Legacy in the Making: Building a Long-Term Brand to Stand Out in a Short-Term World

Reprinted Courtesy of Wall Street News Network

Review by Fred Fuld III

The book, Legacy in the Making: Building a Long-Term Brand to Stand Out in a Short-Term World, discusses the importance of branding your your business and the legacy that goes along with it. It is written by Mark Miller, the founder of the Legacy Lab, and Lucas Conley, the author of Obsessive Branding Disorder.

The book is captivating and engaging for several reasons. First, it gives real life examples of extremely successful brands. And the brands are not just limited to businesses, it includes non-profits, sports teams, and film festivals.

Second, the book delves into detail about how and why certain successful brands were created, with specific illustrations. For example, in the chapter “Empower Your Believers” on the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, the authors talked about how the employees are empowered to create the “Wow Factor” for their guests.

Some of the organizations that are examined include The Honest Company, Grey Goose, The San Diego Zoo, The Toronto Maple Leafs, and The Tribeca Film Festival.

In terms of the structure of the book, it is filled with pictures, diagrams, blurbs, and quotes. The book is a brand all its own.

If you own a business or are involved with an organization, I suggest you get  Legacy in the Making and make your brand the best that it can be.

Straight Talk for Startups: 100 Insider Rules for Beating the Odds

reprinted courtesy of WSTNN.com

If you are an entrepreneur or startuper, you need to read Straight Talk for Startups: 100 Insider Rules for Beating the Odds. The book is written by Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman, both of whom have had extensive startup and venture capital experience.

I have read several books relating to startups, but here is what I like about this one. Straight Talk for Startups has recommendations and advice that you won’t find in other books about running a startup.

Here are some examples.

• You need two different business plans, not one
• Why a part time team member may be better than a full time one
• Why you should NOT provide free lunches to your employees
• Avoid venture debt
• If you are looking to be acquired, choose your acquirer, don’t let acquirers choose you.
• A small board of directors is better than a big board

The authors even provide a sample board meeting agenda.

The book is a well-written, easy read, with every short chapter, each a couple pages long, representing a rule you should follow. There are actually 101 rules in this book, and I believe the last one, covered in the Epilogue is probably the most important.

Whether you are thinking of starting a startup, have recently started a startup, or you are at the point of bringing your startup to a new level, I highly recommend Straight Talk for Startups.

The Latest Books on Startups

Are you looking to start a startup? Are you looking to improve your startup? Many books are hot off the presses that cover how to create your own business and entrepreneurship. One of them even covers 3D printing. Here are several worth checking out for your summer reading.

Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale by Jennifer Davis and Katherine Daniels

Some companies think that adopting devops means bringing in specialists or a host of new tools. With this practical guide, you’ll learn why devops is a professional and cultural movement that calls for change from inside your organization. Authors Katherine Daniels and Jennifer Davis provide several approaches for improving collaboration within teams, creating affinity among teams, promoting efficient tool usage in your company, and scaling up what works throughout your organization’s inflection points.

DevOps stresses iterative efforts to break down information silos, monitor relationships, and repair misunderstandings that arise between and within teams in your organization. By applying the actionable strategies in this book, you can make sustainable changes in your environment regardless of your level within your organization.

Before Disrupting Healthcare: What Innovators Need To Know by Pallav Sharda
Healthcare is an industry unlike any other — it’s a matter of life and death, and no field poses as much reward or as many challenges for tech entrepreneurs. 
Before Disrupting Healthcare is a must-read for anyone working on, or investing in, health information products. Health IT veteran Pallav Sharda draws on a dozen years of real-world experience to bring you to the leading edge of health software innovation. 
Before Disrupting Healthcare combines an introduction with the foundational ideas and products of today with a look into what emerging IT trends will rule the future. Outsiders can use this book to become insiders, and insiders can become experts. 
You’ll learn why Electronic Health Records, Health Information Exchanges, Accountable Care Organizations, and Meaningful Use regulation matter so much today―and what will matter even more tomorrow.

The Decentralized and Networked Future of Value Creation: 3D Printing and its Implications for Society, Industry, and Sustainable Development by Jan-Peter Ferdinand and Ulrich Petschow
This book identifies, analyzes and discusses the current trends of digitalized, decentralized, and networked physical value creation by focusing on the particular example of 3D printing. In addition to evaluating 3D printing’s disruptive potentials against a broader economic background, it also addresses the technology’s potential impacts on sustainability and emerging modes of bottom-up and community-based innovation.  Emphasizing these topics from economic, technical, social and environmental perspectives, the book offers a multifaceted overview that scrutinizes the scenario of a fundamental transition: from a centralized to a far more decentralized system of value creation.

Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth by Ash Maurya
You’ve talked to customers. You’ve identified problems that need solving, and maybe even built a minimum viable product. But now there’s a second bridge to cross. How do you tell whether your idea represents a viable business? Do you really have to go through the whole cycle of development, failure, iteration, tweak, repeat? 
Scaling Lean offers an invaluable blueprint for mod­eling startup success. You’ll learn the essential metrics that measure the output of a working business model, give you the pulse of your company, communicate its health to investors, and enable you to make precise interventions when things go wrong. 

Spark: Take Your Business From Struggle to Significance by David A. Hilton
In this fast-paced allegorical non-fiction, our hero is about to learn all the lessons of business the hard way so that you do not have to. His story is a combination of a fast-paced novel with compelling, impactful and eminently executable business lessons. Join Jack’s journey and take your business from struggle to success, where you’ll find more time, more money and, more importantly, more freedom.

Start Your Business on a Ramen Noodle Budget: 12 Lessons on Becoming a Young Entrepreneur When You are Broke! by Felecia Hatcher
You don't need millions of dollars to get your business idea off the ground, but you do need to START, with what you have and where you probably are financially-on a Ramen Noodle budget! Think about it: Ramen Noodles are one of the cheapest meals on the planet, but when you get creative and add ingredients you have at your fingertips, you can transform it from an inexpensive meal from your college "glory days" into a "grown-up" gourmet meal. So, if you can get creative with Ramen Noodles, you can get creative with limited resources and overcome any roadblocks to starting your own business. You know you have what it takes to launch a startup. It's time to harness that gritty scrappiness, tap into your network to gather the resources you need to launch your business, and stand out-even with limited funds.

Combatting Disruptive Change: Beating Unruly Competition at Their Own Game by Ian I. Mitroff

This book is a critical examination of the main ideas regarding disruptive change and startups. It systematically lays out the full set of challenges and tasks one needs to master in order for existing organizations to weather severe change or make a startup successful. Ian Mitroff outlines the protective actions business leaders must take to ensure their continued existence, providing a clear demonstration of the key roles leaders must assume such as Applied Epistemologist, Applied Ethicist, Applied Systems Thinker, Applied Social Psychologist, and Applied Crisis Manager, and how to perform these roles competently.

Citing cases such as Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb, this book uniquely analyzes the disrupting agent in emerging industries, which is crucial for success in today’s complex and turbulent world. It will be of value to students, academics, and entrepreneurs looking to develop a new product or service.

The Following Book is a Best Seller

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly
Much of what will happen in the next thirty years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends—interacting, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning—and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly’s bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading—what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place—as this new world emerges.

Top Selling Books for Startups

Are you considering a startup? Are you looking to improve the business, sales, and operations of your startup? There are plenty of books for startups available on Amazon. Here are the top sellers.

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businessesby Eric Ries

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Futureby Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs by Sam Altman and Gregory Koberger

Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup by Bill Aulet

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau

The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf

All of the above have at least four and a half stars. I really enjoy The Lean Startup and The $100 Startup. I haven't had a chance to read the others yet.

Read on!!!

Book Review: The Sustainable Edge

The book, The Sustainable Edge: 15 Minutes a Week to a Richer Entrepreneurial Life, by Ron Carson and Scott Ford, is a guide to help entrepreneurs with their work-life balance. With the spectacular growth of startups, many startup founders and entrepreneurs have their entire lives revolving around their businesses. The authors can help business owners improve in the four areas of business, teams, clients, and personal lives.

The book covers everything from knowing your core competencies to listening to your customers to setting your company's one clear annual goal to creating your brain trust to measuring your progress to time management to delivering value.

One nice feature of the book is that at the end of every chapter, there is a quick exercise to help you apply the principles of the book.

In addition, the appendix section has extensive charts, worksheets, and resources to provide further support for the reader.

The authors relate many of their personal experiences from their financial services businesses (both authors are CEOs of wealth management companies).  The authors obviously know what they are talking about as they are very successful in their fields. As a matter of fact, Barron's ranked Carson Wealth as one of the Top 100 Financial Advisors for 2015.

If you want to improve your business life while maintaining a balance with your personal life, you should check out  The Sustainable Edge.

Exclusive Interview with Chris Lin, Author of the book 10,000 RIDES: What it's REALLY like driving for Uber & Lyft

In a continuation of our series on startups, the following exclusive and fascinating interview was graciously provided by Christopher Lin, author of the book 10,000 RIDES: What it's REALLY like driving for Uber & Lyft, provided to you in the form of a podcast. 

Christopher Lin drove for Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar for a year in San Francisco and decided to write a book about his experiences and some of the more unusual passengers he has had to deal with. The book even has illustrations throughout showing his amazing experiences. But he did more than just write a book, he looked at it from a business standpoint, from the research, to the development,  to the marketing and promotion.

Chris currently has a Kickstarter campaign going and has already far exceeded his goal. There is still time left to get in on it so check it out. He also has a website/blog where he features a few of the most interesting chapters in his book. It can be found at 10000rides.com.

We cover a lot in this interview, including:

• How he decided on which publishing route to use
• Why Uber and Lyft drivers are not his market
• The way he designed his Kickstarter campaign to blast through his goal
• How he did his Kickstarter research
• How he got several strangers (including a politician) to pledge $111 each to the project
• The way to use Starbucks to get incredible feedback, research data, and customers

You will enjoy the incredible advice he gives.

Stream by CLICKING HERE.

Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as.”

Great Books on Startups for the Holidays

Holiday shopping has already started, and the time for you to start is now. Might as well get it over with, so that you can go back to starting on your startup.

Here is a selection of books related to startups. By the way, you might want to pick up one of these books as a gift for yourself.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

Startup: Essential Startup Guide - Entrepreneur, Small Business & Online Business by Bill Robb

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Steven Kotler

How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It by Mark Cuban

Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of Trouble by Bernard B. Kamoroff

How to Make $1,000 Per Day Clear Profit on Amazon with One Single $35 Product You Choose by Bradford Sullivan

The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank

The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime. by MJ DeMarco

Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore

The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success (Touchstone Books) by Nicholas Lore

Hopefully a few of these books will be useful to you and your business. Read on!

Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed

When I first started looking through the Table of Contents of Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed: Leverage Resources, Establish Online Credibility and Crush Your Competition by Patrick Schwerdtfeger, the first words out of my mouth were "Wow." I could see right away how complete the book was and how it covered all possible areas, as it has 80 chapters!

This is the kind of book you wished you had before you even started your business. The chapters are short and concise, and leave out the time-wasting fluff often found in other books. The author provides specific resources and web sites to go to, which is extremely helpful.

One of the things that I found interesting is that some of the recommendations could be applied to other areas of the business. For example, Chapter 6 - The Elevator Pitch describes the structure of creating such a pitch. But the same structure could also be used to create a blog post.

Chapter 9 on Google Codes and Alerts was great. I thought I knew all of them, but I learned a couple new ones, and it also reminded me to start using the ones that I already knew about.

The keyword research trick in Chapter 13 alone is worth more than the price of the book. Easy to do and very useful.

I could go on and on, as the book covers everything from analytics to sales copy to outsourcing. If you are just getting started in your business or you are already into your first, second, or third year of of your startup, I highly recommend that you read Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed.

Another Boring Derivative Piece of Crap Business Book

Do you want more promotion for your business? Do you want your company to get free publicity? Do you want to get attention-getting headlines for your product or service? Then you need to read Another Boring, Derivative, Piece of Crap Business Book: Make The First Basic Leap In Work in 100 Years, Laughing All The Way by Mike Veeck and Allen Fahden.

The book makes it very clear that the best way to get the publicity you want is to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing, and not only that, but do something stupid.

One of the interesting chapters in the book is about how author Allen Fahden wanted to come up with an idea to promote his book. He realized that he should take the advice of his own book, and did something stupid. So he set up a one book bookstore.

He rented 1,000 square feet of retail space, set up various bookshelves with different sections, such as travel, philosophy, and history, with just his books in all those sections. The sign over his shop said One Book Bookstore. He also posted a little sign that said Shoplifters Welcome.

A woman walked by and asked what he was selling. He invited her in, showed her around, told her about his top ten best selling books list (his book was in all 10 places of course), and she was very impressed. She told him that she writes a small column in the local newspaper and would write about his store.

Within a month, the One Book Bookstore was written about in major magazines and newspapers all across the country, and was covered by ABC and the BBC.

The book has numerous and hilarious ideas and true stories. Here is just a small sample of some of the chapter titles:

Think One Person Can't Make a Difference? - I Killed Disco
We're Number Three and We Don't Try at All
If You're Worried About Covering Your Ass, Learn to Walk Backward
The Joys of Wine Slobbery
English for Me is a Second Language - I Don't Have a First
Bat Night with Tonya Harding

The book is only available in hardback, but it is a small size book, about the hight and width of a regular paperback, so it fits easily inside a briefcase, purse, or carry-on. The book even has a flip page video inside.

For light amusing reading with great, inspirational, funny promotional ideas, I recommend Another Boring, Derivative, Piece of Crap Business Book.

Free Book: Choose Yourself! by James Altucher

James Altucher, in case you didn't know, was the founder of Stockpickr.com, which he started for almost no money and sold around a year later for about $10,000,000. He also has an extremely popular blog, JamesAltucher.com. His latest book, Choose Yourself!, was recently published, and is unlike any other success-oriented book you have read. The subtitle says it all: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream.

Altucher has very radical ideas about college (a waste of money and time), employment (it's all over unless you have your own business), retirement (forget about it), and government (read the book). It is very informative and an enjoyable read. He describes how to choose yourself from a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual standpoint. These are his own opinions of course, and what has worked for him.

However, if his book doesn't help you (or even if it does), you can't beat the price ... free. Here is how it works. You can buy the book, either the paperback edition or the Kindle edition. Then you get a copy of the receipt along with secondary verification that you read the book (such as taking a picture of yourself reading the book), and email it to him at the email address on page iv of the book (that's the page number on the printed edition, the Kindle will have it in the very first section). Then he refunds your money.

Basically he is paying you to read his book. A very innovative way of getting your book distributed.