Today the Gang of Four is light years ahead of its peers. And this lead is not just in one vital area, such as technology. In incredibly short periods of time, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google have done truly amazing things. They have built valu- able brands, released popular products and services, cultivated widespread followings, and generated enormous shareholder value and profits. They have quickly risen to prominence, in the process becoming the envy of thousands of organizations.They have been able to innovate and launch products, services, and even entire lines of business at unprecedented rates. As we’ll ?see in this book, the source of these companies’ competitive advantages stems from many things, including profound customer insights enabled by troves of data, immensely valuable partnerships, highly adaptive cultures, and the intelligent use of technology.

Big Company Syndrome
Historically, as large companies have grown to such dizzying heights, they have begun to show signs of fissure and eventual decline. Examples abound. IBM struggled mightily in the late 1980s and early 1990s. To be fair, it was able to successfully redefine itself as a service-oriented company, a turnaround that has been nothing short of astounding. Kodak was woefully unpre- pared for the rise of digital cameras and printing. More recently, many iconic organizations have lost their leads, sometimes in just a few years. Microsoft comes to mind and is discussed at length in Chapter 9 of this book.
It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the symptoms or diagnose the disease. After some degree of success, large organizations begin to tread water. Over the course of, say, five years, they start to exhibit the signs of stereotypical risk-averse, monolithic organizations. Again, this is well-trodden ground. Many books have been written about how size tends to encumber organizations, along with attendant bureaucracy and other baggage. Call it big company syndrome.

The Gang of Four, however, appears to be largely symptom-free. Each company continues to hire thousands of new employees, enter new and often challenging markets, forge new partner- ships, and launch entirely new lines of business. These compa- nies are doing much more than avoiding the traditional perils of growth, nor are they simply maintaining previous levels of performance. They are somehow increasing their organizational pace of innovation.

I’m looking forward to finishing Phil’s book — I’m still in the first section, but it has been very interesting so far (look for a review soon).

Have you read the book? What do you think?

NOTE: All links above to Amazon are affiliate links. As with any review I do, this is my honest opinion. If you feel differently after reading this book, please share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you for reading!

Related articles

• Phil Simon: Company Building In The Age Of The Platform: 8 Lessons From Amazon, Apple, Facebook, And Google (huffingtonpost.com)
• Book Review: The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business by Phil Simon (blogcritics.org)
• Interview with Phil Simon: The Age of The Platform (newbizblogger.com)

Being an entrepreneur and creating a small self-sustaining business, is vastly different than building a startup that will eventually have to provide returns to investors. Cynthia focuses on startups, with information on different types of funding, what information needs to be provided to investors, and the entire process of creating a product to provide a return on the investment. Every business is different, but there is some basic information that investors want to see. Cynthia sets out what information should be included in different types of documents, including investor presentations, customer presentations and the business plan. This doesn’t mean that the book isn’t helpful for any entrepreneur, but the focus is definitely on startups which will eventually have an exit strategy.

Pros: Real world tips and detailed instructions which can be applied to any business to help from everything from product development to creating a business plan to presenting to investors. This book is full of good information that can make any businesses growth just a little less rocky and certainly more organized and thoughtful.

Cons: Cynthia’s experience is in building startups which eventually have an exit strategy. She’s used to building companies relatively quickly in order to provide return on investment. While she does talk about bootstrapping and other funding methods (which may actually be more effective for many entrepreneurs), they are not the focus of this book. Cynthia also has a slightly negative view of most marketing in that it’s very structured and non-creative (which it can be, but it doesn’t have to be).

UPDATE: I was given a pre-release copy of the book (but didn’t realize it), and I’ve been told that all the editing errors have been fixed in the published copy, so no worries on the editing in any copy you purchase. There are also several places with fairly large editing problems, including The Prologue. If I had judged the book only on The Prologue, I would have demanded my money back. While there aren’t any spelling errors, there are missing words and a slew of grammar issues. And there’s a chapter which ends mid-sentence. Hopefully these problems can be fixed in a future edition because they put a damper on an otherwise very useful book.

Conclusion: Despite the focus on startups with an exit strategy, Startup from the Ground Up is an extremely useful book for any entrepreneur. One of my measures of books is how many pages I dog-ear and how many notes I take, and this book was full of both. I highly recommend this book to any type of entrepreneur.

What are your thoughts if you’ve read the book?

NOTE: All links above to Amazon are affiliate links. I was sent a free copy of the book and asked if I would review it. As with any review I do, this is my honest opinion. If you feel differently after reading this book, please share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you for reading!

Story Potential

Initially, Ryan sets the stage for what happened in his life in the opening chapters. There’s some interesting story lines here. Getting out of trouble of being a gang member to eventually become a successful entrepreneur is no easy feat. Unfortunately, much of the story is glossed over as just a means for establishing Ryan’s history and reputation. Ryan also adds some good stories to some of the chapters as a means of explaining a point or illustrating a situation.  Near the end of the book Ryan realizes that his stepfather really was his Dad in every important meaning of the word.  How Ryan struggled without a good male role model and his relationship with his natural father and stepfather would have made for an engaging story — if only that was the true focus of the book.

Roadmap & Guide

While billed as a roadmap and guide, there wasn’t anything particularly insightful in Ryan’s recommendations.  You’ve probably read them and heard them all before.  I honestly had a hard time getting through the middle of the book and almost set it down. However, there is some really good information about financing and investing, which is a black hole to most entrepreneurs. And some of the insights that are shared with personal stories are helpful in terms of learning from another’s experiences. But the book’s roadmap and guide is shakey at best — there are much better guides in terms of starting and running a business or startup.

Role Model & Lessons Learned

Ryan is definitely a role model for troubled youths who are discouraged about their future.  But, similar to others, Ryan didn’t get out of trouble on his own (although he did have to have the perseverance and grit to succeed) — he found mentors and others in his network to help him out every step of the way.  That was one lesson that wasn’t blatantly spelled out: you succeed because of who you know and the relationships with those people (whether business or personal). Ryan really isn’t a self-made entrepreneur.  He never went it alone.  He always had help: either from his step-father, investors or his business teams.

Verdict

I think Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur tries to be both an inspiring story and a roadmap and doesn’t succeed at either. I think it would have been a much more interesting read if it was written as a memoir or story, with insights added as part of the storyline.  There could even be a pretty interesting non-fictional story written around Ryan’s life.  But as a business road map, I wouldn’t recommend this book. If you’re looking for some insights or case studies from someone who has been successful with startups, or need some recommendations for financing or getting investors, there definitely are some good tidbits.

What are your thoughts if you’ve read the book?

NOTE: All links above to Amazon are affiliate links. I was sent a free copy of the book and asked if I would review it. As with any review I do, this is my honest opinion. If you feel differently after reading this book, please share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you for reading!

While the book is full of examples of The New Small companies using technology as a competitive advantage, my favorite example is Chaotic Moon Studios, which helps organizations with their mobile strategies and development. Chaotic Moon is not only interesting from their use of technology (which you would expect from a development company), but also in their use of technology to improve their business model. The term mobility brings to mind smartphones, but Chaotic Moon also helps companies re-publish content and applications across different platforms (for example, from the Microsoft XBox to the Wii). Not only do they help develop “mobile” applications, they also will handle development, marketing and distribution for a share of the revenue if they feel it has a viable market. They  helped News Corp. develop the first ever fully digital daily publication with The Daily iPad application. Using technology as a competitive advantage is at the heart of Chaotic Moon’s business model (even technology companies can find new ways to use technology competitively).

My overall thoughts:

Pros: The New Small is a pretty easy read.  Each chapter covers a topic, starting out with an overview and includes a case study from an actual small business, closing with a summary of main points. If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur (the target audience), this book does a great job of explaining and showing how small businesses are using technology as a business strategy, as well as giving ideas of how technology can be used for any business (who is willing to try). Even for those with more technology experience, all the case studies in the book are helpful for spawning new ideas or using to show the value of technology to clients or management.

Cons: As someone who is very connected to new technologies and how companies are using them, the main themes of this book were nothing new (but they may be for less technological folks). The structure of the book can be a bit difficult to read at times (in the digital Kindle version), since some of the footnotes run into the content and the headings don’t stand out very well. Since the book is about The News Small, the sentence structure “The New Small knows…” was a bit overused and got a bit tiring to read after awhile.

Verdict: If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur who is curious about how technology can be used, not only for cost savings and efficiency, but also as a competitive advantage, then I recommend taking a look at The New Small. Unlike many books which just explain how small businesses should be doing something, Phil uses a ton of examples of actual small businesses who are doing exactly what he’s talking about in the book. The proof is in the pudding, and Phil’s book is full of proof. As an easy read, with good explanations and summaries, Phil makes it easy to understand the advantages of technologies so that anyone can figure out ways to apply them to their own organization.

If you’ve read this book, what do you think?

NOTE: All links above to Amazon are affiliate links. I was sent a free digital copy of the book and asked if I would review it. As with any review I do, this is my honest opinion. If you feel differently after reading this book, please share your thoughts in the comments.  Thank you for reading!

A Forgotten Asset: Current Web Presence

Often people forget about their website and other online sites they’ve created for their business in favor of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. But these websites are valuable assets in any online strategy. As Scott, explains, social networks are for having ongoing conversations and places like the corporate website are destinations where people go to do something specific (get information, purchase from you, request a quote, etc.). Figuring out how to unite current websites with social networks may be difficult to figure out, so Scott has provided 7 easy to understand (and follow) steps to a unified web presence:

1. Identify Your Constituents – While this may be obvious, some companies have different audiences with different needs and interests and trying to serve them all in one place may be ineffective.  Properly identifying who you are trying to reach is key to any marketing strategy (offline or on).
2. Identify Actions – Having a clear call to action is one of the most missed parts of marketing strategies for many companies.  If you spend a lot of effort building an audience, but it’s not clear what they should do next, you’re missing out on a lot of sales.
3. Create Conversations – Social networking is obviously about having conversations, but to unify your web and your social networking presence, you need to have them working in concert.  People should know where to find you if they’d like to ask you a question or have a conversation (beyond just a contact form).
4. Define the Content Visitors Want – Some people may be interesting in your promotions, but the great majority of people aren’t interested in being advertised to. You need to figure out what information you can provide that is of interest to your target audience.
5. Define Your Communication Style – How you communicate online should be directly tied to how you’d like people to view your brand. I find that it can help to list out attributes you’d like your brand to have associated with it if you thought of it as a person. Setting this style (and persona) ahead of time helps make sure that no one acts on behalf of the company in a way that isn’t appropriate. Being cool and hip may not work for a button-down accounting firm (although that would be a cool differentiator in my opinion).
6. Send Advertisements – While promotion shouldn’t be any more than 10% of the content you put out, it is required in order to make people aware of your social networking presences and also to leverage your audience to increase sales. Incentives or giveaways can be powerful motivators to get people to connect with you (just look at the success of sites like GroupOn).
7. Use Web Properties – You need to leverage your websites and other online presences to have places where people can take the actions you’d like them to once they’ve conversed and engaged with you on social networks. Social networks are great for short bursts of information and for having conversations, but they aren’t so great at providing in-depth information or for converting sales. Websites can help you provide the in-depth information your audience wants, as well as providing locations where people can perform desired actions for your sales process (request info, purchase, etc.).

While none of this information is particularly new (I use a lot of the same strategies with my clients), Scott presents each step with actionable items and reasoning in a way that makes them applicable to any organization. I ended up highlighting a lot of this chapter just so I could use some of his explanations to get concepts across with my clients. Breaking down the process of integrating social technology with websites into 7 steps makes the concepts more easy to digest and therefore to implement.

Here are my overall thoughts:

Pros: The entire book is broken up into chapters which each stand along fairly well. Each chapter ends with a list of key points to cement in the important topics, but which could also be used to guide implementation of his ideas. There are also some great case studies to see how social media has been used by companies to drive revenue and results.

Cons: I was expecting more in-depth examples in some cases (for example, in creating a social policy — not just in what the policies are, but how the company developed them). Some of the chapters seem more well-thought-out than others, which may be due much of the content being crowd-sourced. The chapter on measurement, for example, had steps, as well as good examples of different ways that a company could measure, but some of the topics that were mentioned within the explanations felt like they were trying to cover ground that was already covered.

Verdict: Enterprise Social Technology is a good read. If you have a company or are part of an organization, that’s trying to figure out how to use social networking within your marketing strategy, this book can serve as a great guideline for getting things started.  I also think it’s a great book for anyone who is involved in social media or who is making decisions about whether to use social media because it covers a lot of the decision making that needs to be done for a social networking strategy to be successful.

If you’ve read this book, what do you think?

NOTE: All links above to Amazon are affiliate links. I was sent a free digital copy of the book and asked if I would review it. As with any review I do, this is my honest opinion. Scott Klososky is also offering the opportunity to receive a bounty for a review, etc., which did entice me to write a review, but not to write what I did. Hopefully you’ve seen that I try to be honest in my writing from the other posts I’ve written.  Thank you for reading!

Quick & Easy Read

I like reading to increase my knowledge and to help improve various aspects of my business. Reading takes time, which means having to choose which books get read. Books that are faster to read are more likely to be chosen (depending on the subject matter), because their knowledge can be gleaned much more quickly.  Randel’s book is a super quick read, which I read it in less than hour.

Textbook-like books are dull to read and just put me to sleep. Reading shouldn’t be a chore. The Skinny on the Art of Persuasion is incredibly easy to read. Randel uses stick figures for illustrations (which are also a bit amusing) and the amount of text on each page is fairly low, which also makes it easier to digest the information on each page.

Actionable Rules & Relatable Examples

Randel teaches the art of persuasion with 15 rules, each discussed with an example. These 15 rules are easy to remember and are repeated several times throughout the book so have a pretty good chance of remembering them when you’re done.

Examples used to illustrate the rules, as well as occasions when persuasion comes in handy, are scenarios that happen in every day life. Because you can relate to the examples, you’re much more likely to remember them in conjunction with the rules.

Thumbs Up

If you’re looking for an in-depth book on persuasion, this isn’t it. But if you want a quick read that gives you some great actionable tips for improvement, I recommend reading The Skinny on the Art of Persuasion: How to Move Minds (affiliate link). Jim Randel has an entire series of “The Skinny on” books, ranging from networking and time management to real estate investment, several of which I’m likely to also read.

Have you read this book or any other in “The Skinny On” series? What do you think?

disclaimer: I wrote this review because I feel that the book has value to you. I was asked to read and review one of “The Skinny on” books of my choice, but I received no compensation other than several of the books to choose from.

I think this is a great book to read if you own a business and are wondering how to use social media.

Have you read this book?  What do you think?

If you’re interested in reading the book, here’s the link:

• Buy the book: Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion (Amazon link)

About Gary, from his blog, http://garyvaynerchuk.com:

Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements around the world. Gary’s dual identity as both business guru and wine guy has made him the “Social Media Sommelier.”

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our free email updates or following us on Twitter.

Information on how to create a marketing strategy is broken into easy-to-understand steps that together form The Big Picture.  The steps are easy to remember so they can be used in real-world situations (who wants to drag out a big textbook).  For each step in the process, the book walks through how to figure out that particular portion of the strategy, who in the company should be involved, and the consequences of different decision paths.

Once you figure out your marketing strategy, you’re also be shown how to measure it’s effectiveness and how to make improvements.  Many companies think a marketing strategy should work right off the bat, but there often is quite a bit of change and improvement that needs to go on before a good implementation is found.  Even with a good implementation, changes need to be made as the product and marketplace evolve.

At just 214 pages, including the appendices, anyone can spend a weekend learning how to put together a good marketing strategy.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to create a marketing strategy that works and is easy to measure. The Big Picture Partners also have a companion website with case studies, information, and a blog covering material from the book and updated information.

Sidebar – Am I worried about people reading this book and then not needing strategy consulting? Not really.  This is a great introduction to marketing strategy, but no book is a replacement for years of experience and wisdom.  And good business people know that they should focus on what they’re in business to do, outsourcing whatever someone else can do.  There will be those people who don’t have the budget for outside help, and this is a great book to help them get started.  Even for people who are going to use an outside consultant (or inside employees) for their marketing strategy, this book will give good background information to make the marketing strategy more effective and the process more efficient.

Have you read Marketing Management: The Big Picture?  What did you think?

Marketing Management: The Big Picture (Amazon affiliate link)

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our free email updates or following us on Twitter.

Technorati tags: internet strategy, internet marketing, marketing strategy, marketing, business, strategy, marketing plan

Overall the subject of the book is extremely important to companies that want to continue to compete in the changing marketplace.  The first few chapters are great explanations of why being a purple cow is important and how marketing has changed, and Seth offers some good examples of companies which have made a business of being remarkable.  There is one very important point Seth makes, that I think is important for all companies:  marketing, strategy and design departments can no longer work independently if remarkable products are going to be properly created and launched.

Purple Cow was a quick and easy read.  Seth Godin has structured the book like a blog – short text excerpts divided by catching titles.  There are some great tidbits of information that are set off with bullets – which can stimulate some great trains of thought.  The case studies are short and to the point, many of which are followed up with some points to ponder. However, there are a few where I wanted a bit more information about what the company did to become remarkable.  There are also several places where a company or product is mentioned as remarkable, but I had never heard of it, which is fine, but I would have liked a bit of an explanation of what they did.  (While I could search for it, I feel like I paid some money for the book, so it would be nice to get the information all in one place).  There is a Purple Cow website which includes a few bonus chapters and additional information.

Purple Cow was a good book for up north.  It would be a good book for the beach.  Most of the information is now widely accepted (the book was originally published in 2002), but still not widely implemented.  The current recession would make a good opportunity to transform a business.  I don’t think Purple Cow would necessarily be useful to Marketers who are in-the-know with current trends online and in social media, but it could spark some great brainstorming.  Purple Cow definitely would be a good book for any higher level management that’s looking for a way to use the recession as an agent of change for their company and for any marketers and product designers just getting into online strategies.

Have you read Purple Cow?  What did you think?

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable (Amazon affiliate link)

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

If you’re not sure exactly why social media is important to business, Li and Bernoff start off explaining why it is – they term the emergence of social media technologies into the mainstream as the “groundswell.”  Once you understand exactly what the groundswell is, they explain how it can be tapped to help your organization.  The last part of the book focuses on how using the groundswell will change your company and what the future looks like.

One of the strengths of this book is that it doesn’t have a one-size-fits all social media strategy that works for all organizations and companies.  Instead, it examines the use of social media on a behavorial level – different types of people interact with social media in different ways.  Some types will login to a social site every day but never actually interact.  Others post regularly.  Understanding what types of people you have in your particular target audience is key for crafting a social media strategy that will actually work.  The book runs through the different types of people and their typical interactions with social media and how to use this information to craft a winning strategy.

While this book is a year old, the underlying information is still extremely valuable to anyone looking to tie social media in with business measurements, such as ROI.  There’s also a website which provides updated information via a blog and some tools for understanding the possible makeup of your target audience, based on industry and age groups.  I highly recommend this book to anyone considering using social media for their business – it will give you a good idea of what needs to be done to be successful and the twenty-five cases provide good real-world examples of possible ways to use social media for your business.

If you’ve read this book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Amazon affiliate link)

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

Website usability is more important than ever with a large portion of business research conducted online.  With the rise in popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices, having good usability on multiple platforms will be extremely important.  The principles and examples used in Krug’s book will help any business understand the basics of getting their website into shape so that they can reach a much larger audience (and stop annoying their current customers).

Even web designers and usability “experts” will find something useful in Don’t Make Me Think (Amazon affiliate link), even if it’s just a great quote for a blog post on usability.  I found some good quotes that you may see in future posts, but I also found some great new ways to illustrate usability principles that will help get the why across to businesspeople (which can be difficult, as we all are aware).  Don’t Make Me Think (Amazon affiliate link) was a quick and enjoyable read, even for someone very familiar (and passionate about) with web usability.  I recommend giving it a read, no matter what your business role.

If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition (Amazon affiliate link)

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.