Category Archives: Good Business

Lazy Man’s Way to Riches by Richard Gilly Nixon

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Update: Looks like someone found the workbook! Contact walrusbooks(AT)yahoo(DOT)com [-b 4/14/2007]

Warning: The additional workbook is nowhere to be found. [-b 1/26/2007]

The Lazy Man's Way to RichesThe Lazy Man’s Way to Riches – a neat little audio book. It has a lot of the ideas that Think And Grow Rich and Rich Dad, Poor Dad have in them. What really makes this guy stand out is that he explains that procrastination means more work. Not doing something that needs to get done drains as much energy as actually doing it, except it drains it for longer without results. Another cool idea was the type of people you’re surrounded with and how to build your company (not just in the business sense) to be beneficial. This is a lot like Napoleon Hill’s mastermind idea.

The thing that really stands out is the last part of the book about online products: e-books and such. While the ad campaign section isn’t exactly new news, one should considers that for its time, and even now, it’s a fantastic and thorough explanation. He covers e-zines and e-books and mailing lists and gives lots of fantastic ideas.

While I’d still recommend Rich Dad, Poor Dad as the wake-up book, the latter online business part of Richard Gilly Nixon’s The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches is worth listening to. I wonder what Joe Karbo’s original was like.

[Edit:] Warning: The site at the end of the book is either too hard to find or no longer valid… The book is worth listening too, but it’s a bummer the promised section isn’t readily available. – Thanks Gigi!
If anyone knows how to get there, please pass on how. Thanks. -b


Beans

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Beans: Four Principles for Running a Business in Good Times or Bad Beans, a very cute and to the point story about an already successful business owner trying to figure out what’s missing. The interesting thing about this story is that the guy asking for help already has everything in place. It’s pretty cool to hear about how a stewardess couple gets its business going and truly lives doing something they’re passionate about (the wife retired, but still helps out). In the end, the consultant brings out the framework of the four P’s: passion, people, personal and product, and tells Jack how they apply to his business. What’s neat about this book is that it’s told as a story rather than in concepts. It’s not super deep or super long, but it has some nice simple insights. The parts with the consultant feedback were alright, but I found the parts about Jack the most interesting and educational–and I think that’s what the authors intended.

I made the decision and officially started yesterday. Can you guess what I chose?

Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning

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Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of MeaningI thought Good Business was just another business book. Not that I don’t like business books, but this one is far more. The way the author describes working environments that foster flow and the way he discusses responsibility and purpose. He breaks it down so clearly. I want to go out and get the print version and take notes from it. It’s so clear and so powerful.

What is flow? Flow is when you’re vibing, it’s a period of time when you’re working at your maximum capacity. It’s when time gets distorted and you completely forget about yourself. You have clear goals and you become the task you’re accomplishing. The amount of flow time in one’s life corresponds with a feeling of purpose, happiness, and well-being. The author talks about strategies of bringing flow into the workplace, but also, toward the end of the pack, talks about choosing a life and career or business that’ll foster such time. He covers all sorts of topics like time allocation, family and work, and has so many insightful quotes. This is one of the few books on tape, that I’ll probably listen to twice.

Another really neat part of his work deals with complexity. He combines evolution, physics, biology, religion, and purpose and weaves through metaphoric threads to prove the need for growth in our lives. Building up step by step, he really creates a work of art, a very powerful one. This is definitely no regular business book. This is a book about living a meaningful life.

The most important concept I got from it so far, and there are many to choose from, is that in order to live a meaningful existence one must do something that’s enjoyable and complex enough to challenge, and at the same time it must benefit mankind. It’s that simple (broken down in far better detail in the book): find something challenging that you love and that helps people. If you make a bad choice, get stuck, and start losing energy, try something else. Find what you love, not what you’re not good at and not what’s too easy. Choose a fun challenge that’ll help others and help you.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning’

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Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of MeaningAfter my lesson, I headed over to the audio books section to get my next few hours of learning while driving. I picked up some foreign language cd’s and another business book: Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. Right now, I know it’s about time to stop jumping from book to book and really focus and follow one, however, the subtitle caught my attention. I’m glad I picked it up.

It’s another Nightingale-Conant Production. For those that don’t know, it seems like almost every book makes the world a better more meaningful place. This book is no exception. From the get-go Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (say that three times fast) made a few remarkable points about happiness. (Not a literal quotation, more an outline of thoughts)

We strive for happiness. It’s above wealth and power, because those are sought after to attain happiness. What are different levels of happiness? How do we attain them? Who is happier?

On a very low level, we need some material things to make us happy. Someone who’s starving, will find happiness in being able to get food. An extremely impoverished family will find happiness in rising to a more stable level of living. However, after a certain bit, materials no longer have a lasting effect. Many people who win the lottery are at first very happy and then they go back down. Many people who become injured or disabled, also show a comeback and bounce back to previous levels of happiness. How does this work?

Again, at the lowest level, we have basic necessities. Having enough to live comfortably. After this level people go for status or love to support them. Marriage and family, status symbols, cars, job titles, specific careers. These are steps toward getting self-esteem. Upon gaining this self-esteem, people may still be unhappy. In order to attain the highest level of happiness people must truly live out their life to its full capacity, meaning making use of their talents and abilities for a purpose greater then the self.

True happiness comes from knowing that one is living at 100% of one’s potential–from doing something that’ll improve other people’s lives and enjoying what you do.

This should be the basis for any business. Any company and every product must aim to raise its customers’ happiness. Some products offer only temporary improvements at high costs, while others offer hopes of happiness with little chance of success. Some try and fail to deliver, those are forgivable, while others lie from the start, those are not good businesses. A good business, that will bring true happiness to its owner is one that will bring happiness to its customers and to its employees. The perfect role is one which is complex enough to make you work hard and keep your interest, and at the same time it should energize you and make you feel like you’re living a fun and meaningful existence.

The purpose of one’s life should be to do something that raises the happiness of others and at the same time lets you enjoy doing it.

Few people have broken it down as well as Mihaly did within the first few minutes of his Good Business. Many have hinted at it, but he hit the spot. Can’t wait to share more.

Think and Grow Rich

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Think and Grow Rich“Think and Grow Rich” by Napolean Hill is an amazing plan-making, goal-setting, entrepreneurial book. It comes from one of Dale Carnegies’s (How to Win Friends & Influence People) industrious students. The book really focuses on how to create plans, see visions, and realize them. At times it gets a bit long, perhaps the author didn’t know that most people don’t remember lists of more than seven things, but the content is fantastic. I had my first business idea after reading the book and following its steps and because of this I learned about patents, product evaluation, goal setting and following through on plans.

I got the recommendation for this book from Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad, Poor Dad“. After reading that book, I realized that my web development job was going nowhere and just wasting my time. I was eager to start a new business. The plan was to teach SAT’s, however that wasn’t exactly a business rather a self-employment thing. Still not sure about what to do and excited to learn more I followed up with this book. The first thing it said was to set a goal, visualize it, and make a plan for it. My short term goal was to make twenty thousand in assets by the end of February. Since I was planning on studying for the GMAT and teaching SAT’s (the two help each other out quite nicely), why not make a new innovative product. The idea finally came, a special card game for memorizing new facts and words. I wrote down the plan to accomplishing it, and read the commitment to it and the steps every morning and evening.

Among the first steps was to read a book on patents. I accomplished this in the first week, even with work destroying my energy. By the following week I started a website and started thinking about the design. Eventually I did an analysis and realized that manufacturing and distribution of the game would force a fairly high price on everything and perhaps it would be better to get the whole thing going online. After about a week of planning and brainstorming, everything seemed clear. I told my roomate and we sat down to see the closest competition. Then came the big lesson. Someone had already created such a website a few years back. It actually had all the ideas we had and worked really well. It also charged about twice as much. At that point I joined a small start-up and had no time to work on any other projects until I quit my day job. On one hand it was a bit disappointing not being first, on the other hand it was an important lesson about doing one’s research. The lessons learned through this experience and inspired by the “Think and Grow Rich” book were priceless. The book gets kind of strange at times, but nonetheless if one follows its steps, he or she will surely gain a wealth of knowledge.

The ABC’s of Buiding a Business Team That Wins

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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.