review by Ian Baine, guest blogger

In Bolivar L. Bueno’s book Customers First: Dominate Your Market By Winning Them Over Where It Counts The Most, the author analyzes and explains the many different conscious and unconscious factors that will affect a customer’s behavior. Mr. Bueno discusses the factors that keep companies like Apple and Harley Davidson on top of their respective markets. He then proceeds to explain the ways that you can build your company’s brand to encourage and create very strong customer loyalty for years to come. This development is called Brand Modeling. This book is great for entrepreneurs who are looking to create more reliable success using methods that will create returning customers. This book also allows business owners who already have an established business reach a new level of profitability, especially if that company is spread across the entire US, or even internationally.

To help his readers get a better understanding of how they can utilize the concept of a Brand Model, Bueno breaks his book up into four parts, an introduction, an explanation of the meaning of a Brand Model, lessons on how to build one’s Brand Model, and finally, a discussion of how to implement this model. This book was a clearly written guide towards making your business a stronger one. I highly recommend it for entrepreneurs attempting to get a leg up on competition, but also as an interesting look into the science of designing a brand’s reputation.

Written by guest writer Nabil Khan

All recent great successes during and after the 2008 economic collapse has had one common strength and one key to their rise to their top: strong customer experience. Customer experience is the “sum of all interactions a person has with a company”. Without strong customer experience a company cannot become a leader in its industry and the market. A company needs to have a strong client base in order to produce enough profit to lead its own industry, and this is done through customer experience and great leadership. Bean and Van Tyne emphasize the importance of customer experience and how a good customer experience can help guide a company and enable them to become leaders in their own specific industries.

As the book progresses, after explaining the certain intricacies and definitions involved with customer experience, the authors proceed to use several examples of well-known companies in order to further elucidate their views on customer experience. In the first half of the book, their focus is on Apple, and how Steve Jobs through innovative thinking and customer-first prioritization led Apple to the top of the technology and entertainment market. Other companies that were paragons of customer experience were Netflix, Amazon, Starbucks, and LPL Financial. Each of the companies mentioned in the book have had a myriad of highs and lows in their respective markets. Bean and Tyne, after discussing the brief history of the ups and downs, force the reader to recognize the turning point in the company’s history that forever changed its history. This turning point with every company had customer experience being the commonality between all these companies.

Bean and Tyne mention a certain concept that they reinforce throughout the book and use in order to help the reader understand there through process. “Do-Fors” are what certain products and services “will actually do for the customers that they highly value” and why should they care? If a company can succinctly answer these questions and then intelligently incorporate their goals into the products and services, the company’s long-term reputation and thus profit and client base will rise. Another concept that the book seems to give importance to is that the goals of the customer experience must be aligned with the priorities and goals of the CEO of the company. In the example companies such as Apple and Amazon, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, the company’s leaders, were die-hard advocates of customer experience. Steve Jobs would undoubtedly delay a product’s launch date so as to make sure that the product is customer ready and Jeff Bezos’ view of money well spent as spending money as “building customer loyalty” instead of adding that money to the bottom line, both show how if customer experience is to be an integral part of your company it must start with the CEO and then be instilled into the various departments of the company.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand how to separate a company with a great idea, to a company that makes millions off of a great idea. The clear analysis of customer experience unequivocally illustrates the importance the customers’ sentiments hold on a company’s outlook in their industry.

review written by guest blogger Nabil Khan

Throughout the past decade due to conflicts of war, milestone presidencies, and revolutions around the world, the public eye has been focused on the leaders in government and the economy. There is a perceived dynamic between the public and private sector leaders that Geoff Smart wishes to change and modify. Geoff Smart provides a survey of the leaders that testify to the transition from public to private sector leadership positions. Smart unambiguously illustrates the process he went through in order to eradicate this stereotype that people, including private sector financier leaders, have about positions in government. Through the use of past examples of leaders who made the transition and their opinions concerning their experiences, Geoff Smart helps the reader develop a greater understanding of government leadership.

Geoff Smart consistently uses various examples of successful individuals who made the transition from private sector leadership to public sector leadership. These examples include Mitchell Daniels, governor of Indiana, Governor Jack Merkell of Delaware, and Mark Gollogly who sits on the cabinet of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Smart interviews and discusses the transition from private sector leadership at places like Blackstone, Ernst & Young, and the Tractor Supply Company, to government leadership positions as governors, secretaries of departments, and cabinet members of the presidential administration. The interviews consisted of questions concerning why they left their high-paying jobs, was the transition a rewarding experience, and whether or not they would recommend it to other CEOs of industry.

This book takes you on a personal journey and recommendation of Geoff Smart, a leader in the field of ethical leadership. This journey entails Smart’s own hesitancies behind the idea of transitioning from private to public. He admits to the stereotypes and fears that most Americans, and CEOs of industry continue to have: the money isn’t as good, it’s a political game, and spotlight is not something they want their families to endure. Geoff Smart tackles these obstacles by asking tough questions and requiring substantial answers. He does admit that there is not much data in terms of this investigation of the transition between private to public, yet the stories he tells of these successful individuals provides inspiration for the reader as well as other CEOs to make the same leap.

People aren’t happy with the government not necessarily because of the direct regulations and policies that have been enforced, yet they are unhappy with the enforcers on a municipal, state, and federal level. Geoff Smart offers a solution that enables a pledge by private sector leaders to serve in a government leadership position for two years of their professional careers. Smart views this option as doable, valuable, and meaningful not just for the public but also for the individual him/herself. With this proactive approach, it will encourage more leaders to step into a government role and apply their skills acquired in the private corporate world in order to better society. Private to public, can be the solution to bad government leadership.

review written by guest blogger Bernadette Davis

Do your employees feel like zombies? Does your company mindlessly pursue the status quo without taking any risks? Have creating, inventing, and exploring taken a back seat to efficiency, output, and short-term return on investment? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, Kill The Company is the book for you. Lisa Bodell is the author of this inspiring book and the CEO of Futurethink, an internationally recognized innovation research and training firm. She wrote this book because she knows that every company has the potential to be innovative and geared toward the future. A zombie-like company can be contagious and cause disengagement and disinterest among employees. Kill The Company is the antidote.

I know what you may be thinking. As a head of a company, you may have tried to implement change in the past. Bodell knows all too well about employees whose response to this kind of change is rolling their eyes due to the amount of additional work they know there are going to have to do. Kill The Company describes a unique program that is client-tested to work. This program that Bodell writes about is not a one-size-fits-all kind of program designed for every company. Those do not work. Because she knows that every company is different, her program is very flexible. It is a revolutionary idea that in order to be a “killer company, you have to kill the company.” It’s not as violent as it sounds. You look at your company as if you were its competition trying to beat it. This method gives you the tools and techniques you need to achieve your company’s goals.

Kill The Company has a diagnostic test that lets you know which degree of change you need in your company. The book is based on four principles that make change stick. First is that everyone is a change agent. People feel empowered by these kinds of messages. Anyone from the cubicles to the corner offices will be more excited to participate in your efforts if they feel like they can make a difference. The second principle of the program is that it is created by the employees, for the employees. This is because one-size-fits-all types of programs do not work. Employees should know that the innovation revolution should be led by them, not made for them. Another principle is that the little things make a powerful impact. Which leads into the last principle that if you start out small, you can observe what is working well and adjust.

The book addresses parasitic behaviors, such as skepticism, that harm companies. Bodell offers interesting stories that showcase how these behaviors have harmed once very powerful companies that got caught up in these parasitic behaviors. I recommend this book to leaders that are stuck in the status quo and desire a drastic change in the company that they have worked so hard to start. If you use the ideas from Kill The Company, your employees will start innovating, creating, questioning, and inventing. You will enable your employees to break free from the status quo and allow them to follow their dreams.

Written by guest blogger Nabil Khan

Does your company provide a service that if eradicated at this point in time, would be a severe detriment your customers and their lifestyles? Or can they simply go to the store next door and receive similar goods and services to replace you? If your answer to the first question was no, and the second answer was yes, Cynthia Montgomery of the Harvard Business School would argue that it will remain difficult for your company to gain a long-term, competitive advantage in the industry. The Strategist: Be The Leader Your Business Needs by Cynthia Montgomery is a personal recommendation from the professor of how the vitality of a company’s strategy begins and ends with the leader of the company.

For too long, as Montgomery describes, have companies separated the entities of strategy and leadership. Formulating proper strategy for a company is not being, in a sense, outsourced to minor positions in the company—MBA students known as strategic analysts. If not MBA students, third-party consulting groups take on the role of providing a foolproof strategy for a firm. Cynthia Montgomery revisits her classroom anecdotes and demonstrative real-life examples in order to illustrate how strategy and leadership within the company must coexist in order for a company to grow and improve.

The Strategist is written in an ostensibly clear and direct format. While this book is not necessarily a how-to guide in terms of creating a strategy for a company, it does provide proper instruction and reassurance to company leaders of the importance of creating a disciplined and well-thought out plan. The most impressive aspect of this book lies within the organization of the book. Montgomery carries out the process of first describing what a certain term is, what type of actions it may require, and the effects of such, and from thereon she proceeds to give enlightening examples. Not only do these examples challenge and deepen the reader’s understanding of her investigation of certain concepts such as purpose, the strategy wheel, or the dos and don’ts of strategy, yet these examples prove to be thought-provoking and difficult even to those at Harvard Business School.

As a teacher, Montgomery is adept and astute in her discussion and questioning of the executives she teaches at HBS. The book is a reliable source due to the consistent examples she recalls from her teaching days. Montgomery clearly defines the process of creating a strategy through her use of examples. Montgomery begins with the idea I presented at the commencement of this book review, “Does your company matter?” The first quarter of the book delves into this idea of making sure your company is valuable and that it has a purpose. The company must have a clear and defined mission statement or purpose, that shows why it exists, how is it better than its competitors, ad how does it believe it can achieve their uniqueness. Cynthia then provides numerous examples, ranging from Nike, Ikea, to Brighton Collectibles, and Google, in order to illustrate what a proper purpose looks like an entails. Montgomery follows this organization and process in order to explain the various concepts she emphasizes.

I encourage everyone to read this especially those in a company that wishes to gain a long-term competitiveness in their industry. Young readers and even business executives can gain valuable insight on how to establish a company that is united behind one, well-defined, and aspiring goal to be the best in the business. This a great read and it will only help anyone who reads it.

Earn What You’re Really Worth by Brian Tracy provides a foundation for the readers who need and want to change their lifestyle to something bigger and better. The values Tracy describes and reiterates consistently throughout the book are rudimentary characteristics that one must possess in order to succeed at almost anything in life. The focus and concentration, the never-ending pursuit of knowledge, and the persistence needed in earning what one is really worth, is in a greater sense the traits needed for anyone to succeed and achieve their goals. Knowingly or not, Tracy creates this unequivocal guide to succeed in life using the actions and morals behind the motivation to achieve a greater income. This book will allow anyone motivated enough to achieve a future goal whether that may be earning a higher bracket of income, creating lasting and bonding relationships, graduating at the top of their class, or even learning how to build the Statue of Liberty.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Now I wonder if I can apply that to the web sites we run like American Health Journal (a web site with medical videos about everything from What causes peripheral artery disease, Nasal Spray Addiction to Does the cookie diet work.   Would never hurt to double web site income.

written by guest writer Bernadette Davis

Have you ever been at work and simply wished that your colleagues would talk normal? What is operationalisationism and why do people say remuneration when pay is perfectly fine? Have you had to sit through hours complicated and meaningless PowerPoint presentations? Perhaps your co-workers’ excessive use of jargon or overwhelming desire to sound clever is driving you crazy. Well, Tim Phillips has the same frustrations. That’s why he started his blog, Talk Normal. Because of the popularity of his blog, he wrote his book Talk Normal inspired by his blog.

Phillips was very frustrated by people that use advanced language that not everyone can understand, when people use language to try to sound like they are smarter than they are, and when people obsess about language rules that don’t matter. These office habits that we all are guilty of at some point or another are frustrating to everyone and cause confusion. Phillips outlines his principles for how to avoid these habits, so that you can increase the clarity and efficiency of your speech at work. After this book you will never bore, frustrate, or annoy your co-workers with your language again.

Tim Phillips is extraordinarily frustrated with annoying office speech habits. His passion for the English language and his desire to eliminate these absurdities is very apparent when reading his work. As you make your way through the pages of Talk Normal, you will feel the same frustration. If you weren’t motivated enough to change your speech habits, you will be when you take a look at the facts and anecdotes that fill the pages. Phillips then teaches you how to edit yourself and think clearer so you can write better. He understands that good communication is difficult, so he outlines it with his three principles: try to be understood by everyone who’s listening, stop trying to sound clever for no reason, and it’s about attitude not rules.

I recommend this book to anyone who feels a disconnect with his or her co-workers or customers. Sometimes we get caught up in wording phrases in a way that sounds good. This book is the wake up call that you may need to realize that sounding good doesn’t make the situation good. As you read this book, you will catch yourself saying things like “Gosh, I do that” and “I can’t believe that’s how I come off to people”. Phillips does make you feel guilty, but that’s ok. He quickly offers solutions to fixing the problem. You may be ashamed of yourself when you read Talk Normal, but you will find that this book is a good investment and well-worth the guilt trip. You will be able to communicate with others better.

Talk Normal is based on Phillips’ blog talknormal.co.uk so if you really enjoy the book, you can always read more form the blog. Or, you can visit the blog now, and get a taste of what the book will be like before you buy it. Since you are already at a computer, there is no excuse not to check it out!

When I first saw the title of the book Just Run It!, I thought it was a book about action. However, I was wrong. This is a book tells you how to run a business form the start. It is useful to the people who have an idea of what kind of business they want to start but don’t know how to run it in the real world. Running a business is not that hard as most of us would think. There is nearly a half million new businesses created in America each year, although most of them fail in the first five years. I recommend this book to all the young people who want to run their own business in the future. Dick Cross, the author stated that most of us don’t have a clear idea about how to run a business. Neither does the MBA programs have a course named how to run a business. Actually, there are a lot of theories about the operation of businesses in modern society. I believe most of the students in business school are familiar with them, like Potter five competitive forces model and the life circle theory. However, we can’t get a clear vision about how to run a business. This is also a question confused me in the past. This book described all the details about running a business from the beginning period to the matured period of a business. I don’t know whether these methods in this book will be worked in the real world, but it will definitely inspire you to run a business, at least give you a clearer vision on this area that other books never told you. The experience of the author-Dick Cross also attracted me. His major was architecture in college, and then got an MBA degree. An architect is good at outlining the blueprints. Mr. Cross outlined a business blueprint for us. There is no doubt that small business as an irreplaceable part in American society has strong vitality. And a lot of the business empires just run from a small business, or even just from an idea. It would be very helpful if anyone could provide a theory or a method about how to run a business to decrease the failure rate of new business. Dick Cross did that. I know it is very hard to write a book about this, so few people have done it. Although whether Dick Cross’s theory worked in practice and needs time to be proved, it is still a brave and meaningful step in this area, just like running a business from the start. At last, I want to mention that some of the ideas in this book are interesting. For example, the author compared to the factor of business idea as the business on the back of an envelope. Another example is the chapter 11- Love and Business, and Other Important Things. If you want to know these interesting ideas, or you want to know how to run a business, do not miss this book.