Make Everyone Want You

This book is not about dating or your relationship with your significant other — actually, that’s just the fun & sexy title to get you to read the book.  Really, Marie Forleo’s book, "Make Every Man Want You (or Make Yours Want You More):  How to Be So Damn Irresistible You’ll Barely Keep From Dating Yourself!" is a self-improvement book about how to clean up your junk & enjoy your life, regardless of who else is living it with you.  The idea is that once you love your life & are enjoying yourself, everyone (including potential mates, clients, friends) will find you irresistible.

I would have never picked this book up (since I’m married) except that Marie and I are in a mastermind group together.  But I am SO GLAD that I bought and read her book, because I immediately put into practice & changed some little but major things in my life that have already improved my happiness and my relationship with my husband. 

The #1 lesson I put into practice:  "Life Is Now, This Is It."  Read more

Book Review: The Now Habit by Neil Fiore Ph.D.

The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play by Neil Fiore, Ph.D., originally was published in 1989, so perhaps everyone besides me has already read this book … but I found it incredibly helpful in diagnosing my current procrastination problems with finishing my book and getting done some nagging stuff on my to-do list.

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Book Review: No B. S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is a Character.  Love him or hate him, he tells it like it is, and in his books (and info products) he gives million-dollar checklists for doubling your business income, or more. 

The book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Guide to Time Productivity & Sanity is no exception.  Dan Kennedy passes on practical tips you could implement today that will help you get more done in the same amount. of time.  This is NOT a time management system or another way to create a to do list.  He teaches action steps you can take that will change how you value your time, and keep people from getting in your way so you can get stuff done. Read more

Book Review: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

Want to work just 4 hours per week, and still make enough money to enjoy the lifestyle you want? 

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss -  is a brilliant and fun book that I highly recommend to teach you just how to do that — work as little as possible to get what you want. Read more

The Long Tail

Last week I read The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson.

This book does a wonderful job explaining the real New Economy — the ability of small merchants to sell specialty, niche products, widely available through new internet distribution systems. Fundamentally, transaction costs — shipping, store stock, brick-and-mortar, distance, time — are all reduced to small amounts (or nothing) — so we, as consumers, can access whatever non-mass-market stuff we want. And, the book discusses the power of the internet to let the collective wisdom of the masses dispense information (i.e., Wikipedia).

So what is The Long Tail? See The Long Tail website for more specific information and the chart. The Long Tail is reference to a chart where the popularity of a product/service is on the vertical axis (or how many are sold), and the products are on the horizontal axis. A few products sell a whole bunch, and then the graph quickly falls off to the majority of products that sell very little.

There are only a few “blockbuster” type products that sell a lot (and each year those “blockbusters” sell less and less). Then the chart quickly falls off, as most products sell very few. Historically, those products were not available, because no business could afford to stock a product, like a book, that sold only 2 copies a year. However, in the age of internet business, and Print-On-Demand, no one has to keep a book in stock (and pay for inventory, storage fees, non-sale, etc.), so non-brick-and-mortar businesses like Amazon.com can afford to keep that 1x year book available on its website.

What this means is that the very large mass market products — blockbuster movies, network TV, CDs, brick-and-mortar stores — are gradually loosing out to specialty products that are available through various internet distribution mechanisms — both the large stores like amazon.com, Netflix, and iTunes, as well as the online marketplaces and search engines, like ebay, Amazon marketplace, yahoo marketplace, and google. We all like using specialty products, because they are more directed to our particular tastes and needs, than the generic mass-market junk.

I love that the tyranny of the mass-media big-business is gradually being eroded by the collective wisdom of the masses, and the little guy internet businessperson, the blogger, the garage band, and the self-publishing author. Much more stuff to weed through (requiring better search technology and a more critical eye), but so much more interesting stuff is available now than ever before.