What’s New in Business

Dare to Prepare: How to Win Before You Begin

by Ronald Shapiro, Crown Business, 2008.

One of the things that can make or break everything you do is preparation. The better prepared you are the better chance you will get the outcome you want most.

Ronald Shapiro covers nine preparation principles he teaches to clients to help them become better preparers. They are:

1. Understand your objectives and define your endgame
2. Plan with precedents
3. Know your alternatives
4. Define the interests of the other party
5. Set your strategy
6. Do a timeline
7. Pick your team
8. Write your script
9. Adjust and learn from your mistakes

If you know what you really want from all encounters you will have a much better chance of communicating with others. You must discover what precedents have been set in the past and use these examples to reinforce your position. If you are able to articulate all of the potential alternatives that are available, you can help others work toward an outcome that is beneficial to all; this also ties into knowing the other side’s interests so that you can address how they can best benefit from your suggested outcomes. By setting a strategy and timeline you can learn to better focus on the outcomes you are trying to achieve and by stating these you can show your leadership in accomplishing these goals. Pick your team of people by who can best help you achieve your goals and write a script and practice it so that you can anticipate all potential obstacles. By using what didn’t work for you and others in the past you can constantly move forward and help to accomplish many things.

The three most common excuses as to why people fail to plan are: 1. I don’t have time, 2. I’ve done it before and 3. I know how to do this. These all assume that you know so much that you don’t need to plan to prepare because you already know how to win and get what you want. By making these assumptions you will often fail to get what you want and you will lose the respect of others because you will actually show how unprepared you really are.

Use the preparation checklist at the end of this book to make sure you know what you are after and how you will address the concerns and questions of others. The benefits you will gain by being prepared are self confidence, effectiveness and satisfaction.

Me, Inc. : How to Master the Business of Being You: A Personalized Program for Exceptional Living

by Scott Ventrella, Recorded Books, 2007. Book on CD

Motivational speaker Scott Ventrella uses the best business practices of the best companies, but he teaches you to use them on yourself to develop the life and career you really want. Each milestone addresses a different aspect of your life and includes activities to help you decide what is really important to you and how much of your time you want to devote to each aspect of your life. He helps you identify all of the customers or ”clients” in your life and helps you determine what kind on relationship you want to have with each. Me Inc. includes the ten time tested principles that define the most successful companies and shows you how to apply them to your life.

You will develop a plan that will help you achieve your goals by understanding the twelve milestones and applying them to your life through the defined activities. Many questions provided help you to drill down to what is most important to you and what plan or guideline you need to develop to achieve your exceptional life. Because the answers to the questions asked are quite unique your plan will not look like someone else’s. This will be something you want to develop and then revisit as circumstances change in your life. Becoming the person you want to be is easier when you have the motivation and experience shared by Scott Ventrella to guide you.

The Power of an Hour: Business and Life Mastery in One Hour a Week

by Dave Lakhani, Recorded Books, 2007.

Dave Lakhani covers how to gain more effective use of your day by teaching a concept he calls “Fearsome Focus.” Fearsome focus allows you to focus on one specific task at a time for a period of one hour. You can not allow any interruptions during this time period. Lakhani found during his research that many of us spend six to eight hours a day fighting crises or fielding interruptions in our day. If we learn to plan for time to address crises that come up (the average time spent is two hours a day) and learn to stop or slow down the interruptions that try to control our day we can accomplish much more than we do today. By planning an hour a week (or more) and focusing on making the best use of that hour we can slowly make our to-do list go away and find ourselves with many tasks successfully accomplished.

Lakhani addresses how to focus, think creatively, set the stage and identify and destroy the blocks to getting tasks done. We can use this fearsome focus hour to accomplish the wanted task and by changing the way we choose to address our time constraints we can learn to focus on specific tasks and learn how to accomplish more in our day.

Topics covered include management, time management, customer experience, sales and marketing, making connections, mentoring and giving something back. Examples of successful use of the fearsome focus hour are included by Lakhani.

How to Position Yourself for Success: 12 Proven Strategies for Uncommon Achievement

by Nido Qubein, Recorded Books, 2008.

Motivational speaker Nido Qubein shares 12 proven strategies to succeed in business. We all have different talents and the trick is to identify yours and develop them to their fullest potential. Qubein shares his strategies through real life stories and situations.

The strategies include:
Create your own success system
Focus on differential advantage
Turn problems into opportunities
Turn stress into creative energy
Boost your impact with people along with seven others.

Every time you interact with others you have an opportunity to advance your business and theirs. You need to define what success means to you and develop a system that works for your personality, your system will probably not look like someone else’s. Once you have developed this system you can then focus on your differential advantage. This will help you define the similarities and differences between your product or service and that of your competitors. Once you have this you can look for problems that potential clients are facing and show them how your products or services can be a new opportunity for them. Using your products they can address their problems and turn them into opportunities for their companies to grow.

All of us suffer from various forms of stress and the strategy shared for turning your stress into creative energy will help you deal with the stress while advancing your business. Although we don’t always realize it we impact all of the people we interact with. Using this strategy you will realize more of the impact you have on others. You will become aware of the actual effects you have on others. By following these strategies and others you will learn to better understand yourself and your business.

Fire Them Up!: 7 Simple Secrets to: Inspire Colleagues, Customers, and Clients, Sell Yourself, Your Vision, and Your Values, Communicate with Charisma and Confidence

by Carmine Gallo, John Wiley and Sons, 2007.

Carmine Gallo divides this book into two parts; first he defines and illustrates with stories the 7 Simple Secrets and then he tells you how to live them. Many of the companies that have successfully implemented these secrets will be very familiar to you. Some people/companies use multiple secrets all of the time and some pick and choose the ones that work best for them and are known for adhering to these principles. People you will recognize include Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs and companies showcased include: Intel, Gymboree, Cold Stone Creamery and Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

The 7 secrets are:
1. Ignite Your Enthusiasm
2. Navigate the Way
3. Sell the Benefit
4. Paint a Picture
5. Invite Participation
6. Reinforce an Optimistic Outlook
7. Encourage Their Potential.

Many stories are given that show exactly how these aforementioned individuals and companies inspire us to learn and use these secrets. Your passion and commitment can help others around you provide the same level of service and commitment that you do to all of your customers.

If you want to light a fire under your company and get everyone’s buy in to grow the company and succeed you only need to emulate the guidelines shown here to succeed. The energy and passion shown by these individuals and companies will give you the inspiration you need to develop your own game plan and to put it to use.

The One Minute Entrepreneur: The Secret to Creating and Sustaining a Successful Business

by Kenneth Blanchard, Don Hutson and Ethan Willis, Currency Doubleday, 2008.

A person who is just graduating with an MBA, but hopes to open his own business in the future, tells this inspiring tale as a business fable. It follows his life as he accomplishes his goals and teaches us how to avoid the things that cause most entrepreneurs to fail. His first job out of college brings him his first mentor and someone who helps him find the right mentors to go forward with his dreams. Whether you want to be an entrepreneur or someone who controls their career you can gain a lot of insights on overcoming obstacles in your business life.

Topics covered include: learning the craft, creating legendary service, helping people to soar like eagles, ego issues, financial growing pains, turning things around and putting it all together. We follow Jud through his dream of having his own business and what he must do to develop it and weather the rough patches. He relies, at times, on the mentors that he has invited to coach him in life. They share their insights and these insights and others are recorded by Jud in a journal that his high school coach encouraged him to keep. Some of the insights shared under creating legendary service include: look for moments of truth with your customers to create the kind of experience you want them to have and don’t create a company of ducks; let your people soar like eagles.

An appendix with the twenty attributes of successful entrepreneurs is also included and some of these attributes are: purposeful, visionary, integrity-based, communicative and determined.

TheOne Minute Manager series of books has been around for a long time and this adds to this reference base. This quick read will inspire you to develop the characteristics that can make you succeed wherever you want to and doing what really matters to you.

Art of War for Women: Sun Tzu’s Ancient Strategies and Wisdom for Winning at Work

by Chin-ning Chu, Currency Doubleday, 2007.

This title is misleading because the book can be utilized by both genders, not just women. It focuses on women only because it suggests that you focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses and the examples given are for women. It would definitely give a heads up to thinking about possibilities from a feminine viewpoint because one of the strengths they possess are in relationships and in building relationships and this comes up under multiple headings. The original Art of War was written 2,500 years ago, but much of the strategies work just as well in today’s business environments as they did in wars 2,500 years ago.

There are five elements that must be addressed if you are going to fight a war:

ethics or moral standing
timing
resources or terrain
leadership
managing.

Doing business today is much like having a war against your competitors. Understanding and applying these elements can tell you if you are going to be a winner or a loser in the business war. Applying these elements can help you plan and develop a strategy to overcome your competition and stay ahead in the business world.

The main strategy is to know thyself first because if you don’t understand yourself and how you relate to others you can’t address your needs or the needs of others and you can’t respond to opportunities around you.

Thirteen chapters cover planning, doing battle, strategy, disposition, momentum, both sides of reality, conflict, imagination, management, environment, competitiveness, fireproofing yourself and espionage. If you need to develop a plan to advance your business you can get many ideas from the knowledge shared here.

“I got my start at the library.”

Continuing a seven-year partnership with ALA’s Campaign for America’s Libraries that has generated millions of dollars worth of editorial coverage on behalf of libraries, four entrepreneurs share their stories of how they started businesses using the library with Woman’s Day magazine’s 4 million readers.

The article appears in the magazine’s March 2008 issue. Featured are the co-owner of a Brooklyn-based children’s clothing business who participated in Brooklyn Public Library’s “Power Up!” business-plan writing contest, a library supporter who learned about self-publishing, a founder of a home organization business who turned to her library for business seminars, email and Internet access, and a financial advisor who found enthusiastic support from her local librarians.

“When you think of libraries, you think books and magazines, but there’s so much more. There’s almost nothing you can’t find-and no help you can’t get-at the library,” Jessica Sequinot, the featured winner from Brooklyn, is quoted as saying in the article.

Also included in the article is a sidebar with tips on how to “jump-start your small business at the library,” written by reference librarian Celia Ross, a member of the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Business Reference and Services Section. RUSA is a division of ALA.

Woman’s Day announced the initiative last March, asking its readers to submit stories of how they used the library to start a business. This is the sixth such initiative Woman’s Day has co-sponsored with ALA’s Campaign for America’s Libraries to promote libraries and librarians. Previous topics have included “how the library has changed my life,” “why I would want to be a librarian for a day” and “why I want to research my family tree at the library.”

Woman’s Day is a Founding Partner of The Campaign for America’s Libraries, ALA’s national public awareness campaign to promote the value of libraries and librarians. Other Founding Partners include Dollar General, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

The Campaign is made possible in part by ALA’s Library Champions, ALA’s highest level of corporate members, who support public awareness and advocacy for America’s libraries.

The Competitive Edge: How to Win Every Time You Compete by

Jeffrey Brown, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2007.

We compete every time we interact with others. Some people are stronger competitors than others. The Competitive Edge gives us seven vital principles we can use to compete and still remain true to our values and retain our integrity. Competition does not necessarily have only a winner and a loser, we can all win.

The seven principles are:

1. Know the Rules of the Game
2. Recognize the Right Decision and Make It
3. Define Goals that Reflect Your Values
4. Rethink Winning
5. Know the Psychological Pitfalls of Competition
6. Make Friends with Failure
7. Use Time to Your Advantage.

Using many sports and religious analogies Jeffrey Brown explains each principle and how we can learn to apply it to our greatest benefit. He uses stories to show how each principle works and ends each chapter with what he calls a postgame review that bullets the highlights of the chapter. For instance the postgame for Know the Psychological Pitfalls of Competition contains the following bullets:

Remember that failing doesn’t mean you’re a complete failure

Ponder the qualities of failure and how they confirm you are a worthy competitor

Block out negative thoughts

Rebound so you can be better prepared to perform again among others.

Using the postgame review sections you can refresh your understanding of the chapter and find the sections you wish to work on for yourself.

Jeffrey Brown shows us how to maintain and build our character and integrity in all of the interactions we have. The Competitive Edge shows you how to win while always remaining in a positive light and acting as a positive role model.