One last question. Are you missing your life?

That’s what Joe Robinson is most concerned about. He claims most of us are stuck in a “performance identity.” We tie our self-worth to external factors, like how productive we are. As a result, we’re only motivated to do things when they have a measurable payoff, for example money, status, or recognition.

That’s no way to live, says Robinson. In his new book, Don’t Miss Your Life: Find More Joy and Fulfillment Now, he explores the costs of living in a performance-based mental trap. He shows readers the ingredients of a vital, passionate life. Then, step by step, he demonstrates how to leave the Calvinistic cubicle mentality and become a full participant in a life that you love.

In turn motivational, Zen, and instructional, Robinson’s unlikely self-help book teaches us how to cultivate “leisure skills” as a panacea to the digitally-collared life of an onlooker. He shows that play, rather than being the domain of slackers, has far-reaching benefits throughout our lives. If that sounds fun and relevant, read on.

What’s Inside

Each chapter of this well-written book launches with a story. Robinson describes an experience that makes someone, including himself, more alive. Each chapter covers research explaining why joy, fun or play are so essential to your health—and the costs of continuing to titrate your self-worth to external forces. You get exercises that help you launch your own pursuit of a better life, as well as a review of key concepts at the end of each chapter. Chapters are easy to read in bursts, which is helpful if you are short on time.

The introduction and first chapter introduce you to the physiological and psychological benefits of having fun. Joy comes from doing something fun for the sole reason that you like it or it challenges you. Such “direct experience” not only benefits your body, but increases your feelings of competence, independence, and social connectedness. While convincing you that you need more experience and play in your life, Robinson provides starting points on how to do it, beginning with re-owning your time.

Chapter 2 explores the habits that make so many of us stick to the overwork-errands-bills-TV-stress doldrums like flies on tape. We have an inner “performance identity” that tells us something is only worth doing when there’s an external payoff. Robinson explains why it’s important not to base your self-esteem on your productivity or external factors, and shares tips on getting unstuck by cultivating a “worth ethic.”

The next four chapters show you what you need to cultivate in order to build a life worth living. Your goal is to find something you feel passionate about. If you build that passion into a skill through time and effort, you will eventually reach an “optimal experience,” where you become completely engrossed in your activity of choice over longer and longer periods of time.

Robinson then explains how to reach that goal of optimal experience. When you find something that gives you a “glimmer” of passion (Robinson calls this foreplay), you want to make that passion last. To find something that, uh, arouses you in the first place, you need to try things now.

To want to take risks in the first place, you have to be motivated “without regard to payoff.” That’s what Robinson calls intrinsic motivation. If you’re risk-averse in general, Robinson shows you how to develop your “venture aptitude.” He tells you how to cultivate the right mindset and create the right kinds of goals to get you there.

Next, Robinson shares how to support yourself in the process of getting skilled at the thing you’re passionate about. He includes tips on motivating yourself and making steady, safe progress in your skill. He even illustrates the process in a Maslow-remniscent “fun pyramid” in Chapter 7.

You also learn how to stop being crippled by social comparisons. Robinson teaches you the value of eagerness, enthusiasm, positive self-talk, realistic self-appraisal, and intentional foolishness as tools to help you commit to practicing your passion. As your vitality and self-worth increase, you’ll get better at taking advantage of opportunities that augment your life.

The final chapter condenses the messages from previous chapters into an actionable 7-day plan to restructure your life.

Thoughts

Don’t Miss Your Life is a solid addition to the sheaf of books and blogs that have emerged on the topic of happiness in recent years. Robinson, a great writer with quips like “you can’t play hopscotch with a flow chart,” uses a practical, step-by-step template that anyone can follow to build a more fulfilling life. He demystifies the fulfilling life by breaking down what it looks like, why it (scientifically) matters, and how to build your own.

Robinson sold me on the case for leisure. (Disclaimer: In my case, he might have been preaching to the choir. I’ve valued the kind of experiential absorption he describes since I could walk, but haven’t ever been able to break it down the way he has.) Through exercises and suggestions, he made the techniques for attaining joy accessible. And, though I didn’t have time to test all of his concepts, I’m convinced they’re solid. Robinson clearly did his homework, as the many case studies, books, and individual stories sourced in the book show.

I did get a little lost towards the middle of the book, where I started to forget exactly what terms like “venture aptitude” and “intrinsic motivation” meant, and had to go back to refresh my memory. A glossary of these terms and their definitions would have been helpful. I also found the book a bit heavy on descriptions of samba, Robinson’s passion of choice. Towards the end, I caught myself thinking “not samba again!”

The concepts also took a while to crystallize in my mind. I’m still not sure I absorbed every one of Robinson’s many points. It’s the kind of book you keep around as a kind of reference/motivational tool and revisit as needed.

I think this book will benefit you most if you:

a) Feel like your life has become dull or bland, and need a way out of your rut
b) Are willing to make changes in order to improve your life
c) Aren’t in survival mode about job security or money

If that sounds like you, do pick up a copy of this relevant and timely read.

Disclosure: We received a free copy of this book.

For being at the top of the food chain, humans aren’t terribly evolved. Give us a complex situation like, say, a credit meltdown with a zero accountability, and we drape a TARP and hope it will just go away. Individual humans just aren’t good at making hard decisions in complicated situations.

That said, a smart, carefully tuned group of us could be. Ants, which aren’t too smart as individuals, do it. Bees do it. Even educated humans do it, given the right circumstances.

A smart swarm is “a group of individuals who respond to one another and to their environment in ways that give them power, as a group, to cope with uncertainty, complexity and change,” according to the National Geographic senior editor Peter Miller, whose book The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done dives into the dynamics of how large groups function in nature. Miller uses the relatively new science of understanding flocks, schools, and colonies to make his points about how smart swarms operate.

This “science of collaboration” is relevant to business, especially considering how much the Internet has boosted human collaboration. Ants in a colony assign just the right number of workers to each job every day—can you imagine the competitive advantages of having similar flexibility in your own company? Miller explains how businesses use the mechanics of the smart swarm to optimize manufacturing, routing trucks, networking phones, and more.

Content

Each of The Smart Swarm’s well-written chapters features an example from nature—insects, fish, birds—to illustrate principles, or defining features, of a smart swarm. Miller peppers in knowledge from a span of other fields, too, including economics, political science, government, computer science, mathematics, robotics, physics, and even The Lord of the Rings. Each chapter also includes a case study; subjects include Boeing, the Iraqi municipal government, and the CIA.

Between the introduction and conclusion, the book has five story- and example-rich chapters:

• Chapter 1 explores how ants optimize changing conditions, followed by a case study on how gas supplier American Air Liquide uses a computer system with an ant-based algorithm to save it an estimated $20 million per year.

• Chapter 2 demonstrates the necessity of diversity of knowledge and friendly competition in a smart swarm using honeybees, Best Buy, Boeing, and a small town in Vermont.

• Chapter 3 uses the electric grid, termites, national intelligence, and Hurricane Katrina to illustrate how smart, adaptable networks work.

• Chapter 4 uses flocks of sparrows, caribou and animation in Lord of the Rings to explore how individuals each play a subtle part in keeping their entire group on course.

• Chapter 5 explores what triggers peaceful swarms of locusts to go into mass destruction mode and create a plague; it applies examples to crowd disasters in Saudi Arabia and the Philippines as well as market bubbles.

What do you get out of all this research, case studies, and examples? A handful of principles that define a smart swarm, including:

• Individuals aren’t smart, but the colony is. A smart swarm self-organizes “from the bottom up, as the result of interactions among many parts.”

• A smart swarm distributes group problem solving through individual interactions. Miller uses the beach as a way to illustrate this. If you go to beach, you find a space for your towel that’s a comfortable distance from everyone else; if you look at crowded beach from aerial view, it’s a mosaic of evenly-spaced towels. Also, if a couple of people stand up and stare into the water, then a couple more do it, pretty soon everyone will be staring into the water in a collective state of alarm.

• The more choices a smart swarm has, the better it performs. A smart swarm made up of individuals with a diverse skill set leads to more choices. Assuming the group is structured right and given an appropriate task—necessary for it to be a smart, not dumb, group–friendly competition of ideas will let the best strategy percolate upwards. The smart swarm will then execute that strategy.

• Smart swarms are self-healing: “In an ant colony or a beehive, many individuals can fail to perform their jobs and the system still functions just fine, because many other individuals, sensing something different in their surroundings, adjust their behavior accordingly,” writes Miller.

Thoughts

Thanks to increased global interdependence and lightning-speed communication, business and government are itching for a model to replace the old hierarchical one. The Smart Swarm points us in the right direction.

This wasn’t clear to me at first, because each chapter in the book is so rich with examples and diverse stories that I had could only ruminate the book’s deeper implications after stepping away from it for a while. It’s a challenge to pick through and grasp everything. I can’t help but think there must be a better way to make each of Miller’s principles more accessible on the first read, eg. listing the principles in bold before the beginning of each chapter.

That said, The Smart Swarm was effective in that it introduced me to a whole new vocabulary and idea set around collaboration. I started reading the book with a preconceived notion that individual experts are the smartest problem solvers; the Smart Swarm cured me of that.

It’s also very well written. Miller includes reams of quotes, references to books, research, and case studies to make his points. He clearly did his homework; his writing integrates everything smoothly.

The Smart Swarm provides relevant, quality information that everyone in the Information Age should know about. For that reason, I recommend it to everyone, with a caveat—it helps if you’re a close reader.

Disclosure: We received a free copy of The Smart Swarm.

A lot of blood and sweat goes into maximizing a store’s consumer appeal. Designing a store that both attracts shoppers and makes them buy is practically an art form.

It’s a crucial art, at that. Shoppers actually choose most brands not as a result of advertising or brand awareness efforts, but at the point of purchase–the store display, studies show. If you master the point of purchase, you make the sale.

This is why spending on shopper marketing has doubled since 2004. Proctor & Gamble alone spends $500 million per year on it. Still, shopper marketing, which has taken the retail world by storm in recent years, defies easy description. It refers to the conglomeration of things that retailers need to consider in putting up a store, from design to packaging, layout to pricing, shopper behavior to creating the right sample counter.

Markus Stahlberg and Ville Maila have compiled the first book on the topic, aptly entitled Shopper Marketing: How to Increase Purchase Decisions at the Point of Sale. After 20 months of what Stahlberg calls “relentless correspondence and face-to-face meetings” with more than 300 experts around the world, the authors compiled the 35 shopper marketing essays that define the essence of the discipline.

Contents

Because Shopper Marketing is a collection of essays, it’s not a cover-to-cover read. There’s a lot in here, from shopper heat maps to case studies on corner displays. The most memorable essays revolve around:

• Where shoppers go once they’re in a store.
• How to cut through shoppers’ immunity to their surroundings.
• Incorporating the five senses into shopper experience.
• The patterns of customer behavior.
• How to offer shoppers more value with in-store media.
• What motivates customers to buy.
• How marketers sometimes make it hard for a customer to make a purchase, and how to override that.

Shopper marketing is complex and necessary—and doing it right isn’t easy. That’s why essays covered so many topics, with case studies, charts, research, tips, and analysis mixed in.

Thoughts

The whole book is rather heavy on the analysis and light on anecdotes. It is not light reading, but the in-depth essays are satisfying and educational. Shopper Marketing’s strongest asset was that it teaches a shopper-centric mindset, helping you understand how shoppers think and behave. This is crucial for attracting and retaining consumers in a hypercompetitive retail environment.

I would recommend Shopper Marketing to any retailer for a big-picture overview of how shoppers think. As a consumer, I also found it fascinating to learn just how much time, effort, and money goes into making people like me buy.

Disclosure: We received a free copy of Shopper Marketing.

The authors turn CDOs into something that makes sense, CEOs into the fallible humans they are, and even transform the government into a place readers can picture. The result is a book not only on the causes of the financial crisis, but commentary on corruption, systemic hubris, and human nature itself.

Content

All the Devils Are Here offers a chronological overview of the three decades that fomented the financial crisis. It starts in the late 1970s and ends with the Obama administration’s 2010 financial reform bill.

Rather than going into detail about one firm’s collapse, the way other books do, Devils covers several major players through time. Every creatively-titled chapter (“I Like Big Bucks and I Cannot Lie,” for example) tells the story of one or more major players, from Fannie Mae to Goldman Sachs. The authors add color and personality to these players using anecdotes, quotes, and email excerpts.

The authors’ extensive research, apparent throughout the book, resulted in an overview of the crisis that made me take a step back from my previous assumptions.

For example, none other than the government first securitized mortgages. When derivatives made it to the international stage, governments around the world, meeting in the “Basel I” conference on international banking regulation, agreed that mortgage products weren’t risky. They decided that banks’ capital requirements should be lower if they held more of those “safe” mortgage derivatives.

The Fed fed into this delusion by assuming that derivatives like credit default swaps would let banks offload the risk of holding capital to other entities. With that risk passed on, the logic went, banks were less likely to fail in the traditional way–by making bad loans. Policymakers also saw no need to regulate derivatives, which they too saw as risk-free.

This lack of regulation, in turn, gave banks incentive to get creative with derivatives. Besides agreeing that mortgage-backed derivatives were safe, the financial world also thought innovations in general reduced risk. In reality, say the authors, they dispersed risk so widely that everyone was affected. This perceived lack of risk also led ratings agencies to give derivatives–and derivatives of derivatives, like credit default swaps–AAA ratings.

The risk hallucination kept growing. Lenders that there was zero risk of default, so they stopped caring if creditors could pay them back. Securitization eventually became the main way of funding mortgages. A Clinton-era push for increased homeownership increased the Wall Street subprime feeding frenzy. Meanwhile, Countrywide Mortgage’s bulldog CEO, Angelo Mozilo, starting pushing refinances in the early 1990s. Refinances eventually made up a whopping 82% of subprime mortgages.

The authors cover how the government, its GSEs, Merrill Lynch, Ameriquest, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and AIG jumped on board and inflamed the economy. You learn about each company’s history, the personalities of its CEOs and top executives, and its relationship with the government. There’s also a skillful emphasis on how demagoguery, especially at AIG and Merrill, as well as a restrictive company culture induced disastrous results. Goldman Sachs, still the media villain du jour, actually had the most effective leadership and company culture of anyone in the book.

A Note on Fannie and Freddie

The stories that enlightened me most in the entire book had to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Our GSEs, it turns out, aren’t as quaint and innocent as they sound.

Since inception, Fannie has been at odds with Wall Street and the government, protecting profits while neutering the law, write the authors. It owned its massive, lucrative 30-year-fixed mortgage market share with the help of lobbying (FNM and FRE spent $170 million between 1996-2006) and the belief by investors that the government would never let Fannie default.

Its job was to “supply liquidity when the housing markets needed it,” but Fannie forgot that and focused instead on generating ever-increasing profits and trying to keep pace with the private market. After subprime became mainstream and ate into their market share, our sweet-sounding, greed-infused GSEs jumped onto the subprime bandwagon. They bought in during 2005-7, the worst possible years to join, according to the authors. When the cards collapsed, their losses were massive.

Despite all of the GSEs’ hubris and corruption, the government still hasn’t decided what to do with Fannie and Freddie, which today back about 95% of homeowner mortgages.

The Authors’ Outlook

McLean and Nocera wrap up the book with a critical look at the Obama administration’s 2010 financial reform bill, saying that regulation is only as good as the regulators who enforce it. They also point out that despite putting several key financial crisis players on trial, the government can’t punish something that, while corrupt, isn’t considered a crime. I closed the book feeling the same way many people probably do these days: dubious, with a twinge of optimism.

Thoughts

McLean and Nocera line the story with such thorough, fascinating detail that I can’t begin to chronicle all the new facts that jumped out at me. Suffice it to say that I was pleased to get to know some of the main players in the financial crisis more personally.

Devils covers media whipping boys like Goldman Sachs and AIG in a more nuanced light, making readers understand how leadership and company culture contributed to the firms’ post-crisis fates. One of the book’s most valuable contributions, besides its coverage of Fannie and Freddie, was Roland Arnall’s Ameriquest. This corrupt company, heavy on cheating and cocaine, was one of the dirtiest players in the financial game. Yet the media and government–which ended up giving Arnall a post as US ambassador–continue to overlook it.

It’s easy to say “systemic hubris,” but much harder to describe what that looks like in real life. McLean and Nocera do this well. After finishing the book, I ended up with a big picture view of the financial crisis, of the humans whose greed built the straw house that burned in ’08.

I followed the financial crisis while it was happening, and frankly always felt like pieces were missing. The books that I read after the financial crisis covered certain bits in detail, but I still had no bird’s-eye view. Finally, All the Devils Are Here provided it. I highly encourage anyone who wants not only a chronology of the financial crisis, but a valuable look at human nature, to pick up this book.

Disclosure: We received a free preview copy of All the Devils Are Here.

The tagline says it all. You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. The Social Network, a fictionalized account of Facebook’s rise to fame, depicts the sacrifices and steamrolling that many successful businesspeople go through on their way to the top. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s brilliant, almost Aspbergian founder, is the Gen-Y version of the timeless American business hero.

The Social Network doesn’t extol Zuckerberg, though. Played by a sourpussed Michael Eisenberg, Zuckerberg balances out his social reticence by programming a viral software application that lets Harvard students express their basic social needs online.

As Facebook grows, Zuckerberg alienates his former business partners and best friend. Set mainly at Harvard University and in Palo Alto, The Social Network depicts the trials, successes, and innumerable parties that helped nurture Facebook to a landmark one million users.

Plot

The movie alternates between two depositions in a conference room, which represent the current time, and scenes from the past depicting Facebook’s founding and growth. The depositions pit Zuckerberg and his lawyers against two different plaintiffs–the preppy Winkelvoss twins are one; former business partner Eduardo Saverin is another. When lawyers quote him or ask him certain questions about Facebook, the movie pans back to chronological segments of the Facebook story. Whenever a story scene ends, we’re brought back to the deposition. I didn’t include all the deposition segments below, just the arc of the Facebook founding story.

The opening scene depicts Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend breaking up one night in a bar. The scene employs the kind of satisfying, witty dialogue that reminds me of The West Wing, which Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin also wrote.

After the breakup, a dismayed Zuckerberg goes back to his dorm room, blogs, and gets drunk. To ease his misery, he comes up with an idea, a website that lets users rate the looks of female Harvard undergrads. He spends several hours coding the site, hacking each Harvard residence hall’s database to compile the collection of pictures. “Face Mash” becomes so popular so quickly that Harvard’s servers crash at 4am that same morning.

Zuckerberg gains notoriety through Face Mash, attracting the attention of business partners Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra. They invite Zuckerberg to program a Harvard social media website called The Harvard Connection. After agreeing, Zuckerberg goes to his friend Eduardo Saverin, a Harvard economics major and financial whiz, for seed money for a concept he calls “The Facebook,” an invite-only social networking site available only to those with a harvard.edu email. Saverin provides $1,000 seed money to get Zuckerberg started.

Read more about the plot here. Spoiler alert!

Thoughts

Although The Social Network has the New York Times refers to as having a “complicated” relationship with the truth, it’s still a captivating, well-produced movie.

Trent Reznor’s dark music, combined with party, drinking, and drug scenes make The Social Network surprisingly edgy. The acting was excellent. Eisenberg made for a multifaceted, if not true-to-life Zuckerberg. Justin Timberlake was a vivid Sean Parker; the Winkelvoss twins, both played by Armie Hammer, embodied the most annoying aspects of America’s preppy elite while still being funny. Douglas Urbanski’s Larry Summers, then-president of Harvard, made me laugh out loud several times during his one brief scene.

The business themes in the movie might sound familiar. Zuckerberg, the company founder, single-mindedly pursued his own growth vision for the website. When someone told him something he didn’t want to hear–Saverin wanting to monetize the site with ads, for example–Zuckerberg simply didn’t listen. When someone pointed him in a direction that fit his vision, the way Sean Parker did, he went for it.

Like a true techie, Zuckerberg is something of an artist, calling Facebook a constant work in progress. Like the moneymen that they are, the competition (the Winkelvoss twins) and slighted former partner (Saverin) seek out their share, using the law to squeeze as much out of Zuckerberg as they can get. These thing happen in the business world every day. The Social Network applies them to the latest generation to hit the entrepreneurial circuit, tech-savvy Gen Y-ers.

Overall, The Social Network was well-paced, lacking dull spots or drag. It was adult enough to feature an ambiguous ending, with themes timeless enough to appeal across generations. Plainly put, The Social Network was a good movie. Just take it with a grain of salt–it’s no documentary.

Most Internet users find Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter pretty intuitive. Sign up, make connections, comment, respond. If you need extra tips, they’re readily available online.

There are, however, some users who are unfamiliar with social networking websites, and prefer to learn about them by reading a book on how to use them. Author and publisher Steve Weber has created just that kind of book. In Wired for Work: Get a Job Fast Using LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, he details how to use LinkedIn, Facebook, and two other networks for finding a job.

Wired for Work is a brief, informative guide on how to use popular online networking tools to find job opportunities and get hiring managers to notice you. In a little over 100 pages, Wired for Work introduces you to social networking for your career, using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace for job hunts, and common legal issues.

Weber provides basic details about each of the four networking websites mentioned above. He holds your hand through the process of signing up, building your network, using its features, and other essentials. He mixes in the occasional screenshot and success story to make things more understandable. He also adds little tricks you may not have heard about before, if you’re already familiar with the software (for example, I didn’t know that I could put my Amazon reading list on LinkedIn).

The first and last chapters don’t show you how to use a social networking site, but offer other useful information. Chapter 1 gives a good overview of where we are now vis a vis social networking for your career. You learn details on avoiding scams and a little bit about personal branding. The last chapter covers common legal issues like copyright, defamation, and trademarks.

This simple, easy-to-understand book is laid out the way a lot of online writing is, with subtitles, bullet lists, and boldfaced points. In fact, you can read an online PDF version for free here.

In sum, I’d call it a quick and dirty guide to basic social networking for job hunters. The book targets anyone who’s not familiar with today’s social networking technology, specifically Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace. I’m not sure why the author included MySpace—maybe he should include a disclaimer that it’s not as big (at least for non-musicians) as those other websites.

I breezed through it and, as an experienced user of all the sites he mentioned, found Weber’s information thorough. I wouldn’t hesitate to give it to someone unfamiliar with modern gadgets or computers, eg. my mother-in-law.

Disclaimer: We received a free promotion copy of this book.

After a messy divorce, a doctor chose to close his successful practice. He couldn’t afford to give 50% of it to his wife.

Dennis, Joanna, and the doctor made stupid small business mistakes. Dennis never chose the right business partner. Joanna didn’t understand cash flow. The doctor didn’t have his practice valued until it was too late.

Though relatively common, business mistakes like the ones above are avoidable. The stories come from Smart Business Stupid Business: What School Never Taught You About Building a Successful Business, a new book by CPA Diane Kennedy and small business expert Megan Hughes. Kennedy and Hughes provide tips, recommendations, and real-life anecdotes help you avoid common business mistakes.

Their recommendations are based on years of experience in the bookkeeping and legal industries. Smart Business Stupid Business fills in the tax, bookkeeping, and legal knowledge gaps that most small business owners have somewhere in their organization. The end result, ideally, is that you prevent yourself from experiencing stupid mistakes at all.

Summary of the Book’s Contents

The authors list Action Steps (exercises you can do) and resources at the end of each chapter. The book is best read with a notebook, so that you can jot down answers to exercises and notes as you go.

The book is divided into seven sections. Each section is comprised of several chapters.

The first section is one of the few parts of the book that doesn’t talk about bookkeeping, accounting, or legal aspects of running a small business. Here, you learn about building an entrepreneurial foundation for your business, including how to devise a mission and values.

Section 2, on the other hand, dives into the kinds of details that make up the meat of Smart Business Stupid Business. This section tells you how to cover your butt if the IRS takes an interest in you, fund options for your business, make projections, recognize and manage cash flow, select good partnerships, boost your business credit, and recognize employee embezzlement.

Section 3 teaches you bookkeeping basics that every small business owner should know. In Section 4, you learn about financial statements and financial scorecards. Section 5 jumps into more advanced asset protection strategies, such as the benefits and drawbacks of C- vs. S-corporations.

The next two sections include chapters that veer away from the book’s bookkeeping core. In Section 6, you read about pricing your time right, creating systems that allow employees to replicate your own functions, and creating and managing passive income. Section 7 tells you about exit strategies, buyouts, and building your legacy.

My Thoughts

The meat of this book had to do with accounting, bookkeeping, and tax tips. I found some of these tips original and valuable. For example, the chapters on projections and embezzlement gave me insights I’d never read about before. I learned about new types of 401(K) plans, too. And after reading the book, I had a general idea of what could go wrong with my business down the line if I don’t pay attention to my paperwork.

The authors also have online resources to help you learn to streamline and organize your business. These resources look useful, but be forewarned: The authors promote them (and themselves) a lot in the book, more than most other business books I’ve read.

It’s not clear from the book’s title or back-of-jacket summary that it mostly covers taxes, accounting, and legal issues. Though it dives into some entrepreneurial content at the beginning, Smart Business Stupid Business doesn’t tell you anything about growing your customer base, marketing, relationships, or many other crucial entrepreneurial steps. To me, this means you should already have a good business and good product before reading this book (unless you’re in the accounting business).

I recommend Smart Business Stupid Business for people who already have a small business, but need to get it organized in a clean, financially sustainable way.

Here’s the book’s website.

Disclosure: We received a free promotional copy of this book.

The Amish, that famous religious community concentrated mostly in Pennsylvania, avoid technology and cars. They have an eighth-grade education. Yet they’ve mastered many of the business concepts it takes the rest of us years to understand.

Author Erik Wesner, who writes the excellent AmishAmerica blog, spent two years researching Amish businesses in Pennsylvania and Ohio. His new book, “Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive” is the result.

By weaving together the Amish experience, common business knowledge, and ideas from mainstream business gurus, Wesner derives business lessons for the rest of us. As the title suggests, the Amish remind us that business doesn’t have to be a complicated venture.

What’s Inside

Here’s a general summary of what’s in each chapter:

Chapters 1 & 2: You learn about how the Amish use vision and faith to build successful firms. Next, Wesner explores how Amish people become successful with only an eighth-grade education, standard in the culture.

Chapter 3 describes the Amish approach to sales and marketing, which emphasizes relationship-building and customer service.

Chapter 4 dives more deeply into relationships and customer service. You also learn how the Amish tend their reputations and difficult clients.

Chapter 5 & 6 cover Amish approach to team-building, managing, and hiring. Many Amish people have to keep community interests at heart when hiring, firing, and motivating employees.

In Chapter 7, you learn how the Amish stay competitive. This includes how to compete in a friendly, sustainable way with others in your community—not something that’s standard in so-called English (American) culture.

Wesner wraps up the book with the Amish definition of business and success, leading readers to ponder what community, success, and their overall goals mean to them.

Thoughts on Style

When I first started reading the book, I couldn’t figure out whether Wesner was describing the Amish or imparting general business wisdom. He’d weave Amish tales, business expert quotes, and general business wisdom into the same section. After a little hesitation, however, the style grew on me. I ultimately saw it as unique and quite seamless.

If one thing about the book caught me off-guard, it was Wesner’s gentle, respectful treatment of the Amish. Chock it up to bad media conditioning. I suppose I expect business books to dictate something to me, and this one didn’t. It didn’t assume wrong or right. It was respectful. (Hey, maybe we could use more of this.)

Wesner also has a knack for illustrating how the Amish operate in their day-to-day lives. His stories, anecdotes, quotes, and research made me feel like I knew the Amish. I could tell he spent a lot of time with them.

Thoughts on Content

If you read business books, you’ve probably already learned some of Success Made Simple’s business lessons, which cover general business topics like marketing and human resources. The lessons I found most useful, however, were those I hadn’t heard before. These include how the Amish use faith as a catalyst for business motivation and success. Or how Amish treat competition when everyone’s in the same community.

I was also fascinated to learn that the Amish don’t go to court. That shines a new light on how to sift out and treat difficult customers without threatening them with legal action. These unique lessons, the ones you don’t find everywhere else, made the book stand out.

A Worthy Read

Success Made Simple is one of those books everyone can benefit from. Its mellow style and interesting anecdotes make it a good commuting or poolside companion. I especially recommend this book for business students, anyone interested in general business lessons, or anyone interested in the Amish.

Full disclosure: We received a free copy of this book.

OK, turn that around. What do you think about when you’re not watching a movie? If you compare real-life events to movies, think of the right movie quotes for every situation, and see most movies the week they’re released in theaters, read on. A couple of movie buffs just like you put together what could be the ultimate compilation of business lessons from movies.

Many movies–even date movies and comedies–are full of lessons for business. Authors Kevin Coupe and Michael Sansolo cover the best of those lessons in The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies. In their new book, they share the business wisdom in 65 famous classic and modern movies. The Big Picture’s combination of clever business analysis with the joy of cinema makes it a fun, insightful read.

Content

The Big Picture is broken down into six parts, which in turn are divided into fifty-one short (4-12 page) chapters. Here’s how they divvy up the sections:

Part 1: Action/adventure movies like Jaws and Rocky
Part 2: Biopics/documentaries like Schindler’s List and Pumping Iron
Part 3: Classics like High Noon and Citizen Kane
Part 4: Comedy, including Tootsie and Charlie Wilson’s War
Part 5: Date movies, eg. Sex and the City and Julie & Julia
Part 6: Drama, including Amadeus and The Godfather

Every chapter is devoted to a different business lesson, indicated in the title section of the chapter. Lesson topics include branding, customers, strategy, leadership, ethics, and more. In each chapter, you learn what a certain movie is about, and what themes and scenes carry the relevant business lesson.

The most gratifying business lessons are the unexpected ones. For example, the authors derive a good lesson from Charlie Wilson’s War. In it, Congressman Charlie Wilson, only one person, managed to make a huge difference in Afghanistan’s Soviet resistance movement. Sadly, his efforts ultimately ended up being in vain, because Congress never passed a motion to rebuild Afghanistan afterwards. The lesson: One person can make a difference, but if you don’t see the job through, it can all go down the toilet.

Many of the authors’ movie selections are also refreshing. Who knew you could learn about the importance of delivering bad news as soon as it happens from Adam Sandler’s “The Wedding Singer”? Despite many clever and original movie choices, however, a few lessons, like build relationships in good times (shown through The Godfather), are rather obvious.

The authors sometimes banter with one another, or give you different individual insights in the same chapter. That keeps the book fun.

Thoughts

The Big Picture could be a great resource for presentations, speeches, training, and any other business activity that could use good movie references. The authors make it easy for you to find a cinematic example to express your business point. This may be a good book to keep around as a reference if you speak or team-build frequently.

The authors’ well-written commentary made me want to see a number of movies again—or for the first time. That said, I’m not a movie buff. I like movies, but it’s not a habit of mine to think about them outside of the movie theater. For that reason, the book felt more laborious to me than I think it would have to a true movie fan.

I also noticed that it was more fun to read about the movies I’d already seen than those I hadn’t. This also makes me think that someone who has seen–and remembered–a lot of movies would enjoy this book a little more than a casual movie watcher like me.

All in all, if you’re a movie buff, The Big Picture will gratify and instruct. It’s also useful if you want a good reference book for motivational, team-building, and training speeches. I recommend it for movie lovers, movie critics, and anyone with a heart for cinema.

Disclosure: We received a free copy of this book.

The closest I come to actually doing this is virtual farming virtually via MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games). Hey, you gotta start somewhere.

In a trend marketer’s view, I’m actually fantasizing about Traditionalizing (going back the tradition). Instead of acting on my fantasy, however, I am Gender Blending (playing video games, traditionally a male past time) and Coming Together (playing video games in a group).

Long before I started yearning for tradition or playing MMOGs, someone discovered that these sentiments were, in fact, widespread trends. They analyzed those trends. They helped companies build a strategy around them, so that those companies can now target people like me with relevant products. Meanwhile, the same trend marketers are busy uncovering next year’s trends.

William Higham is one such trend marketer. In The Next Big Thing: Spotting and Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit, he has written what could be the definitive guide for companies seeking to find and exploit consumer trends.

Content

The book is divided into six very rich parts. Here’s a brief summary:

Part 1: Covers what trends are (long-term changes in consumer behavior), how they impact global commerce, and the opportunities and threats they present to a company.

Part 2: Describes what trend analysis is, why you need it, and how to formalize it into a trend marketing function.

Part 3: Details the forces that cause trends and where they happen. It educates you on the difference trends and fads.

Part 4: Teaches you how and where to identify trends.

Part 5: Tells you who creates trends, how they progress, what trends grow fastest, what influences the trajectory of a trend, and how to predict the development of a trend.

Part 6: Instructs how to integrate trends into your company strategy.

As the summary above may indicate, The Next Big Thing is a very detailed book. Yet that detail reflects depth rather than digression. Higham leaves you with a comprehensive understanding, not just an overview, of trends.

Comments

Throughout the book, Higham uses an impressive number of examples to support his points. He integrates his encyclopedic knowledge of trends and branding into a story of what trends are, how they work, and how companies can harness them. You learn about the contexts trends operate in. Instead of being a vaguely defined mystery, trends become something more predictable, more of a science.

Even the drier parts of the book–there were several–held gems. For example, there is a chapter devoted exclusively to using statistical data. That’s not very exciting, but, among other things you do learn how to recognize when marketers are manipulating data for their own advantage.

Why I recommend this book

Our world today is crowded and wired. We cycle through trends rapidly, making it hard for companies to stay informed enough to remain competitive. Even so, the study of trends is still a very new discipline, outside of fashion. This is the first book to break them down into understandable parts.

In addition, you learn to see things through a trend expert’s eyes. When I was reading the book, the knitting clubs and plate-breaking cafe I’ve come across started to make sense. They weren’t anomalies. They were signs of widespread trends. Even human history and culture starts to take on a different hue through a trend analyst’s eyes. This new perspective, along with the thoroughness of the book, made The Next Big Thing a truly valuable read.

If you need to understand and incorporate trends into your business, want to understand how trends work, or simply enjoy a well-researched book on a fascinating subject, do not miss The Big Picture.