Get Found: How Inbound Marketing Can Drive Customers to Your Business by Brian Halligan


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is one of the best books I have read. The book gives step-by-step instructions for getting your company into social media and more importantly, how to communicate with and interact with your customers in a way that is beneficial to both of you. This is a great book to get customers coming to you instead of traditional interruption marketing.

My only complaint is that the book wasn’t longer. That’s not to say that it was short but rather that I didn’t want it to end. It was full of good ideas and techniques for getting the name of your company or product out there.

I knew from the first chapter that this was going to be a book that I would read over and over again.

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Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is not a “how to lead” book or a step-by-step approach to good leadership. Instead it is more of a look at the forest of leadership and interest groups rather than the trees.

Seth does a good job of using use cases to explain how modern interest groups (large and small) are getting together and interacting. By providing a vehicle for interaction amongst people who share a common interest, you can create your own tribe.

He also provides a few cases of how change in an organization was made by individuals who were not considered to carry much power but by being passionate and serving as a beacon for others to get on board, their changes happened.

Most people will find this book very light on details, and it’s true, but I don’t think that was the authors point. He wanted to inspire true leaders, not create imitation leaders. The fact is, if you want to be a leader, you’ll use this book as a starting point and go forth and do it.

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Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was hesitant about this book but it’s actually pretty good.

Some will criticize it for being too touchy feely and even I can’t help but admit that as someone who is adverse to physical expressions of emotions, I’m weary of a huggy work environment. Aside from all the hugging, it has some pretty good ideas for making yourself marketable and admired.

One of the points that the book makes is the importance of sharing knowledge. It gives you good steps for gaining knowledge to share as well, encouraging you to read books, actual physical hard backed booked (which is ironic since I was listening to it in audiobook format). Once you have a number of books under your belt, you begin recommending these books to people that you think would benefit from them. You then become a comrade of these people as they find useful information in these resources.

One of the other points that was emphasized in the book that I liked was the sharing of contacts and social network nodes. Introduce people of need to people that supply that need. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. This point reinforced ideas introduced to me by How to Win Friends & Influence People

Overall a good book and probably worth a read again when I get into curmudgeon mode. Like I said, a lot of touchy feely concepts and a lot of talk of bizlove and lovecats, that made me uncomfortable but I could see them working in certain situations. The benefit of turning a business relationship into a social relationship is more business and that is clear.

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The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A very intriguing book filled with a mix of pretty solid good ideas and then some really drastic and out there ideas. I’m not saying the drastic and out-there ideas were bad, they were just extreme or hard to swallow.

One idea from the book that I was particularly fond of was taking mini-retirements all throughout life rather than saving it up until the end when you are too old to enjoy them.

I liked the idea of a “muse” project, one that needs very little oversight but can be a source of income with a little effort up front but then having your involvement taper off while you automate the project/business and still collect the income. I’m not sure that I can come up with one, but I liked the idea of having one.

I also liked his idea of outsourcing certain tasks to personal and virtual assistants. Having them find you jobs, write resumes and cover letters, schedule interviews, perform research and create presentations. It seemed ingenious really.

Some of his work slip streaming tactics seemed a bit reclusive and not really possible if you are in a service based position but that doesn’t mean that the techniques couldn’t be adapted to most work situations. I may not be able to check email once a week like him, but I couldn’t certainly trim it down to twice or three times a day and put off the constant interruption of “new mail” notifications.

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