All posts by Borya

Owning Wisdom

Owning Wisdom

You can live in a palace filled with treasures and still be poor. To be wealthy you must own the things you have.

So too with poverty of the mind: You may have all the knowledge and brilliant ideas in the world, but you are still poor until they have become part of you.

From the wisdom of the Lubavitcher Rebbe; words and condensation by Tzvi Freeman. To order Tzvi’s book, “Bringing Heaven Down to Earth”, click here.

(from Chabad‘s Thought of the Day)

SalesDogs

SalesDogs

SalesDogs (or Sales Dogs?) is another book that rocks. Also by Blair Singer. I’m not in sales, and have never been in sales, but after reading the book, I got all excited about it anyway. It made me want to go out and try my hand at it. I like how the book breaks down different kinds of people (or dogs) and its attitude. Instead of fixing what you suck at, it says get good at your natural skills, then start picking up skills from others. Its a neat flip of an approach. Some other cool things in the book are attitudes toward trying, rejections, getting started, and getting things done. I think this is a really good book to follow Rich Dad, Poor Dad or the Rich Dad Cashflow Quadrant book with. It gives a kind of path to someone that wants to move to the right side of the quadrant but isn’t sure how, and it does so realistically too. One of the interesting things it mentions is that it’s worth the time to stay at a certain place to build knowledge of the territory and learn all the skills and build the necessary authority and networks. It says that in choosing a company to work for, one should choose it for the training and knowledge that one will receive. It also gives a progression from selling products for someone and building the skills and knowledge, to opening a franchise and selling the product or service yourself, to eventually selling the franchise and learning to sell franchises. Very neat, optimistic, more realistic and clear. After reading this book I really started to wonder about my whole actuary endeavor. It got me all excited about sales and made me more eager to try real estate. The SOA exam is in mid February. I still plan to pass it, but as far as work goes, big surprise (sarcasm) now I’m thinking about another field. Next book: something about getting started in real estate.

The ABC’s of Buiding a Business Team That Wins

Rich Dad's Advisors®: The ABC's of Building a Business Team That Wins : The Invisible Code of Honor That Takes Ordinary People and Turns Them Into a Championship Team (Rich Dad's Advisors)Just read Blair Singer’s book on building business teams.

The chapter on leadership rocks. Looking at good leaders, it’s as if they’re following the qualities listed word for word. I love how he broke it down and the whole part about finding what people are good at and helping them improve on that, instead of telling people to work on things they’re not good at. In many situations just by changing the approach a person can accomplish the same thing through empowerment. I also love the debreifing section. How it breaks down everything and maximizes learning from every situation.

The code of honor is interesting, very similar to part of the message in Hill’s book. Looking at my friends and groups and companies, I see the code stuff is true. The only danger is when this code gets used against the employees or “friends”, when even achieving the goal offers nothing to most of the team and most of the individuals. I guess that’s the biggest thing to think about when joining a company or group, “Do I agree with the goals and with the code?” On the other hand, such a code for a group of friends trying to help each other succeed, a marriage, any kind of mutually beneficial team, as well as for every individual makes a whole lot of sense. Looking at real friendships, good marriages, and successful companies, if they didn’t follow such a code, they couldn’t perform at such a level.

I think keeping both sides in mind gives a really good picture of the dynamics in many relationships and helps one evaluate whether the relationship is a waste or worthwhile one (one that improves the community, the team, and you as person). It also gives a special sense of clarity to working under pressure. I think this is great book, but when reading it one should keep some of the previously mentioned questions in mind as well. I can’t wait to read SalesDogs.