Books and Courses

I recently finished reading "Small Giants – Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big" by Bo Burlington.

I enjoyed the book, though like most of these books, you need to determine how and what you will apply to yourself.

My basic take-aways include:

• Find a product/service that the market needs and is willing to pay for,
• Build a company that is great at delivering that product/service,
• Determine what you really want from the company you are building,
• Let your growth be a result of providing a great product/service and building a great company,
• You have choices: you can be great and stay relatively small […]
  

Sometimes you pick up a business or personal development book and you enjoy reading it, but for some reason, nothing really changes afterward. Some are read it once and never read it again.

Well, recently I was perusing my bookshelf and picked up two I had read quite a while ago for a re-read.

When reading these (or any other books), you are not likely to get magic ideas or formulas to guarantee success in your business. What works for one company will not work for yours straight out of the box.

No the thing to get out of these books are […]

I am always fascinated by what makes some people succeed and why some very gifted people don’t really accomplish anything of note.

So the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell was a pretty good read, not because of the underlying ideas but because of his writing style and the examples he used.

Some of the premises of the book include:

• Being an intellectual genius does not guarantee success.
• Once you are smart enough, other skills come into play, like how to deal with people in the real world.
• There are few “instant” success stories, mostly it’s hard work and persistence.
• Your parents […]