a refresher course.

Overall stickiness:
I’d rate it as a five-sticky book overall. I know I rated the Style as lower, in spite of this I still call it a five-sticky.  The usefulness and far-reaching application of this book overrides the slight downfall of the style.

Application:
Whether you’re in business and need marketing knowledge or just in everyday life as a consumer there’s information that you can use in this book.  Understand how sales and marketing is designed to encourage to you buy – especially when you’re not aware you’re being marketed to.

The concepts in Influence are fully explained in a way that makes them instantly applicable to your own business and situation.

Ideas:

I don’t think there’s anything actually ‘new’ about the ideas in Influence.  Marketing tactics have been around since the world began; however Influence digs really deeply into the ‘Why’ these tactics work and how to use them to their best effect in your own marketing.  Never before has a marketing book approached these techniques and tactics from the psychological aspect or in such depth and detail.

I found I had a lot of “Aha” moments as I read this book and realised the many ways we’re marketed to, every single day, by everyone we meet.  It’s an absolute eye-opener.  Whether it’s a friend raving about a great movie, an email to tell you of an upcoming sale, or an authority figure selling toilet paper, Influence dissects the effect it has and explains the psyche behind it.

While I said there are no new ideas in Influence, the age-old marketing techniques are presented in a radically new and interesting way, in way more depth than I’ve seen anywhere else.  The case studies and discussions of scientific experiments provide a solid base of understanding and ‘real life’ application that is fascinating and at times shocking.

Style:

This is not a book to be read quickly and lightly.  The material is heavy and at times the language can be fairly scientific.  Cialdini knows his subject inside and out and at times his writing becomes a trifle long-winded.  His passion and knowledge shines through in every word he says though, and this does make up for the heaviness of the material.

On the actual physical side, the text font of the book is quite small and the pages are full of long paragraphs of text.  This both slows down reading and makes it slightly harder to focus on the words.  (Don’t try and read this book in a badly lit room!) It doesn’t detract from the reading, however if you’re looking to skim through for important or interesting topics it does make it harder.

Influence is not strictly a business book; it’s a fascinating insight into how our minds are wired and why we do what we do, presented in an entertaining if sometimes heavy manner.

My Biggest Insight:

From Influence I learnt to look at marketing techniques in a new way and to be able to identify why they’re working or not working and how to fix or improve them.  I gained an in-depth understanding behind a buyer’s thinking – or rather, their non-thinking responses – that enabled me to revamp my marketing and that of my clients.

It was quite a shock to me to realise how much of our buying behaviour is pre-programmed for marketers to tap into and use.

One of the minor fun things I learnt from Influence is how to deal with telemarketers and other heavy-duty salespeople by recognising the tools that they’re using and refusing to be manipulated by them.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):

- Realising that discounts are actually devaluing your product in the eyes of the customer.  We’re wired to associate cost with value with quality.

- Techniques to encourage blog readers/customers/visitors to ‘buy in’ to your site and convince themselves of your value.

- The power of social proof and how to use more than just testimonials to demonstrate the benefits of your business.

- How to get rid of telemarketers and have fun with their questions.

- I could rewrite the whole book under this heading, for me, the above were the biggest and most important concepts to apply immediately.

Introductory concepts:
1) The ‘Click-Whirr’ response that we’re all wired with and that drives our behaviour.
2) How we’re much more strongly influenced by society and peers than we like to think.
3) Reasons that we’ll support and justify a decision we’ve made even in the face of strong evidence that it’s a bad decision.
4) How to deny the marketer/salesperson the ability to manipulate your answers for their benefit and sale

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this isn’t an affiliate link)
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X

• Author: Robert B. Cialdini
• Hardcover: Paperback
• Publisher: Harper Collins, Revised Edition July 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-124189-5

Thanks to Melinda Brennan
http://superwahm.com

Review by: Natalya Murphy, Website Remedies

Would I recommend Don’t Make Me Think?
If your job has anything to do with creating or maintaining a website, this book must be on your desk. Not on your bookshelf collecting dust; on your desk where you can refer to it daily as you work on your website.

Overall stickiness:
I’d rate it as a five-sticky book. You can use the first seven chapters as a step-by-step checklist for evaluating the user-friendliness of your website. The last few chapters give specific instructions for conducting usability tests.

Application:
It’s a three-sticky on application. Concepts such as having a search box or tabbed menus are easy enough to describe, but making them usable is still tricky; the same goes for home pages. Krug devotes an entire chapter to good home page design, but in the end the suggestions there are still just high-level concepts. There is no single solution for making every home page user-friendly. Because there is so much variety between websites and their purpose, it’s impossible to identify a single approach to design that works in all cases. Krug does an excellent job of giving the high-level concepts but he doesn’t give many specifics on how to implement them.

Ideas:

There are two main ideas in this book:

1. People won’t use your website if they can’t find their way around it  The book tells you the specific elements to put on your website to make it easy to navigate.
2. You won’t know if people can find their way around your site unless you do usability testing.  Krug spends an entire chapter showing you how even the most time- and money-challenged businesses can find the time and resources for usability testing. For those wanting more details Krug has published a companion book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, devoted to usability testing.

Style:

Steve Krug writes his book in the same style he recommends for website design: easy to scan, easy to digest. You could take 15 minutes to just skim all the subheadings in the book and come away with the basic concepts.  The tone is light and sprinkled with humor, which makes the book very easy to read. The screen shots and tables are easy to understand and, like the subheadings, give you good information just from skimming them. In the introduction, Krug writes that he intentionally kept the book short enough to be read on a long plane ride.

My Biggest Insight:

The biggest insight I gained from this book is that just because my site design is obvious to me, doesn’t mean it’s obvious to my site visitors – that’s where usability testing comes in. Testing a site’s usability doesn’t have to be a big and scary process – it can be as simple as grabbing someone walking by your desk, asking them to take a look at your site design and asking a few questions or observing how they interact with the website.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):

Websites are like billboards – they need to quickly convey a message and get the visitor’s attention. Use visual elements on the website to logically group related items and distinguish between more-important and less-important items.

Some web users prefer to find information by using the search box, so make sure your site has a search box… and make sure it actually brings back meaningful results.

Introductory concepts:

1. Site visitors should be able to figure out what a website is about right away, and navigating the site should be easy and intuitive.  Some elements Krug recommends for easy navigation:
   1. A logo in the top left of the page that, when clicked, returns you to the home page.
   2. Standards for navigation menus
   3. A search box
   4. Breadcrumbs (you-are-here indicators)
2. Internet users are looking for a quick answer to their problem. They don’t read web content, they scan it.   Websites should be designed with this fact in mind.
3. Make time for usability testing.  It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and money, so commit to taking one morning a month for usability testing, and involve as many people from the project team as possible.

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758

• Author: Steve Krug
• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 2nd edition (August 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321344758
• ISBN-13: 978-0321344755

Thanks to: Natalya Murphy, Website Remedies

Guest Post by Joe Thoron
http://websitemomentum.com.

Would I recommend ‘Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company with Almost No Money?’
Definitely. It’s a book that helps you stay focused on what’s really important when you’re starting or growing a business. I have often recommended it to friends who are working on their businesses. Too many times we sit around lamenting that we don’t have enough money to do what we want, but the solution is right in front of us. This book gets you off the couch and selling products with a plan toward long-term growth.

Application: (5)
This book is all about application. It’s about making a clear plan of action and then executing that plan. A “bootstrapper” is a business owner who builds a business without significant external funding. This makes for a business that’s nimble and responsive. It’s more than just watching every penny (though that’s important). It’s about delivering value in every transaction. Greg Gianforte bootstrapped his own business and walks you through the exact steps to determine customer needs, define your niche, and close sales.

Ideas: (5)
“Bootstrapping Your Business” is packed with many ideas and strategies, but they’re all in the service of two big ideas. 1) Find out what the customer really wants and 2) Sell it to them.

It seems simple, but most of us go into business with an idea we think is great. We jump at it without research, investing hundreds or thousands of hours in product design, creating a website, writing marketing pieces, applying for patents, setting up manufacturing systems, and so on. And we don’t know, until we’re in too deep, whether anyone actually wants to buy what we’ve made.

For me, these two concepts are crucial to any new endeavor. And I keep re-reading this book because it’s so easy to forget how central they are. Sometimes new technologies and new fads are so interesting and distracting it’s easy to think that the new tactic of the month is enough to create a business around. But unless you’ve built something that real customers are willing to pay real dollars for, you don’t have a business.

Style: (4)
Bootstrapping is written in a direct and engaging style. It’s well organized and filled with stories of real people who’ve built successful companies using the same techniques that are discussed in the book. These stories are inspiring and help to make the concepts more concrete.

My Biggest Insight
The fastest way to learn how to sell your product is to start selling your product. Not planning it, marketing, or publicizing it. Selling it. It’s another version of the “fail fast, fail often, keep learning” philosophy.

The idea of Bootstrapping is that instead of relying on infusions of capital to get your business going, you build it by developing a solid revenue stream. This means CUSTOMERS, which means you need a product or service that solves a real problem, so that customers will actually want to buy it.

Also, Greg Gianforte’s vision of sales is very hands on and direct. He asks you, the bootstrapper, to be the chief salesperson and to put yourself on the line with each customer contact.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):

1. Bootstrapping is a quick and sure way to build a solid business because you have to deal with customers and fulfill their needs from day one.
2. Having a lot of cash on hand only delays the onset of the sales learning process.
3. Pre-sell your product before you put it into production. Make sure there’s demand for what you want to produce. If people don’t like what you’re offering, change it. Use sales for market research.
4. Focus on what makes your business unique.
5. Listen — really listen — to your customers.
6. Be thrifty with your startup expenses (Gianforte provides detailed examples).
7. Manage your cash. The chapter on cash management is worth the price of the book. Like the advice on selling, it goes to the root of how to build a strong business. Gianforte argues that your cash flow forecast–which should be revised daily if necessary–is even more important than a formal business plan.
8. You can do marketing and public relations on a budget (and the author tells you how).

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
At Amazon.com : ‘Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company with Almost No Money’

* Author: Greg Gianforte with Marcus Gibson
* Publisher: Adams Media (2005)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1-59337-387-2

Thanks to Joe Thoron
http://websitemomentum.com.

Guest Sticky Book Review by Bob Bare

Would I recommend The FOUR OBSESSIONS of an EXTRAORDINARY EXECUTIVE?
Are you a one man show, or working with a small team? Forget this book, it’s not written for you. Are you part of a small to medium sized business, but don’t have the authority to make major changes? Then don’t read this book, either. You’ll be as frustrated as a pilot in coach section during a storm. You’ll see all the danger signs, but won’t be able to do anything about them.

If you are an executive or owner of a company that has at least one level of management between you and the ground troops, and you are concerned about the long term viability of your company, I would definitely recommend this book to you.

This isn’t a book about tactics for growth or market share, although your business will flourish if you become obsessive about the four obsessions. The book is about the health of your business, the culture and fitness of the organism of your company. It’s not like drinking a Red Bull to jazz you up for the moment, but it’s about a company management lifestyle that keeps your company healthy and kicking well after most others are relegated to the nursing home.

Overall stickiness:
I’d rate this as a four-sticky book—if you fit the target audience. The reason it gets lowered to a four-sticky has nothing to do with the readability or ideas. The lower rating comes because the applications are not easy for most people to do. There isn’t a quick check-off list for next week’s to-do list. Some of the applications involve real change, both in yourself and your organization. And as you may have already discovered, significant change is neither always quick nor easy.

Application:
Why only a 3 sticky? Even though there is an entire section called “Putting the Disciplines into Practice”, the solutions offered are not easy. Most of us get so busy “spinning plates” (did you see the same Ed Sullivan show I did as a kid?), that we don’t have time to contemplate principles and disciplines. If you’re serious about the long term success of your business (think generational), you’ll need to spend time thinking about and discussing how to implement these ideas.

Take just this one concept from Lencioni: “Build and Maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team”. That requires a greater commitment than most executives will give. It includes conflict, transparency, accountability, and committing to group decisions. If you want an enjoyable read and challenging ideas, you’ll get both in this book. But to implement it takes a “Braveheart” attitude.

Ideas:
I give this book a five sticky on ideas. Not only are there ideas on how to handle present team dysfunctions, but also on how to prevent future ones. Besides executives, there are ideas here that anyone involved in interviewing, hiring, and training employees should read and implement.

Have you seen conflict, jealousy, or personality conflicts in your organization? Patrick Lencioni not only points out why they occur, but gives great ideas on how to handle them, especially from the viewpoint of the management team. Old school management may have worked fine in the 1950s, but business and culture has changed. The same old carrot may not be appealing to your younger employees, and the stick that managers used to shake may not make them frighten them anymore.

Style:
O.K., I must admit I enjoy the “story telling” approach to business books, such as Og Mandino’s “The Greatest Salesman” approach. I can pick up the implications, and it keeps my interest. If you are a “what’s the bottom line” type of person, you can skip the novel and go directly to the back of the book, but you’d probably miss a lot of the “aha” moments. The story for the first two thirds of the book is what gives it a “five sticky” for me. The story is like going to a play, and the last third puts what you just read into perspective and tells you what needs to be done to bring the culture to your company.

My Biggest Insight:
My biggest insight was the realization of what only one bad apple on the management team can do to undermine the CEO, and cause havoc in the entire organization. Like an airborne bacterium in an elevator, only drastic treatment can sometimes bring the team back to health. The required cure may not be fun, but it may be necessary. The contrast between the two competing consulting companies helps evaluate the health of your own company.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):
Remember the old Wall Street Journal sales letter? Two young men start out from college, on turns into a successful executive who owns and runs a company, the other ends up as his employee. The pitch was that the man who was successful became so because he subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. Nice story, and it has sold millions of subscriptions, but I really doubt that reading the Wall Street Journal every day would have that dramatic an effect.

This book could be the story of those two men. If so, it would explain the real reasons for their success. What they did, besides read the newspaper, that made one the head of a healthy enterprise, and the other always trying to figure out how the other guy was so successful.

A person that reads this book at the beginning of his career, and applied the concepts, in my opinion, would get the kind of results promised by that sales letter. This is not a list of tactics to apply, but a book of foundational principles that can build a long lasting, healthy enterprise if followed.

The most powerful concept in this book is that the health of the entire organization is affected by the attitude, priorities, and emotional health of the person at the top. To improve your company, you have to improve yourself.

Introductory concepts:
1) Build and Maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team

a) Knowing one another’s unique strengths and weaknesses
b) Opening engaging in constructive ideological conflict
c) Holding one another accountable for behaviours and actions
d) Committing to group decisions

2) Create Organizational Clarity
a) Why the organization exists
b) Which behavioural values are fundamental
c) What specific business it is in
d) Who its competitors are
e) How it is unique
f) What it plans to achieve
g) Who is responsible for what

3) Over-Communicate Organizational Clarity
a) Repetition
b) Simplicity
c) Multiple mediums
d) Cascading messages

4) Reinforce Organizational Clarity Through Human Systems
a) Hiring
b) Managing performance
c) Rewards and recognition
d) Employee dismissal

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Obsessions-Extraordinary-Executive-Leadership/dp/0787954039/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268324865&sr=8-1

·        Author: Patrick Lencioni
·        Hardcover: 184 pages
·        Publisher: Jossey-Bass – 1 edition (September 1, 2000)
·        Language: English
·        ISBN-10:   0-7879-5403-9
·        ISBN-13: 978-0787954031

Guest Author: Bob Bare
www.hearinghaven.com
www.expertclick.com/19-3158

Would I recommend the The Culting of Brands?
Absolutely. I’ve read this book thrice already. And each time it brings a new layer of understanding of why certain communities work (and why most others don’t). The word ‘cult’ brings up the worst sort of connotations. It brings up a feeling of control, of mindless, robotic behaviour, of mass madness. And yet the concept of a cult is nowhere as maniacal.

In fact the concept of the word ‘cult’ changes almost instantly when you think of the brand “Apple Computers”. Suddenly the word swings from the bizarre to the not-so-bizarre. The fact is that cults are part of social evolution for thousands of years, and Christianity, the Pilgrims etc., were all cults. The underlying factor of the book is that cults tend to be progressive. Sects on the other hand tend to be regressive.

And once that definition comes to the fore, we see that cults have these underlying factors of great devotion, distinct ideology, defined/committed community and a devotion that leads to members becoming voluntary advocates. Kinda like me and my Mac (Heck, didn’t even know I was in a cult).

Overall stickiness:
I’d rate it as a five-sticky book. The book is extremely well written and detailed. There are lots of examples (some of which are now dated) E.g. How Jet Blue created a cult out of nothing at all, simply by NOT being an airline, but being something else altogether. You can delve deep into the heart of the Hare Krishna movement, how Saturn cars were sold, or even how Harley Davidson created a cult in complete contrast to say BMW bikes.

This book becomes hard to put down once you get started, because it gets under your skin. Doug Atkins (the author) goes from the Paradox of cults, and shows you how cults (for all their sameness) succeed because the cult members believe they’re different. He also delves deeply into how cults tend to sell the concept of the “people” long before the “ideology”. That interaction between the members is critical and more important than shoving an idea down someone’s throat.

Incredibly, the smart cults attract members who are socially very successful (makes sense, doesn’t it?) and often very attractive. People who have connections to friends, family, and good at making connections. And I must stop raving here, because otherwise I’ll never stop. So yes, I’d rate this book very highly. And I’ll be reading it several times over the years to come.

Application:
It’s a five-sticky on application. The concepts are easy to apply. Really easy. They’re a lot of concepts, but if you are patient (and cults are patient) then you can indeed put all of the concepts in place over the years and the decades to come.

Ideas:
The ideas contained in this book are not only quite sound and well-researched, but they’re very do-able. That’s often unusual for a book with such a broad (or deep) concept.

Style:
The book is very readable. The text flows easily, and the stories and case studies keep you enthralled. It’s hard to put down (didn’t I say that before?) The layout is also very clean, and this makes a big difference in the overall presentation of the book’s ideas.

Click on the thumbnail to see bigger picture

My Biggest Insight
I’d say it changed my concept of a cult. The ideas that are in this book find a place in our membership site at 5000bc. In the past, I’d have hesitated to call 5000bc a cult and used something more like “oh it’s a membership”, but I see that there’s a massive diffrence between just being a member and being part of a cult. I see myself in the Apple cult. And the Wacom cult. And the InDesign cult. And the great coffee cult. It definitely changes the perspective.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today): (Note: The links go to similar-kinda Psychotactics articles.I’ll add more links as I write more articles.)

Introductory concepts:
1) Is there a difference between brands and cults?
2) How people search for meaning, security, order and identity.
3) How it creates a paradox: Devotion of one=rejection of another.
4) People join to find themselves, and not to conform. They feel safe.
5) Mary Kay, Apple, Harley Davidson are all ongoing cults without the overall need to be supervised.
6) All cults assume they’re different.
7) The importance of language, iconography, appearances.
The focus on the person.
9) Choosing the “right” members.
10) The critical importance of interaction at all times.

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
At Amazon.com : ‘The Culting of Brands by Douglas Atkin’

# Hardcover: 256 pages
# Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (June 3, 2004)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1591840279
# ISBN-13: 978-1591840275
# Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches

Another website you’ll find useful to understand customer psychology:
www.psychotactics.com