Archive for January, 2011

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven begins when an amusement park accident tragically kills Eddie “Maintenance”, an eighty-three-year old man who dedicated his life to keeping the park safe for its thousands of guests. From the beginning, Eddie’s character is incredibly well-guarded. We learn very little about him other than he takes great pride in his established routine of reporting to work and caring for his family. Read my full review here.

Save Your Hands

Save Your Hands by Lauriann Greene. Lauriann suffered an injury while in massage school. Through her journey of healing she discovered things you can do to help prevent hand, shoulder and back injuries and exercises to strengthen your hands. She was also a guest on Massage Unwrapped

Smarter, Cheaper, Faster

David Sites Garland shares shares specific secrets that made him successful in his book Smarter, Faster Cheaper. All too often, we try to market ourselves like big brands when we should be doing things differently. He started studying the people who were making an impact in their businesses and how they were doing it smarter, faster and cheaper. He also gives practical advice for how to become a trusted resource online and off, the 20/80 rule of online content and vlogging (video blogging).

Crazy Sexy Diet

Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Karr. Diagnosed in 2003 with a rare sarcoma that affects less than .01 percent of cancer patients. This was the catalyst for a life-changing transformation in which Kris became the self-appointed CEO of her health and wellness. She embarked on an independent study in which Whole Foods became her second home and she devoured the readings of doctors and nutritionists and talked to the leading health and wellness experts to help heal. Crazy Sexy Diet is the wise and witty product of her study in everything from nutrition, meditation, cleansing and much more.

Before Kris was diagnosed, Kris “exercised, drank in moderation-ish, and ate ‘right’ from time to time.” Like many “healthy” women, Kris ignored symptoms such as allergies, depression, bloating, and constipation to name a few, and chalked them up to inconveniences that were just part of her busy life. That is, until, her cancer diagnosis required her to put her lifestyle under a microscope.

Unmarketing

Unmarketing was written Scott Stratten, who goes by @unmarketing on twitter. UnMarketing is about the changes that are happening in marketing for all sizes of businesses. These changes are driven in large part by the push for more interaction, engagement and transparency via social media.
He argues that traditional interrupt and sell tactics, like cold-calling and shotgun direct-response advertising not only don’t work, but are the equivalent to aggressive, off-putting behavior that alienates the very people you’re trying to befriend, then move to become customers and evangelists. Then, he offers up a tons of strategies and tools to evolve your marketing into something that’s not only more effective, but more enjoyable and likely more impactful and lasting.

Linchpin

Linchpin by Seth Godin. The concept behind Linchpin is that many people need to take ownership of their jobs and lives, and demonstrate the value they can offer by becoming “indispensible”. People can become indispensible not because of their power or position, but because of the way they work – what Seth calls “emotional labor”, and what I like to call engagement and passion. He also goes into quite fascinating detail about the lizard brain and why our self talk gets in our way of doing things.

Made to Stick

If you want to succeed in any business, you need people to remember and act on your ideas. Unfortunately, attention is a scarce resource. There are so many things competing for our client’s attention. So, to be successful, there’s no choice but to make your ideas stand out.

The book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath aims to solve that problem. In the authors’ own words: “We wanted to take apart sticky ideas – both natural and created – and figure out what made them stick.”

The six principles of creating sticky ideas: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories (the acronym is SUCCESs). I really find the principles in the book useful. Of course, applying the principles takes practice and diligence and maybe a little creativity.

Getting More

Stuart Diamond, a Wharton School professor of negotiation and a former Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times journalist, illustrates his 12 core strategies of better negotiation

1. Goals are Paramount.
2. It’s about them.
3. Make emotional payments.
4. Every situation is different.
5. Incremental is best
6. Trade things you value unequally.
7. Find their standards
8. Be transparent and constructive, but not manipulative
9. Always communicate, state the obvious, frame the vision.
10. Find the real problem and make it an opportunity.
11. Embrace differences.
12. Prepare — make a list and practice with it.

In the Embrace Differences strategy, Stuart writes differences are not to be avoided or ignored in negotiations. On the contrary, they can lead to more perceptions, ideas and options — as long as you value those who are different.

This is just one of the areas where Diamond demonstrates his commitment to ideas that occasionally go against traditional business thinking. While other business book authors wage a pitched battle over the merits of aggressiveness versus kindness, Diamond provides strategies that push readers to get results. Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World is a tactical book in the guise of an entertaining read.

Early chapters in the book underscore some of the important themes that drive his brand of negotiation: People are everything, perception and communication gaps are deal killers, emotion is the enemy of effective negotiations. Later chapters adapt the strategies and tools of the book to specific areas including family, work and travel.

More than 400 anecdotes illustrate one or more of the strategies, as well as the tools, such as role reversal, that help implement those strategies. The stories in this book alone are worth the reading. Many of Diamond’s anecdotes involve negotiations in familiar situations that we don’t realize are negotiable — how to get an airline pilot to open the closed boarding gate, for example — while others illustrate the power of the strategies in the most difficult, high-stake situations. Every reader will benefit from Getting More.

Life’s Golden Ticket

After surviving a car accident, Brendon Burchard has dedicated his life to assisting people in creating change and making a life that matters. That is why he created this inspirational parable about Henry, a young man who is unhappy with his job and stuck in his life. After his girlfriend Mary nearly dies, she sends him on a mission to an old amusement park which has been closed for 20 years. He must sign a contract to gain access to this place of miracles and ask no questions about how it came to be or what it is. His guide through the amusement park is a groundskeeper.

In the Truth Booth, he encounters his mother who gives him some wise advice. Then a wizard helps him see that for most of his life he has been under Society’s Spell that has made him “secretly feel inadequate and helpless for far too long.” Henry later learns that the themes of his life — the world is a dark and dangerous place, other people are unfair and hurtful, and you yourself are inadequate — have limited his capacity to become all he was meant to be.

Find out what his encounters with the screaming carnies, Harsh the hypnotist, Gus and the elephants, the Hall of Mirrors, the bumper boats, Larry the Lion Tamer, the Tunnel of Love, does to Henry and what he ultimately comes to find out.

The Zen of Social Media Marketing

If you’re looking for a beginner guide on how you can get started and leverage social media in your massage practice, look no further. Shama Hyder Kabani’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing is what you’ve been waiting for.

You’ll find great information on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and online video. In addition, Shama talks about how to leverage this with your Web site (a must in her opinion…and mine) and blog. There’s also some good advice on how to behave in social media, and how to create a social media policy for your business.

As with any social media book, there’s always the concern that the book will be dated before the ink is dry. Shama has addressed that by creating the Zen of Social Media site where readers of the book can access updated information regularly.

Whether you’re just getting started, or you already have a Twitter account and Facebook fan page for your business, you’ll learn a lot by picking up a copy of The Zen of Social Media Marketing.

Five Wishes

As you know, I like to mix in reading about business, metaphysical and self-help. This month I read Five Wishes: How Answering One Simple Question Can Make Your Dreams Come True by Gay Hendricks and it is both metaphysical and self help in nature.

There are so many life-changing lessons to be carried away from this book! With the most provocative and challenging Introduction imaginable, you hit the ground not just running, but running for your life…more to the point, running for the life you want. Momentum builds with each inspiring chapter as the reader lives through the author’s Five Wishes.

From the back cover of the book:

In my thirties I received the gift of a question that changed the course of my life. My decision to answer that question gave me a life in which all my dreams came true. Now I want to offer you this gift, so you can use its gentle power to create your own fulfilled life. – Gay Hendricks

The thing I loved most about this great book was the bridge the author built from his past to his future. In order to attain his own personal five wishes, Gay Hendricks didn’t stare starry-eyed into the future hoping that the wishes would come true. He first looked at his present – to find out exactly where he came up short. If things were perfect, the wishes wouldn’t be wishes, they’d be bragging rights! He had to take a good, honest look inward to learn why the outward wasn’t what he’d hoped or wished for.

Who wouldn’t want to receive Five Wishes? Even genies only give three.

I Will Teach You to Be Rich

I read I Will Teach You To Be Rich on the recommendation of David Siteman Garland of The Rise to the Top.

I Will Teach You to Be Rich is “highly tactical”. He doesn’t just encourage readers to find the best savings accounts, he walks them through the process. He provides scripts for requesting rate reductions from credit cards and banks. He demonstrates his method of automating his financial life. He describes how to come out ahead in salary negotiations.

Ramit has built his book around a six-week program of action steps. Each week highlights one aspect of personal finance:

Week one focuses on optimizing credit cards and improving your credit history.
Week two explains how to find great bank accounts, and how to negotiate away fees.
During week three, Ramit helps readers to open a 401(k) and/or a Roth IRA.
In week four, Ramit leads readers through he process of drafting a “spending plan” so that they can make conscious choices about where their money goes.
Week five is all about connecting your new financial infrastructure, and automating it so that it hums along without intervention from you.
And the final week is an introduction to investing — how to use diversification and asset allocation to meet your investment goals.

Ramit’s book is great, but it’s not for everyone. The book is targeted toward a younger audience of twenty- and thirty somethings with a fair dose of irreverence, humor, and brashness.