Jan09

The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuck

Posted In: Personal Finance

The Thank You Economy by Gary VaynerchuckThe Book

The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuck

The Thank You Economy is much more than saying “thank you.” The Thank You Economy represents a much bigger movement. This book could easily have been called The Humanization of Business or Manners Marketing.

Opinion on the book

I need to be honest : I was sold before reading the book. I love Gary Vaynerchuk, and I watch his public appearances for fun. But the book was great, it’s probably a good gift for an old friend who runs a company and hasn’t made it to the internet yet. Great read all in all, and still entertaining. You can check out one of his talk here.

The Book in One Sentence

If your company decides to step up, now is the the time when you can outcare and outwork any of your competitor in a way that was not possible before for the “small players”.

Quotes

“Social Media gives you the opportunity to take your business to its fullest potential. Grab it.”

“Competitors are bigger? Outcare them. They’re cheaper? Outcare them. They’ve got celebrity status and you don’t? Outcare them.”

Notes

# What is the thank you economy ?

In 1930 your butcher knew your name, the name of your children and gave you a call to wish you a happy birthday, even offering you some of his newly arrived bacon as a gift. This is why you would not go to another butcher. Because he cared. Because you were thankful to how much he cared.

Then big corporations came in and stopped caring. Because they didn’t have to. Because one unhappy customer was just that : an unhappy customer. Worst case scenario he would tell his mom and his wife, and that would be it.

Then the internet came in, and an unhappy customer has the power to tell thousands of people on facebook, twitter, or his blog, that he is an unhappy customer. Now is time to go back to Joe the butcher who knew and cared about his customers. You can do that because the internet allow you to. Go to https://twitter.com/search right now, type the name of your company/brand, and start communicating.

# 11 Excuses

According to Gary there are eleven excuses people use when justifying why they don’t believe in using Social Media. Eleven excuses that the author proceeds to dismantle. Most of them resolve around one fact : Social Media is in the world of the unknown. We don’t know the ROI, we don’t know if it will last, etc…

But this is exactly what people who advertised on the radio said when the television was invented. And what people said about the internet when it was invented. The thing with the new game : you have to start first, because it’s easier to take the hearth of a person that is not in love that to still that person from the one he/she loves.

And that’s exactly what you ought to do in the Thank You Economy : make people fall in love with your company !

Other excuses are : this is only for B2C and / or tech companies. There are great counter examples in the book about B2B and non-tech companies doing it right, but just keep this in mind : people do business with people. And it doesn’t matter if you sell tea to eco-friendly families or if you sell concrete to big businesses (if that’s your case you probably need to read the full book to grasp what to do ).

# How to do it right

If you start openly communicating about your company and with your customers, every flaw will be revealed. You have to be truthful and honest, and you have to be outstanding at what you deliver, and at caring for your customers. No bullshit here, people can smell it.

And it needs to come from the top. The most important thing a company should monitor is not the competition or the customers : it is the employees. The top need to care for the employees so the employees can care for the customers. An employee happy is an employee that is treated as an adult and whose needs are being met. This requires one-on-one knowledge of your employees, or at least one-on-one knowledge of them with someone from the top. The goal is to have caring culture at the top, and to apply it both internally and externally.

So here are the steps necessary to become a company that truly care :

- start with yourself if you’re at the top (see above)

- know and be yourself. You don’t have to become a “flip flop at work” company to enter the Thank You Economy. If you’re a suit and tie, that’s fine, just be honest about it and don’t try to look like what you’re not. Remember : people smell the bullshit from far away.

- commit 100%. You can’t just open a twitter account and advertise on it once in a while. You need to answer to people. You need to create a relationship. And then, once in a while, you can advertise. This will take time and ressources.

- invest in your employees, and trust them. If you make them have every tweet approved by a lawyer before being published, don’t even try… Also you need a strong company culture, where all your employees care about caring. If some of them just don’t fit maybe it’s time to reconsider your relationship with that employee.

# Final tricks

Some final ideas from the book :

- empower your employees. For example give the a discretionary budget to take care of customers and give away gifts

- right now the best strategy is to mix classic media with social media, to “bridge the gap”

- “The same intent that fuels any successful social media campaign also has to be behind the day-to-day engagement a brand pursues via social networking sites. Your intent should be twofold: water as many plants as possible, and put out every fire. When you’re tending to online relationships, every engagement should be answered with emotion, from the heart.”

- the little things matter. A lot. It’s : the car washer who provides Wifi. The cafe that offers regular customers a cake. The car repairer who cleans the car perfectly after the work is done.

- invest in your customers, not platforms. Instead of spending 40.000€ on a TV ad, make 1.000 customers happy with a 40€ gift. They will talk about it. Maybe one of them will have  a huge audience. Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. Because you’ve outcared your competitors.

Why you should (or should not) buy that book

If you’re already sold on the ‘caring’ and social media thing, then you probably don’t need to read this book. But you should because it’s a quick and very entertaining read, and the case study are interesting.

If all this sounds new for you…then you probably need to read that book.

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Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

~Thomas

 

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What about you? Have you read that book? What did you think of it?

Jul25

On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis

Posted In: Self Development

on becoming a leaderThe Book

On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis

Bennis here deplores what he considers a dearth of leadership in the world. Although he provides solid, practical guidance in how to fill this vacuum, his philosophically and psychologically rich volume seeks primarily to define leadership–which, in his view, requires self-knowledge and clear personal goals.

Opinion on the book

I was pleasantly surprised by this book, it’s an easy read but the ideas of the author were very interesting and on point – although you may sometimes agree or disagree upon some subjects.

The Book in One Sentence

Leaders are made, not born. The only question is : will you step up ?

Quotes

“”it is not enough for a leader to do things right, he must do the right thing”

“Leaders learn from others, but are not made by others.”

Notes

# What is a leader ?

In the author’s opinion’s, leaders are characters who are not interested in proving themselves but want above all to be able to express themselves fully. For him becoming a leader is the act of becoming more and more your true self. Often people say “I can’t lead” but they misunderstand leading for managing.

It ‘s not, there’s as many type of leader as there are people in the world. Leading is expression.

# How to become one

The author then gives us an exhaustive list of what he considers to be the common traits of leaders, among which :

- life-long learning and curiosity : leaders read, a lot

- a dream, a vision that goes beyond them and inspire others

- a personal integrity to his values and vision, which often makes the leader somehow ‘original’ because he doesn’t care about fitting in

- ” Using the context of your life, rather than surrendering to it”

Why you should (or should not) buy that book

If you like what you’ve read so far then it might be worth reading the entire book – especially for the part about becoming a leader.

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Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

~Thomas

 

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Jul18

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini

Posted In: Self Development

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

Note : this post was written by Tihomir Bajic who was the original creator of this blog. He works at Rypple and you can follow him on twitter here.

The Book

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini

Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini meld social psychology, pop culture and field research to demonstrate how the subtle addition, subtraction or substitution of a word, phrase, symbol or gesture can significantly influence consumer behavior. Interspersing references to Britney Spears, the Smurfs and Sex and the City with more academic concepts such as loss aversion and the scarcity principle, the authors illustrate the simple and surprising approaches that can hone a company’s marketing strategies.

Opinion on the book

I picked up this book as a fun light read for my flight to a friend’s wedding. It helps to be armed with the latest findings from the science of persuasion should someone get cold feet. Cialdini et al definitely delivered. They packed their conclusions into 50 short punchy chapters. Each one talks about one specific tactic that increases persuasiveness. Their suggestions are fresh and applicable to various life aspects. The right amount of humor shows that they don’t take themselves too definitively and helps turn what is really a summary of the latest research into an informative and memorable read.

The Book in One Sentence

Scientifically proven tricks to be more persuasive.

Notes

The book isn’t a Jedi manual on mind-control but was definitely helpful in pointing out things that usually make people more persuasive or more persuadable. It made me aware of mental processes that occur subconsciously in certain settings that may lead to non-standard decisions. It turns out that scientific evidence shows that emotionally charged people make bad purchasing decisions; sad people are willing to pay more than indifferent people for the same product. Is that why funerals cost so much? Or are they justifiably so expensive?

Some of the other points that blew me away:

  • People tend to think of themselves as average. That is why telling someone their positive behavior is not average/expected may get them to change it even if that’s not to their advantage.
  • You can get someone to like you more by getting them to help you. Once the person helps you, he subconsciously needs to reconcile the fact the he helped you (meaning he cares about you) with older negative feelings.
  • Too much choice is confusing and can hurt business. After some point, an extra option on your menu or service offering that you hope will bring more interest can only cause less commitment to any particular choice. Less is more.
  • Expression through writing is powerful. People are more likely to stick to their goals if they write them down first. Even writing about something emotionally charged can affect mood and subsequent decisions.
  • Seek dissent during decision making process to avoid group think and to leverage each group member’s insight.
  • People’s names (and even the first letter of their name) influence their career choices and preferences. A disproportionate number of guys named Dennis are dentists.

Why you should (or should not) buy that book

If you haven’t read “Influence” by Robert Cialdini then I would strongly recommend skipping this one for now and starting with that one. This one is more like a sequel and like most sequels, it is not as good.

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Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

~Thomas

 

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What about you? Have you read that book? What did you think of it?

Jul11

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss – Part 2

Posted In: Personal Achievement, Personal Finance

4 hours work weekThe Book

The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated by Timothy Ferriss

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

Opinion on the book

This is very new but is already a classic and you probably have heard of it. Basically the idea behind it is to live the life you want, and do what YOU want on a daily basis. The book isn’t that big but it’s full of useful information and tips so I’m going to separate it in two parts.

So Welcome to the second part about : creating a muse, or automated income generator.

The Book in One Sentence

Re design your lifestyle with Tim Ferris.

Quotes

“Top mistake N°8. :  Not performing a thorough 80/20 nalysis every two to four weeks for your business and personal life”

Notes

This steps are generally not for people who want to run a business but for those who want to own one. And if you think “that doesn’t work in the real world” then just know that Microsoft XBox is built by Flextronics, the same company that design and ditribute Kodak’s cameras. You can outsource everything too.

# The Rules : our aim here

We need a product (if you do service then you’ll need to convert your expertise into a downloable or shippable product) that can’t take more than $500 to test, and can lend itself to automation within four weeks, meaning that it won’t require more than one day per week of management. That’s a muse.

# Step 1 : Pick an affordably reachable niche market

Don’t create demand, fill existing demand. Better : feel a need YOU have, so you know what the product must be like. First focus on the markets you belong to. What do you read? What do you do on your free time? Find two related markets.

Also think now about how you will sell because it will largely influence your future decisions. The less reseller the better, because they will compete with each other on the price, devaluating your product. Generally the more direct you-to-client the better. Go online.

# Step 2 : Brainstorm products

Now you have to brainstorm products for those markets. It must fill the criterias :
- main benefit can be told in one sentence
- cost customers $50 to $200 (enough so you make money but not enough so it’s a big investment for the client)
- no more than 3 to 4 weeks to manufacture
- easily explainable in an online FAQ (not something with 2.000 parameters)

If you want you can also sell information product instead of manufactured ones. Sell your expertise. Transform your skills into sellable information products.

# Step 3 : Micro-Test the muse

Testing here means using cheap advertising to see customer repsonsivness PRIOR to advertising. So you’ll test you products by :
- creating a one-to-three sales page, that will give offer visitors the whole process of buying without actually the possibility to buy, so you see how many sales you would have gotten
- test the offer using Google Adwords (look online if you don’t know what that is and how it works. Go to the author’s website and research it)
- invest on the products that appear to be good, and forget about the others

Other ideas : you can put fake auctions on ebay to see at what price it would sell! But don’t let anyone actually pay ;)   Facebook groups also have every niche market ever possible.

# Step – Get yourself out of the equation

Basically the idea is to get yourself of everything you’re involved in in the organization. A schema showing how it looks like for the author :

4hhh_timferris

Why you should (or should not) buy that book

This book is interesting as it is really full of useful tips, as well as giving you the little ‘push’ you may need. Starting with the author’s blog ( http://www.fourhourblog.com/ ) is a good idea, there are a lot of articles, on a very broad range of subject. But it’s a life philosophy book, and you can summarize that, but you can’t communicate it.
Also the book talks about how to apply those concepts when you’re an employee and want to stay so while still being able to have the life you want, which I didn’t keep notes about.

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Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

~Thomas

 

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________________________________________________________________

What about you? Have you read that book? What did you think of it?

Jul04

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss – Part 1

Posted In: Personal Achievement, Personal Finance

4 hours work weekThe Book

The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated by Timothy Ferriss

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

Opinion on the book

This is very new but is already a classic and you probably have heard of it. Basically the idea behind it is to live the life you want, and do what YOU want on a daily basis. The book isn’t that big but it’s full of useful information and tips so I’m going to separate it in two parts. This week you’ll get the concepts from the book, and next week you’ll get my notes on how to create a muse (a muse is passive income, income for which you don’t need to work. You’re sleeping and you’re earning money. Sweet program hu?)

The Book in One Sentence

Re design your lifestyle with Tim Ferris.

Quotes

“Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness? Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?”

“Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action”

Notes

# Is that really the life you want?

Most people’s life plan is to work, get money, retire, and enjoy what they love doing. But why don’t you do that now? And beside, what is it you would do if you could retire RIGHT NOW? Take a paper, and write that down. Where do you live? With who? What do you do in the morning? During the day? Etc… Then calculate what it would cost you for a year. Divide by 365 and you’ll get your daily necessary income, which is probably much lower than you would expect (as long as you don’t want to live on a yacht or on the moon). Even if it is, you’re probably better off pursuing that NOW than waiting to be old. To do this you need 4 steps :
- D for Definition : Defining the lifestyle you want (what we did)
- E for Elimination : Killing all the unimportant stuff to regain control of your time
- A for Automation : Create automated income
- L for Liberation : Leave the life you want, free of boundaries

# Do what you want

This type of journey, trying to have the lifestyle you want, will set you apart and that’s not easy. But you’re really better off doing YOUR thing in life. Beside, don’t follow the crowd : most of the time there’s a better way than the way things are done now. Find it. Be unreasonable, go for what you want, and don’t be sorry about it.

# Do less

Relative income is more important than absolute income. If I earn $1000 a month by working a couple of hours every week, then it’s much more than someone who earns $10 000 every month but works his ass off 50 hours a week.
So one of the key of the book is to not try to do more each day, but try to do what has to be done in less time. See the difference? There are always ways around, found them and apply them.

# Pareto’s law

The law of 80/20 : 80% of the output is produced by 20% of the input. This apply EVERYWHERE. From sport to school learning to apple trees. And here : for time management and business.
When you do something always look for the 20% of clients that reprensent 80% of the sales. Or for the 20% of your work that produce 80% of the results.
OR also for the 20% of problems that are causing 80% of your unhapiness.

# Parkinson’s law

Parkinson’s law states that a task will expand in in perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time you allow for its completion. Which means that you could do something in 24 hours or a month depending on the deadline I give you. So to use this :
- limits tasks to the important, to shorten work time (80/20)
- shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (parkinson)

# Outsource your life

Tim Ferris advises to use an assistant. Find a cheap but reliable middle-sized company from Indi for exemple, on elance.com or another similar website.
Then you save time (and don’t have any more excuse to go online and waste time multitasking) because you can give him everything to do, basically, that does not require physical intervention. Cool stuff, I haven’t tried it yet but I know I will. Soon.

Why you should (or should not) buy that book

This book is interesting as it is really full of useful tips, as well as giving you the little ‘push’ you may need. Starting with the author’s blog ( http://www.fourhourblog.com/ ) is a good idea, there are a lot of articles, on a very broad range of subject. But it’s a life philosophy book, and you can summarize that, but you can’t communicate it.
Also the book talks about how to apply those concepts when you’re an employee and want to stay so while still being able to have the life you want, which I didn’t keep notes about.

Share the notes

Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

~Thomas

 

PS : If you're enjoying the notes then consider subscribing to the RSS feed or to the newsletter by email to have the notes delivered directly to you every week, for free.


________________________________________________________________

What about you? Have you read that book? What did you think of it?