November’s Selection

December’s Selection

October’s Selection

October’s book is The Stress Effect: Why Smart Leaders Make Dumb Decisions–And What to Do About It by Henry L. Thompson Ph.D.

October’s Suggested Reading

October’s Suggested Reading is Overworked, Overwhelmed, and Underpaid: Simple Steps to Go From Stress to Success by Louis Barajas

September’s Selection

September’s book is Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness by Jeffrey Gitomer

Gitomer clearly is the “Ace of Sales” and this is the rulebook. The fourth line in the Table of Contents is Gitomer’s famous line, “People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.” While a great deal of the book is motivational in nature, a main trust is learning how to ask great questions. The book is a quick, easy read – main points are put into bulleted. I found it layered. At first read it seemed almost irritatingly simplistic but then I found myself going back and back and back to pull out the meat.

September’s Suggested Reading

September’s Suggested Reading is Little Red Book of Sales Answers: 99.5 Real World Answers That Make Sense, Make Sales, and Make Money by Jeffrey Gitomer

This companion to the main book consists of a number of sections each of which consist of real-life questions that Gitomer answers. The sectoins are Part 1 – Personal Improvement That Leads to Personal Growth; Part 2 – Prospecting for Golden Leads and Making Solid Appointments; Part 3 – How to Win the Sales Battle AND the Sales War; Part 4 – Sales Skill Building… One Brick at a Time; Part 5 – Building the Friendship. Building the Relationship. Earning the Referral. Earning the Testimonial. Earning the Reorder; Part 6 – Building Your Personal Brand; Part 6.5 – The Final AHA! When the book is done, and you’re faced with your next sales opportunity, I suspect you’ll be far more likely to say AHA yourself.

August’s Selection

August’s book is Switch by Chip and Dan Heath

This book explores what it takes to change behavior. At first blush, one might think this not very useful for a business of one, or two, but I challenge you to think about the myriad of things that could be improved by changes that you’ve already identified – and just can’t quite manage to execute.  In some ways, this is a great follow-up to Linchpin as we struggle against the lizard.  It’s for everyone who wants to be heard and can’t get anyone to listen. I found it "interesting" but if you read it without constantly asking yourself how you can make the information you’re consuming work for you, it will stay just that – an interesting book.  My hope is that we all use it as a tool to effect change.

Aug’s Suggested Reading

August’s Suggested Reading is Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

This was the earlier book by the authors of this month’s Switch.  The purpose of Made to Stick is to identify the characteristics of a story or idea that make it go viral.  Some ideas circulate, are retold endlessly, reinterpreted, and used to fuel new imaginative projects.  Others, probably just as good in initial analysis, just disappear.  This book will help us determine exactly how to craft our message for the greatest possible benefit.

July’s Selection

July’s book is Get Seen by Steve Garfield

This is one of "The New Rules of Social Media Series" books. The common thread in this series is David Meerman Scott – author of New Rules of Marketing and PR which was our BBBC book for January, 2009 – when many of us set up our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles.  As we’ve been discussing since then, video is going to play a bigger and bigger part in our lives.  There is little value in flat one-frame pictures when video can be served up for free on the web.  Get Seen teaches us how to get the job DONE.  This will be a workshop so come ready to try your own hand. The minimum requirement is a cell phone or digital camera with the ability to capture a snippet of video..

July’s Suggested Reading

July’s Suggested Reading is Outrageous Advertising by Bill Glazer

I’ve chosen Outrageous Advertising to accompany Get Seen because it will give us some "far-out" thinking to use as a background for making our videos.  Even the video space is cluttered.  Being outrageous is not the only option for breaking through but no matter what route you take, you’ll need to be creative. This is a book that will make you think and give you examples. Plus, you just might be able to use your new ideas in non-video work as well.

June’s Selection

June’s book is The Referral Engine – Teaching Your Business to Market Itself by John Jantsch

This book is an updated follow-up to Duct Tape Marketing, which we discussed in the spring of 2008.  Those of you who paid attention, and put the information we learned into practice have seen your businesses grow.  This book is even better in that is concentrates on the key growth area in marketing today.  Whether it’s a matter of people talking on the golf course, at a Chamber mixer, or by introducing a Facebook friend, referrals are today’s foremost key to marketing your business and the resulting success..  This will be a workshop so please come prepared to define your strategy and the way you intend to translate it into action.

June’s Suggested Reading

July’s Suggested Reading is Endless Referrals – Third Edition by Bob Burg

Sometimes it helps to hear things in a different way.  Bob Burg has been a leader in this field for a great many years.  His work is referenced by Jantsch in Referral Engine.  He goes into some aspects of acquiring referrals in greater detail and presents others with a different slant.  This area is so very important to all kinds of businesses today. You will benefit from reading multiple books on this topic.  No one book can cover it all in full.

May’s Selection

Godin Does It Again in Linchpin

Linchpin may just turn out to be the most important book of this decade. It is very early, but the book is that good. It will do for the average person reading it exactly what Purple Cow did for business owners back when it came out. I’d say this book is even more important than Tribes for that reason. If you can’t become what this book is asking you to become, you’ll never lead a Tribe. It’s easy for me to rave about Seth Godin so I gave myself time to let it sink in, to make sure that I was seeing it with as clear an eye as possible. I was initially entralled with The Think Big Manifesto but discovered that within a month it had simply blended away into everything else I’d been reading. I wanted to make sure this book would not disappoint. Outside of raving, I’m not going to tell you a thing. You read it, don’t read reviews, just read the book. Don’t let others shape your mind. Let the book do that. Then go be a Linchpin.

May’s Suggested Reading

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink

Drive is a follow-up to A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. In the earlier book, Pink makes an excellent case for the increasing importance of right-brain thinking in the future.  While most agreed, not all did.  This was the beginning of an avalanche of new thought about the importance of creativity going forward.  Drive follows this trail into the human brain to examine what motivates us to do our best.  This is the overlap with Linchpin.  Linchpins will develop but they will develop faster in an environment meant to encourage their growth.

April’s Selection

Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah

This book has a forward by David Meerman Scott, and has been endorsed by Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. The authors are the founders of HubSpot so they don’t just walk the walk, they laid it out and paved it. This is a bit of a how-to guide for pulling together the kind of marketing that is starting to take over the world of business. We consider it a “must read” for anyone not already an expert in web based marketing.

April’s Suggested Reading

The Social Media Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella

This is a must-have book for social media beginners.  It’s small, easy to read, and, while geared to beginners, it does contain information that intermediate users in the process of building their presence will find helpful.

March’s Selection

March’s Suggested Reading

February’s Book is Who’s Got Your Back by Keith Ferrazzi

Keith’s goal is debunk the myth of the lone entrepreneur taking on a whole world single-handedly.  We are the sum of those we hang around with and we NEED other people to be our advisors, our mirrors, our strength, and our conscience, from time to time. He also tells us how to assemble that all-important team.   We’ve definitely seen the benefits of having people around you who “have your back” just among the memebers of this book club.

February’s Suggested Reading is Keith’s earlier book, Never Eat Alone.

Keith’s first book is about building relationships – which he advocates doing every time and any time the opportunity presents itself.

January’s Selection

Making It All Workby David Allen

If this sounds a bit familiar – it should! We read David Allen’s Getting Things Done in 2008. Everyone from the book club talked in terms of “next action” for months. Many of us implemented part or all of the program. Now it’s time to take a refresher course and add the next step. Everyone complains about “not having enough time”. You can’t make time. We all have the same 24 hours each day. Some of us just use what we’re given to better advantage than others. Between the covers of David Allen’s books lie the secret to success for anyone who feels that lack of time is the main thing standing in their way.

Jan’s Suggested Reading

Ask and You Will Succeed by Kenneth D. Foster

This is a good companion book to our primary choice for this month. Often times we sense something holding us back, almost as though the anchor of our boat is entangled. Generally that is an indication we need to unravel the base causes. It’s often because one hasn’t been totally honest with him/herself.  Sometimes one doesn’t know how to be honest in that area. The text and accompanying questions help us gain a better understanding of what we really do want out of life, and more importantly, why. Sometimes we find it’s not what we thought it was.