For me, The Wealth of Connections was preaching to the converted. Every morning, I read a fragment of a book titled “Big Potential” by Shawn Achor. Shawn argues, exactly like Vincent Pugliese, that collaboration is so much better than trying to make it on your own. In fact, Shawn calls working alone Small Potential. In contrast, collaboration and working with others is the Big Potential.

So, I didn’t need convicting. Maybe that’s why the only CON I want to mention is that The Wealth of Connections didn’t wow me. In fact, it was unusually hard for me to read it through. And I have no idea why. When I reviewed my highlights, they were almost evenly distributed throughout the whole book. The passages I highlighted were powerful and impactful. Yet, the overall reading experience wasn’t.

Continue reading →

This one was a surprise!

I’m a book-junkie, and I already read almost all in the space of ‘systemizing your business’ genre. Thus, I had very little expectations when getting The Busy Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Lifestyle Business. What new things could a 40-page long booklet teach me?

And I was right, it didn’t teach me much. However, it steeled my determination to keep working on my business (instead of “in” it).
Continue reading →

Book by Niklas Goke

The 4 Minute Millionaire is a nice, short book. I appreciate what Niklas did with it – summarized hundreds of hours of research, reading books, watching courses and listening to podcasts in a concise format. This book is Personal Finance 101, and I’ll buy a copy for each of my kids.

I love the premise of the book:
This book won’t make you a millionaire, but it’ll equip you to become one.
After the lecture, I can attest it’s true. But, traditionally, let’s start from…

CON

I found one stupid piece of advice in The 4 Minute Millionaire – the idea that investing in the stock market is better than investing in a house – in the context of mortgage and debt. Niklas provided some backbreaking theoretical assumptions and provided some data out of context (the data suggests families stay in their homes for nine years on average) to justify his opinion.

Continue reading →

Cover Design by Low & Joe Creative, Brea, CA 92821

This is a little sweet book, but it’s surprisingly full of golden nuggets. I mean, I’m not a total noob in the speaking world; I already had some paid gigs, and I was interviewed dozens of times on podcasts; yet, I learned quite a lot from Finding the Speaker’s Edge. Also, some tips were totally congruent with my own experience, and I can confirm that Michael’s advice is spot-on.

Continue reading →

Book by Seth Greene

This book lives up to its title. This is truly the ultimate guide. At least when it comes to growing a business. It may miss some details; for example, what equipment to use (although I didn’t really pay attention to that, it may as well contain those details), but when it comes to business and podcasts, it is very thorough.

I’ve just reviewed my book’s highlights, like I do before writing any review, and seriously, I couldn’t find any CONS of this book. It is well written, reasonably concise and absolutely comprehensive around the subject of leveraging podcasts for business. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the…

Continue reading →

Cover design by Jim Saurbaugh

“The sad truth is that today customer service is at an all-time low.” – wrote Jim Palmer in 2010. I guess, it only downgraded since that time and the trend doesn’t seem to reverse anytime soon.

Which is a great news for you, if you are willing to learn from “Stick Like Glue – How to Create an Everlasting Bond with Your Customers.” If your competition is hopeless at customer service, you can shine just by providing a decent experience.

But Jim teaches you how to bring customer service to a whole new level – well above “decent.”

Continue reading →

Cover Design by Charlotte Chan Mikkelsen

$100M Offers is an excellent book in more than one way. First of all, I want to scream from the rooftops how amazing the concept of this book itself is.

I’m in the book advertising business. Long ago (read: a few years back), I noticed how great an opportunity creating books was for business owners. You can sell the book, let people get to know you and your offer, and give them an incentive to go back for more.

I’m an author myself, and I know firsthand how common readers can turn into great customers. Yet, when I tried to explain my concept, very few entrepreneurs got it. And finding an entrepreneur who not only understood it, but implemented it in the right way, is as hard as trying to find a unicorn.

Continue reading →

Cover Design by Wiley

From my point of view, Fanatical Prospecting is a great personal development book. It is probably good for prospecting too.

I don’t prospect. I fear rejection like any sane person, and according to Jeb Blount, the author of Fanatical Prospecting

prospecting is hard, grueling, rejection-dense work.”

Thus, I built my business ventures to avoid prospecting and rejection. My customers come to me; I don’t look for them. I qualify them before I get on the call with them. And I don’t really need new customers. My attrition rates are low. A few new customers a month is more than enough for me. When COVID robbed me of my health and sanity, I did nothing in my business for three months. My revenue slumped only by about 50%.

Continue reading →

I love books that provoke me to think, and Your Personal Truth was certainly one of them.

Book by Alex Strathdee

Book Funnels is a very good book. It brilliantly serves the objective of teaching authors who do not know much about the Amazon advertising system how to set up their first campaigns, so they won’t go broke. Even better – the ads are guaranteed to make them money.

Yet, it is not without drawbacks. However, most of the CONs are directly related to the book’s objective. Alex focused on laying out his concept in as simple terms as possible – and believe me, it is not easy with this system! With this focus, he discarded anything that didn’t fit the purpose.

Continue reading →