The $100 Startup - 05/22/2012
Chris Guillebeau was in Milwaukee last night as part of his $100 Startup tour. The full room of people who traveled from as far as Chicago got exactly what they hoped for: Hearing Chris share some of the most interesting stories from the book, a discussion of idea navigation, free copies of his book, and personalized signing by Chris. What they also got was a great space, cupcakes, Milwaukee Beer, and pizza arranged by the great folks at Translator.
Appropriately enough, Translator is a company whose story would fit right into the $100 Startup. Like many people/companies profiled in Chris’ book, they learned that starting with an idea or plan can be helpful, but once you get going, things change, and you have to be open and creative enough to see where needs are, and how to apply your skills to fulfill those needs.
The great thing is, any of us can think about business in this way, whether we’re entrepreneurs, or not. But for some people, this might be the book that helps get them to take the step into the great unknown of doing their own thing.
So, what are you waiting for? Pick up a copy of Chris’ book and get started with your own venture today.
Thanks again to Chris for making the trip here, and Translator for providing the space for us all to come to!
Work with us! - 05/22/2012Located in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward, 800-CEO-READ has been in the business of business books for over 25 years. Over the past decade, we have concentrated on two things: moving bulk orders of business books around the world, and spreading great business ideas online. More info can be found at www.800ceoread.com.
We are seeking candidates for a Special Projects Coordinator position. If you’re
committed to excellent service, are highly organized, have a bit of sales drive and are interested in working for an extremely fun company, we’d love to hear from you. This salaried, full-time position also includes paid vacation, health and dental insurance, 401k with match, and bonuses, in exchange for your skills and commitment to grow personally and with the company.
Special Projects Coordinator, 8CR
Manager: GM
Other key teams/people: 8CR team, publishers, authors and client organizations
Key Responsibilities:
Coordinate special projects
- Handle all incoming requests for special fulfillment and customization projects.
- Obtain pricing and scheduling from outside vendors when applicable.
- Organize costs, pricing, and schedules.
- Follow up on internal and external fulfillment processes.
- Provide high-level service to customers, including follow-up.
Conduct author and customer outreach
- Follow publisher schedules and contact new and forthcoming authors.
- Communicate 8cr’s value to authors and customers.
- Conduct sales of special fulfillment and customization to new and previous customers.
Assist in Customer Service
- Cover general customer service issues for web and phone when needed.
- Participate in service/operations meetings on a weekly basis.
- Share and implement agreed upon ideas for increasing 8cr customer satisfaction.
- Conduct sales of special fulfillment and customization to incoming customers.
Abilities:
Skills and Knowledge:
- Understand and practice the art of service.
- Proven organizational skills.
- Excellent communication skills.
- Effective Marketing and Sales approach.
- Proficiency in various computer software and usage.
- Knowledge of and love for books.
Competencies:
- Team-focus
- Independence
- Confidence
- Flexibility
- Curiosity/Openness to Learning
- Drive
- Hopefulness
- Creativity
Qualifications:
- Experience in customer service, sales, and marketing.
- Work experience in the publishing industry (in any aspect) preferred, but not necessary.
- Ideally, experience working in a small, entrepreneurial company.
Interested and qualified candidates should send their resume and a brief note describing why you think you’d be good at the job and a good fit for our company to jon (a) 800ceoread.com.
KnowledgeBlocks - 05/21/2012
We’re very pleased to announce the official opening of KnowledgeBlocks, a subscription-based service and online resource that gives readers access to quality content and business resources, a way to save, organize, and customize the information that is important to them, and engages business authors and thought leaders to help solve business problems and build new knowledge.
Among the key features of the site, subscribers have access to the following:
- Explorations: Every month we publish three business book explorations that examine a narrow subject within a broader business topic. Each begins with a featured book and then branches out in unexpected directions, introducing you to author insights via podcast or interview, other related must-reads, curated links, and brief analyses that will help you build your business knowledge.
- Thinkers-in-Residence: This key feature of the site offers authors the opportunity to connect directly to a dedicated audience via webinar and a stand-alone page of author-contributed material such as Q&As, blocks, and featured books.
- Giveaways: Continuing the weekly book giveaway tradition of our inBubbleWrap program, we will put the latest releases in the hands of a smart, dedicated, interested and influential business audience.
The site is being administered and curated by the immensely talented and capable Sally Haldorson, who has been with the company for 14 years and was the editor of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, giving her a wealth of knowledge on the business genre that is hard to top.
We hope to see you over there.
Friday Links - 05/19/2012➻ Shawn Coyne recently wrote a review of Bryce Hoffman’s American Icon (one of Jack’s favorite books of the year so far), and how the lessons reflected from Ford CEO Alan Mulally’s leadership in the book contains in them the ideas espoused in Pressfield’s The War of Art. Discussing Alan Mulally’s leadership of Ford Motor Company, the implications that has for the future of book publishing, and When the Ladder Becomes a Wheel, Shawn writes:
Analog hierarchies use the pursuit of the fruits of labor—money, status, Big Kahuna-ship—to “incentivize” individuals. Do this and we’ll pay you more and get you into the Country Club… Daniel Pink writes a lot about this and he’s found that it is not the best way to motivate a human being.
What digital territories demand is much more difficult. They demand honesty, integrity, and connecting with other people to explore common interests. The fruits of our labor in a territory aren’t about being named one of People magazine’s 100 most beautiful people. The reward is simply to continue doing your work. If your work is professional and meaningful, there’s a tribe of like-minded people on the planet who will find and support you. If it isn’t, work on something else.
Alan Mulally’s big triumph was not making billions of dollars for Ford. It was getting the people who spend eight hours a day at Ford to love their work.
So what does this have to do with Book Publishing?
These two books, American Icon and The War of Art, got me to think about where the book business stands today and where it’ll be tomorrow. Don’t cringe. It’s good news. Very good news.
To hear the good news on the future of publishing, and to see it (Mr. Coyne developed some great visuals to explain his idea), head on over to the original post.
➻ Looking back at the last fifty years of publishing, there is one title that could be considered a business book among the Top 10 Most Read Books in the World—Napolean Hill’s 1937 classic, Think and Grow Rich. It came in a distant 9th place behind the Holy Bible, Mao’s little red book, and a lot of modern fantasy and fiction.
➻ And just in case the future of physical books is in any danger, there are now two perfumes that will keep the scent of them alive and help you smell as if you have a Nose in a Book: “In the Library” by CB I Hate Perfume and “Paper Passion” by Geza Schoen. I’m assuming the next Kindle released will be doused in this stuff.
➻ The American Booksellers Association has posted a article on how independent bookstores around the country are >Working With Self-Published Authors that should be helpful to both independents and self-published authors.
➻ “I don’t think literature can content itself with being either a mask or a mirror of reality. I think literature creates reality or it is not literature at all. You have to write “La marquise sortit à cinq heures,” to copy the banal details of life, but this is not enough. The mirror is also a way to augment reality; it augments reality or it does nothing.”
—Carlos Fuentes, The Art of Fiction No. 68
➻ Take Time with The Books
The Finch Effect - 05/17/2012Charles Darwin once noticed that finches adapted their beak structures over a few generations to deal with changes in their environment. These adaptations were essential for the birds to survive. They weren’t quick fixes, but necessary ones, which helped them find new food sources while other species slowly died off.
These skills informed Darwin’s theories of survival, and today provide a metaphor that author Nacie Carson uses in her new book, The Finch Effect: The Five Strategies to Adapt and Thrive in Your Working Life. There are more people in the workforce today than ever before, and the global economy is changing the needs of nearly every industry. To survive in this environment, like Darwin’s finches, professionals need to adapt. Whether you’re fresh out of college, didn’t go at all, or have even been in the workforce for many years, there is no guarantee of success. But there are steps that can be taken, “beak adaptations” if you will, that can improve your chances of survival.
According to Carson (and per the book title) her five strategies are as follows:
1. Adopt a Gig Mindset
2. Identify Your Value
3. Cultivate Your Skills
4. Nurture Your Social Network
5. Harness Your Entrepreneurial Energy
You’ll have to read the book to find out the details of each strategy. Her writing is clear, smart, and well-researched. I’ll leave you a sample here, which also serves as a general theme for the book:
Yet when you come down to it, what separates members of the Fittest from everyone else is not intelligence. Or education. Or career experience. What separates members of the Fittest from all the other professionals out there is their willingness to look beyond such perspective-warping psychological mechanisms (even those with their best interests at heart) and allow themselves to be open to change and the opportunities to evolve.
Jack Covert Selects – The Good Food Revolution - 05/10/2012
The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities by Will Allen, Gotham Books, 272 pages, $26.00, Hardcover, May 2012, ISBN 9781592407101
For an average-sized book, there is a lot within this one. From the title, one might expect sociological research on trends in organic food, or an analysis of a health food business and how they became successful. While it certainly has traces of those things, it is so much more.
This book is by and about a man named Will Allen, who grew up around farming, played professional basketball, managed a chain of restaurants, was an executive for Proctor & Gamble, battled cancer and a lot of discrimination and racism along the way, and returned to his life’s passion and roots in farming to help the health, economy, and lives of many people.
During Allen’s succession of career changes, from Disco owner to P&G exec, he was continuously involved in farming, from his back yard garden, to starting a farmer’s market co-op, to eventually buying a number of greenhouses and forming the company Growing Power, which is now a leader in the field of urban agriculture. Growing Power grows and sells produce, fish, and eggs locally, and educates others on its processes. It teaches people and businesses how to grow their own food, and how to grow it better than what’s commonly available in stores. Speaking to the importance of that work, Allen states:
If we are to make farming a profession that young people want to enter, we need to create new models for growing and distributing food that are both emotionally satisfying and economically viable. We have to be guided by the principle that small is beautiful.
And as convenience continues to propel businesses such as fast food restaurants and corner stores forward, the quality of food and our health is at stake. Again, Allen focuses on young people:
Our current generation of young people rarely eat fresh foods, don’t know how to grow or prepare them, and in many cases, can’t even identify them. They have become entirely dependent on a food system that is harming them.
I believe that equal access to healthy, affordable food should be a civil right—every bit as important as access to clean air, clean water, or the right to vote.
The Good Food Revolution is the kind of book you just can’t put down, rich with personal stories, and full of insightful lessons about business and life that transcend the food industry. There are fundamental lessons in Allen’s work that all leaders can learn from. Certainly, we can’t all grow food, but every leader can look at their business for the true human value that exists within it, and think about ways to spread that quality for the benefit of others.
Jack Covert Selects – The Reinventors - 05/10/2012
The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change by Jason Jennings, Portfolio, 256page, $26.95, May 2012, ISBN 9781591844235
The once vital Main Streets of America are all but out of business, boarded up or filled with antique stores shopping the delights and detritus of another era. Jason Jennings visits the main street of his own abandoned hometown at the beginning of The Reinventors to use it as a metaphor for “what will happen to you, your job, and your business unless you become a reinventor completely committed to constant radical change and growth.”
Jennings’ previous books, Less Is More, Think Big, Act Small, It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small … It’s the Fast that Eat the Slow, and Hit the Ground Running all made a case for business agility in one way or another. This new book does so as well, and then takes it one step further by stressing the need for business model agility. According to a 2010 IBM Global Study:
It turns out that 67 percent of worldwide leaders think their current business model is only sustainable for another three years, while another 31 percent believe their current model might have as long as five years.
So The Reinventors should find a home on many executives’ desks, as the time is now to begin the process of serially reinventing your business, to highlight companies that are good at it, and to teach other leaders how to master the skill. The history of business has always been one of churn, of quick rises and dramatic falls, and smart leaders know that they are but temporary stewards in that history and must transition their companies through that change.
Your job as you know it and your business as it is currently run will eventually change. The only chance any of us have for prosperity is to constantly reimagine, rethink, and reinvent everything we do and how we do it in order to remain relevant. We must all become reinventors, and we’d better do it quickly.
If you made it though the recession with your job or business intact, everything may seem more stable now that you are on the other side of it. But remember that the world under your business is still silently shifting, and you are going to have to shift with it. Jennings is not going to give you a new business model to do that with in this book, but he will teach you how to figure it out for yourself, how to be more aggressively innovative, how to become a serial reinventor.
Jack Covert Selects – How Will You Measure Your Life? - 05/10/2012
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth & Karen Dillon, Harper Business, 240 pages, $25.99, Hardcover, May 2012, ISBN 9780062102416
Clayton Christensen is a business theorist who, in 1997, wrote the renowned Innovator’s Dilemma which introduced the idea that most well-established companies are overtaken not by behemoth competitors but by “disruptive” innovations that rise up and cut down giants in part because the giants were oblivious to the threat, and/or unable to invest in new emerging technologies. Christensen is also a dedicated professor at Harvard Business School, and describes himself as “a father and grandfather with a deeply held faith.” This book is a commingling of Christensen’s passions, but always returns back to the theories he has spent so many years studying and teaching in business courses.
Good theory can help us categorize, explain, and most important, predict. People often think that the best way to predict the future is by collecting as much data as possible before making a decision. But this is like driving a car looking only at the rearview mirror—because data is only available about the past. … This is why theory can be so valuable: it can explain what will happen, even before you experience it.
How Will You Measure Your Life is populated with personal anecdotes—the fates of famous classmates, the progress of Christensen’s career, his motivations as a family man, his numerous health challenges—that lead back to business theory as a way to guide others to better decision-making. Treat your life, Christensen says, to the same careful planning you would your business in order to avoid some of the catastrophic events that can happen to companies when they don’t develop a deliberate, yet agile, strategy.
- Beware of the emergent strategy. Serendipity should play a role in all strategy.
- Define your purpose. “Without a purpose, the value to executives of any business theory would be limited.”
- Allocate your resources in a way that aligns with your purpose. In other words, you are what you do, not what you mean to do.
- Set your metrics: Christensen says “the only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people.”
It’s May, and all around us our children, our friends’ children, our nephews and nieces, our grandchildren are graduating from school. Heading out in to a world that is their oyster, but could also be their undoing. Clayton Christensen’s new book, How Will You Measure Your Life, would make a perfect gift, and will help direct their decisions and steer their moral compass as they set out in the world.
LeaveSmarter: Stephen Shapiro - 05/10/2012
Yesterday, Stephen Shapiro was in town for our private LeaveSmarter event, sponsored by BMO Harris/M&I Bank and Whyte Hirschboek Dudek. His talked focused on ideas from his recent book, and 800-CEO-READ Business Book Award winner for 2011, Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition.
According to Shapiro, the main problems we have with being innovative, is how we think about things, the kind of questions we ask, and what we already know about the challenges we face. Here’s a clip from his talk that gives examples of this:
Following this, Shapiro states that asking the right questions, looking at similar problems but that occurred in different situations from our own, and thinking calmly about those situations, can have a markedly successful effect. From Einstein to everyday people, his book offers great examples of how people have found solutions that were truly great, and how we can do the very same thing.
ChangeThis: Issue 94 - 05/09/2012
Unleashing the Creative Reservoir: The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited by Richard Florida
“A new social compact—a Creative Compact—can turn our Creative Economy into a just and Creative Society, in which prosperity is widely shared. While driven and shaped by economic logic, the key institutions and initiatives of the future will be shaped, as they always have, by human agency.”
Build This: Your Culturematic Laboratory by Grant McCracken
“Ruled by pragmatism and play, your laboratory is fast becoming the place you come to look out into the future. This the bridge from which you can look at your possible outcomes, examine your range of options, think about how to think the future.”
The Shattering: How We Get From Where We Are to What and Who We Need to Be—A Non-Illustrated Guide to Becoming Honest by Erika Napoletano
“The Shattering is the moment where everything familiar slips away. Our protective facades of familiarity spontaneously combust and we shun faith, deny comfort. We’re left voiceless regardless of our need to scream. We tread water in an ocean filled with every brilliant memory of what was only moments ago.”
Let’s Make Leadership Real Again by Mike Figliuolo
“What has happened to leadership? With all the crises and challenges we face and the increasingly risk-averse environment in which we operate, leadership has become generic, ephemeral, and bland. We have devolved from leaders into managers. Admiral Grace Murray Hopper said it best—you manage things, but you lead people. The problem is we’re no longer leading.”
The Face-to-Face Manifesto: Back to the Future by Ed Keller & Brad Fay
“The fact is that online social networking is no substitute for the power and impact of face-to-face communications. Real world conversations—most of which take place face-to-face—are still the dominant mode of communication, and they are the most trusted and persuasive.”
Rebooting America’s Innovation Engine: Using Jugaad to Innovate Faster, Better, and Cheaper by Navi Radjou
“The motto ‘innovate or die’ held true for American firms in the 20th century. In the 21st century, ‘innovate faster, better, and cheaper—or die’ will be your new mantra. Indeed, in today’s hypercompetitive, über-connected, and globally integrated economy, you need to crank out new products faster than you can spell ‘R&D,’ or else your customers will switch their allegiance to more agile rivals.”
