As a business owner and consultant, I understand the pressure that exists to differentiate yourself in a crowded field.  The most impressive thing about the Zane Cycle story that was told in the book Reinventing The Wheel was how a bike shop was able to stand out in a business where it would seem difficult to differentiate yourself.

There are a ton of great lessons and reminders on standing out through creating an unheard of customer service experience.

One of my favorite lessons from this book is that creating the ultimate customer experience is indeed a science.  Getting feedback from customers on what they want and more importantly observing their behavior is the driver to this experience.

The author, Chris Zane, calculated the numbers on every offering and service that he created for his business.  He also had calculated that his lifetime customer value was $12,500.  Business owners for too often go with their get when they make decisions on services for their business instead of calculating and observing customer behavior.

Some other lessons from the book on creating an ultimate customer experience:

• Creating the experience is not an accident.  Everything you do should be intentional.
• Don’t be afraid to do things that others would consider unreasonable.
• Create the right motivation for your employees to ensure that they are committed to creating the proper experience.
• Making it easy for your employees to deliver the experience you want.
• A great experience is all about having the right systems and processes for delivering the experience.

There are a couple of things I didn’t like about this book.  The first being that the book’s subtitle is “the science of creating lifetime customers”.  This book, however was short on science.  I would have liked to have seen a few breakdowns of how Chris came up with numbers on certain programs but they never got that specific.

The other point that was off-putting for me is Chris Zane’s seeming obsession with putting people out of business.  Trying to be better than other businesses is great, obsessing about putting them out of business just seems a little extreme.  I don’t think business is war and it’s not about crushing other people.  I have seen several industries where cooperation works well.

Despite those minor criticisms, overall I think the book is a great guide to how your business can create the ultimate client experience even if you think that isn’t possible.  You may not copy, and probably shouldn’t, what Zane’s Cycles does but you can use the story to think about how you can create the ultimate experience in your industry.

Definitely read this book.

That’s the question that is tackled by The Culture Code.   A business associate of mine, Rich Christiansen, just read this book and and blogged about it and so I was compelled to check it out.

The author makes some interesting observations about how the American culture makes decisions based on its’ adolescent status.

The Culture Code for fat?  Checking out.

The Culture Code for Alcohol? Gun.

The Culture Code for Work?  Who We Are.

Understanding the culture code for how we see things allows us to then speak to the public using the appropriate code.  There’s a little more to it than that but that’s the general idea.

Check out the author talk about the book:

Clotaire Rapaille consults with 50 Fortune 100 companies. He helps companies identify codes through a 3 hour session with the public where he able to identify the patterns in what people are really saying.

As a business owner, how much more powerful would it be if you could speak to the subconscious desires of the public.

If you want more insight into how your potential clients think and how to craft the appropriate messages to them then check out this book.

Check out the book here.

The Use Of Our Socially Networked Society

The book had 470 contributors in 45 countries.  While there were 9 core contributors on the book they had influence from all over the planet.

Traditional Publishing Not Needed

When you look at how beautifully this book is put together, you can’t believe that it didn’t come about through a typical publishing channel.  This book was financed and put out independently.

The Content is So Relevant For Business Owners

Beyond the fact that this book is one of the most stylishly laid out books that I have ever seen.  The content is so relevant for business owners who are looking at starting new trends and exploring new territories of their business.

The book centers around the business model canvas which is pictured above.  This is where your new business model starts.

You explore the different types of business models that exist, how to analyze them and put them into practice.

If you have a business and you are always looking out at what’s next on the horizon then this is a book you should keep in your library for reference.

If you don’t have the book.  Get it right now here.

Pink has identified three key motivators for people:

Autonomy-  It turns out we humans like to have a little freedom with the kind of work we do and when we do it.  There are real life examples of how this has worked for Best Buy and Google.

Mastery-  When we are working we want to feel like we are working on things that are important and that enhance our skills.  Being put in a position to do this as often as possible at work is a positive.

Purpose- As a reader of this blog you already know how important purpose is to me.  Drive illustrates how important working with purpose is to most people.  Putting people in a position to work in a manner that serves a higher purpose is definitely a big motivator.

Regardless of where you are at with regards to the work that you do, there is compelling evidence that in the majority of cases the old model of the carrot-stick motivation techniques don’t serve the purpose we think it does. There are certain instances where the carrot-stick method can be effective but mainly in inhibits success rather than creates it.

This is a book I would definitely recommend to anyone who wants to look at new ways of inspiring people to take action.

Seth Godin says this towards the beginning of his terrific book, Linchpin:

There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.

In it’s essence Linchpin gives a glimpse into the artist revolution.  If you want to get paid for work you to do today you need to become indispensable.  To be indispensable, you need to be an artist.

One of the most empowering points of the book is the fact that there has never been a greater time for the average Joe to be able to create art.  In the past, the barriers to entry for creation was very high.  Now we own the means to production.

This means that we can create and put out more content than ever before which we have been doing.  Some would argue that this has diluted the amount of quality content.  Other would argue that this has allowed for greater ideas than ever before.

Linchpin touches on some the principles that you need to understand in this new work environment.

The first principles is don’t wait for someone to ask you to do more.  This is important whether you work for yourself or someone else.  Seth Godin gives countless examples of individuals who went out and made themselves indispensable when no one gave them permission to do it.

Another important principle is to focus on the work itself.  We get bogged down in our daily routines with work that is not the real work that we need/want to be doing.  Seth talks about how to eliminate those distractions.

The last important point that is covered in Linchpin is in shipping or put in other terms, getting your product/service to market.  This seems to be a point where many of us get tripped up but the book illustrates the importance of getting things out and how we can do it.

There are some points in the book that rail on the current state of affairs, particularly with regards to businesses creating systems and then plugging people into the systems to keep a business moving forward ( see the E-Myth for more on this).  However, there really is no points made on what Seth Godin would do instead.  That may be a book for someone else to write.

There are numerous good points made in this book and it really speaks to the revolution that is occurring in our work lives.  If you read this book and apply the principles, there is no doubt in my mind that your life will be better for it.

The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse.  It’s a justification for not trying.  It has nothing to do with you.

The above quote really resonates as when you are thinking about taking the leap into business the “real world” myth always pops into a new business owners head.  That’s what you can expect from the book Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.  This book is chalk full of business advice that is relevant to today’s business owner and the shift that is occurring with how we do business.

As the book illustrates, there is a growing number of people who are doing work and creating value in the world without worrying about labels such as “entrepreneur” or how many hours we need to work in a week.  Don’t worry about growing your business into a massive entity or that you have a limited amount of resources.  Make do with what you have a be what you want to be.

This is the wisdom that the authors have used in their play book to build their company 37signals.  The book is chalk full of anecdotes on how you can build a successful business that works for you and also creates massive value in the marketplace.  It’s wisdom that wont hear in your typical business book.  It’s also wisdom that you may not 100% agree with which also makes it cool.

Despite all of the great information in the book, Rework also happens to be a pretty quick read as well.  If you are a business owner trying to make sense of today’s business mindset,  this is the book that has the answers you are looking for.

We can do this through starting a business or as Dave Crenshaw puts it in his new book, we figure out what it takes to become Invaluable.

The book centers around a particular character, Jason, that we can all relate to.  He’s young, has high expectations for his career and becomes disillusioned with his initial career path.  Not only is he disillusioned, he begins to take on the dreaded victim’s mentality of his situation.

A conversation with Jason’s grandfather, Charlie,changes Jason’s way of thinking about his career and his approach to it.  In essence, here’s Charlie’s formula courtesy of Earl Nightingale:

The amount of money you make will always be in direct proportion to : number one, the demand for what you do; number two, your ability to do it; number three, the difficulty of replacing you.

That’s great advice but how do you go about accomplishing that task?

This is the information that Dave Crenshaw outlines throughout the rest of the book as he shows how through communication with your team and the use of some specific tools that the author has created, you can work on not only making your self “Invaluable” but also creating successful results for your team.

The Advanced Work Time Budgeter alone is worth reading this book.  When we take the time to analyze the numbers, we start to see where we can make changes.  The Advanced Work Time Budgeter helps you to calculate your real value per hour.  The analysis is an eye opener.

It’s so important to look at how we can maximize the time that we have and become an invaluable asset to our teams and our clients.  My recommendation is that you read this book and then buy copies for your whole team.

Chip and Dan Heath

The book, Switch, starts by talking about 3 surprises about change.  The most powerful insight here is that often with change what looks like a people problem is often a situational problem.

When I work with business owners and we talk about what’s going on in their business, the conversation always turns to employees.  More specifically, how bad their employees are.  What Switch shows is that many of our problems with other people have to do with the process and environment other the people themselves.  This is true whether we are talking about employees or our kids.

The entire book gives tools and information on how to get both sides of our behavior in line with any change.  Those two sides are our Rider which is the rational side and the Elephant which is the emotional side.  The Rider sits on top of the Elephant to steer and guide us but ultimately if our emotions (The Elephant) want to go somewhere, the Rider is powerless to stop it.

The Rider being the intellectual part of our decisions is always looking at problems and problem solving.  As the authors, Chip and Dan Heath, illustrate sometimes the solutions to problems are available by looking at what is already going well in a given situation.  They call these situations, bright spots.

They show that the key for managing your Rider is to look for Bright Spots, script the critical moves so that we are not overloading ourselves with choices and plot a specific destination with our change.

For the Elephant it’s more about motivation.  We know we should work out more yet we don’t because when our Elephant doesn’t want to move, it doesn’t.  In this case, we have to use feelings to truly motivate us because analytics isn’t compelling enough.

Once we find the feeling, we need to make the change small for it to work.  You ever tried to change something but putting together a comprehensive list of 20 bullet point items to change?  Me too and that’s why the change doesn’t work.  In this case, pick the one point that will make the most impact.

The last thing regarding our Elephant that the book points out it to utilize a growth mindset with regards to change.  It has to be expected that when you try something new, you are going to suck at it for a bit.  The authors give the example of learning to Salsa dance as an example of trying something, sucking at it and ultimately quitting without giving themselves the chance to learn.

The last portion of the book deals primarily with the environment that you create while initiating change.  All too often this is where we get tripped up.  When trying to initiate change you must shape  the environment to be conducive to the change you want or it will not work.

This book is a must read for business owners who want to affect change in the world, for  managers who want to affect change in their work teams and for individuals who want to affect change in themselves.  This is one of those business books that’s hard to put down because the stories and information presented are so interesting.

Looking at the landscape of work today, you see companies making cut backs on personnel and resources which then transfers additional responsibility to the people in organization who still have a job.  In this type of an environment, it becomes even more critical to spend your time working in alignment with what makes your company successful.

Americans are working longer and are busier than ever, unfortunately this has not actually translated into productivity.  Consider this quote from page 11 of the book:

An average worker today needs to work a mere 11 hours per week to produce as much as one working 40 hours per week in 1950.

This stat is alarming.  I believe it illustrates how much busy work we have allowed in our work lives.  Technology such as the internet, e-mail and cell phones make our lives easier in many ways but they have also caused us to be distracted and to spend very little time to actual real work.

The authors, Brent Peterson and Gaylan Nielson, really dive into what “Fake Work” is and where it came from.  They also give some specific strategies for overcoming fake work and being more effective as an employee and as an organization.

Consider the following scenario regarding “Fake Work” that we have all prescribed to at one point and time. The scenario revolves around the attitude of “keeping our nose clean”.  There are a lot of workers who get stuck in an unproductive work situation and decide that the best course of action is to just put their head down and keep working and, in the end, everything will be OK.

The problem with this scenario is that if you are just putting your head down and working, you are not paying enough attention to your work and how it aligns with your companies goals.  What you ultimately discover is that fake work rears its ugly head eventually in the form of lay offs, companies going out of business, reputations that suffer etc.

The authors give tons of great examples of fake work from real life scenarios throughout the book.  These are really helpful examples as some of the scenarios are really obvious but some of the scenarios aren’t that obvious.  It becomes easy to see how we fall into fake work sometimes if we aren’t careful.

Regardless if you are a business owner, manager or entry level employee, this book is a must read if you care about ensuring you and your company are more effective.  In today’s economy, these tools and advice are more critical than ever before.

Most of the ideas are not necessarily groundbreaking which I think the author readily admits.  (Hugh’s final chapter is titled “None of This Is Rocket Science”.) What struck me while I was reading this book was just how straightforward and honest the book was as well as how much it reeked of common sense.  I use the words “common sense” lightly because sometimes we just ignore common sense and our better judgment and end up regretting it later and our common sense ends up not being so common anymore.

One concept that I had never thought about and  really found interesting in this book  is the idea of keeping your day job.  We often talk and hear about the business maverick who quits it all and works to achieve their dream against all odds.  Hugh dismisses that theory by encouraging people to keep a 9-5er.  He calls it the sex & cash theory:

The creative person has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind.  Second is the kind that pays the bills.  Sometimes the task at hand covers both bases, but not often.

I appreciate the concept because sometimes we feel that owning a business or doing something creative means never doing something outside of our passion.  Hugh’s own work experience still puts him in a realm that he is familiar with but sometimes he works on projects that aren’t something that he would choose.

The other reason I think that this idea is useful is that for some being a solopreneur or working by yourself isn’t the best for our creativity.  One of my favorite things about working in corporate America was the camaraderie and friendships that you build while working with a team.  You can certainly build that yourself but your passion may not lead you in that direction.  I am an “E” on the Myers-Briggs type personality test, with “E” representing extrovert.  I feed of the energy of the people around me so this concept does hold some weight although I will say that I don’t know that keeping your day job is always an option with running something on the side.  I can, however, see many instances where it would work.

As a business owner I think you will appreciate some of Hugh’s other insights as well.  For instance the fact that we all have our own personal Mount Everest to climb it’s just a matter of starting your journey.  The idea that creativity is uncomfortable at first particularly because we are worried that we will be judged for trying.  There are tons of ideas that business owners will resonate with and find inspiration in.

This book is about getting in touch with your personal style of creativity, being bold and sensible when it comes to working at it and understanding that the journey is yours and yours alone to make.   In this day and age, this book is a must read amidst the journey of reconnecting ourselves to who we truly are.

In terms of a “self help” type of book, Brett gives a lot of practical advice that I think readers will find refreshing.  The premise of the book is that there are five areas that contribute to your success.  Those areas are: Vision, Frequency, Perception, Accountability and Leadership.  Brett breaks down why each of these areas is important, where we allow ourselves to get in our own way in these areas and some steps that we can take to more fully align our lives successfully with these laws.

Some of my favorite point from the book:

1. In the law of frequency section, Brett talks about failing faster as one of the steps that you can take to ensure that you get to success faster as well.  The number one area that trips us up is our desire to always be right.  I have certainly been guilty and not jumping in and doing something because I wasn’t sure if I had all the answers and I see this area as a big stumbling block for a lot of business owners.
2. In the law of perception the author talks about how we receive information.  Again this has to do with our desire to be right.  An important point that Brett makes in this section is to receive feedback that we get from people around us with an unbiased filter as much as we possibly can.  Too often we get negative feedback and close ourselves off to what someone else is saying by with devaluing the advice or the person giving the advice.  We all have done this a few times in our lives and it hinders our ability to see what others see and make the necessary corrections for the better.
3. The last point I wanted to share with readers has to do with the concept of aggregate IQ and it’s role in success.  I am big on using a team and collaborating with people to achieve the best result possible.  Sometimes, however, I try to go it alone with underwhelming results.  This point has to do with accepting different skills and traits that people bring to the table so that your project is more complete and has a better chance for success.  Too often we overlook this area and fail to collaborate with people because they are different from us.

Brett’s background is as a business consultant.  He also works with people on their own limiting beliefs through a non profit program he runs.  This is a great book on success that gives you practical tools to implement and a fresh perspective.

The overall message of this book is for small business owners to have systems and processes in place for their business. The main model that Michael Gerber uses is the franchise model that ensures that companies like McDonald’s can operate anywhere in the country and still provide the same level of service to their respective communities.

As business owners, the last thing we seem to want to do is work on our business. Especially when it comes to systems and processes. An important thought by Mr. Gerber was that you should put systems in place that reflect the big vision for your company, not just systems for today. A lot of business owners create systems that work great for today but as soon as they grow, the systems break down because they aren’t designed with a larger scale in mind.

One thing I didn’t enjoy as much about this book was the relationship with Sarah, who he coaches throughout the book. The conversation seemed ridiculous at times and borderline annoying. Knowing what I do know about book publishing and what it entails to put a book together, I do get why Michael Gerber puts this piece in the book in order to capture the human element. I just wasn’t that big of a fan.

If you are thinking about starting a business or have been a business owner for a few years, this book is a great reminder of what can happen if you aren’t strategic in your business planning. If you are careless, you end up owning a job which is the not quite the idea when you start out.

I am personally fascinated and passionate about understanding what makes me, and other people, tick. Strengths Finder is another great tool to help you understand how you operate and what that may look like in your life.

One of the things that trip us up in life is that we think we are born to do a certain role. We aren’t born to be an accountant, we aren’t born to be athletes and we aren’t born to be doctors. These are roles that allow us to express ourselves at the core of our being. The thing that we miss in all this? Understanding what’s at the core of our being.

Strengths Finder 2.0 is another of many great tools to help you in self discovery. This book, like others, wont completely solve the puzzle for you, but it will get you that much closer to identifying who you are at the core.

The books looks to assist you in identifying your top 5 themes that you operate by. There are 34 possible themes that you can fit into. This is done through a code that you get in the book to take an online assessment once you have read some background info on why the test exists.

Strengths Finder not only helps you identify your top 5 themes but also gives you a guide with an action plan to help you cultivate and understand your themes more clearly. The thing that I like most about the assessment is that they also give you examples of what that theme looks like using real life explanations of people in various fields. “What it looks like” is a powerful exercise to help you visualize your strengths in action and make them more concrete.

I recommend this book to anyone who needs additional clarity of their purpose and talents. I know I personally sacrificed 9 years in a job I hated because I really had no comprehension of what my true gifts were. Our gifts and talents come so natural to us that we devalue them as a result. In reality someone is looking at you right now with amazement with regards to your talents. Now it’s time for you to recognize the talent that everyone else already sees.

So what does it take to be successful? It takes identifying what you like to do and then putting in deliberate practice every single day. He gives a ton of great examples of people who have demonstrated this.

Geoff Colvin’s research flies straight in the face of the long argued logic that we achieve things because we were born a certain way. His book demonstrates that, in reality, that just isn’t the case.

This information is good news and bad news for people. It’s good news in that we have some control over the outcomes in our lives. It’s bad news because it means that we can’t blame our failures on lack of talent.

The other point in this book that I really appreciated was the stance on how America’s current working environment teaches us how to be good employees but, generally speaking, does not allow us to cultivate real skills because the workplace is so task oriented.

If you liked Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, then you will definitely like this book as well.

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View all my reviews >>