Never Eat Alone/Ferrazzi 225-228

228 You can’t do meaningful work that makes a difference unless you’re devoted to learning, growing, and stretching your skills.

WOW in everything you do.

Shake things up! Obsess on your image! Turn everything into an opportunity to build your brand.

Develop a personal Branding Message (PBM)

What do you want people to think when they hear or read you name?

Your message is always an offshoot of your mission and your content. After you’ve written goals in some version of 90 days, three year, and ten-year increments, you can build a brand perception that supports all this.

…list of words that you want people to use when referring to you.

Winners Never Cheat/Huntsman 169-end

176 4 simple suggestions:

1) Begin with a question when you engage in something that affects others: Is this right? Would I like to be treated this way.
2) Take your values to work.
3) Consider yourself your bothers’ and sisters’ keepers when setting the example of ethical behavior.
4) Make the underpinning of your life a string of f-words (at least, phonetically): family, faith, fortitude, fairness, fidelity, friendship and philanthropy.

178 No exercise is better for the human heart than reaching down and lifting another up.
John Andrew Holmes

Survival is Not Enough/Godin 80-86

84 You can’t manage change. Change manages you.

85 Business on the other hand, needs to look forward, not back. It doesn’t make us any money if we successfully understand why strategy A was better than strategy B. What we need to do is predict which strategy is going to work in the future.

So the smart CEO will tell you that her job is to be smarter than evolution. Her job is to see beyond today’s hot trend and embrace the future instead.

86 The job of the CEO is to organize the company to jump on board a strategy that’s winning for now and, at the same time to organize the company to evolve enough to find the next strategy before today’s strategy disappears.

… the job of the CEO is not to be right. That’s impossible. No company has consistently been smarter than the marketplace.

While we’d like to believe that we’re smarter than the market, we’re not.

The Long Tail/Anderson 174-180

180 The Long Tail is nothing more than infinite choice. Abundant, cheap distribution means abundant, cheap, and unlimited variety—and that means that audience tends to distribute as widely as the choice.

181 The result is that more and more individuals, who had been using only the (generic) mass medium because that’s all they had, have gravitated to these specialty publications, channels, or web channels, or websites. More and more use the mass medium less and less. And more and more will soon be most. The individuals haven’t changed; they’ve always been fragmented. What’s changing is their media habits. They’re now simply satisfying the fragmented interests that they’ve always had. There are as many fragments as there are individuals. Always have been and always will be.

Never Eat Alone/Ferrazzi 221-225

223 And yet, truth to tell, few talents are more important to managerial success than knowing how to tell a good story.

So forget bullet points and slide shows. When you’ve figured out what your content is, tell an inspiring story that will propel your friends and associates into action with spirit and fearlessness, motivated and mobilized by simple but profound story-telling.

224 We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brands called You. Tom Peters

Power brands…has become a competitive advantage.

225 …create your own micro-equivalent of the Nike swoosh.

You must think of your job, your department, your division as a self-contained Inc. You must do WOW projects.

Winners Never Cheat/Huntsman 159-169

160 …the challenge for Huntsman executives is making money as fast as I can give it away.

161 In almost every human being, there is an inner desire to help others.

There is no source of true happiness more complete than an act of charity.

162 It is of little consequence where or how or to whom we give. What really matters is our attitude.

163 At one time, I believed charitable giving was purely voluntary. About 25 years ago, I changed my mind.

We are but temporary trustees of our fortunes, no matter the size.

169 True giving is doing something for somebody who can never repay you.

Survival is Not Enough/Godin 75-80

77. You work in swamp. Or a rain forest. Depends on your point of view.

79. Change starts with you, the employee.

80 While most executives like to start from the top and work their way down an organization, evolution doesn’t think that way. Instead, it’s the individual organism that drives the process.

You’re the key element in your organization’s evolution, since it is you and your coworkers that determine which paths the company takes.

If you and your colleagues zoom, then you’ll evolve faster, become more fit and win more often

The Long Tail/Anderson 163-174

166 The audience is migrating away from broadcast to the Internet, where niche economics rule. Given greater choice, they are also shifting their attention to what they value most—and that turns out not to be formulaic fare with lots of commercials.

168 We are in the midst of the biggest explosion of variety in history.

169 As companies compete to indulge this yearning they began to elaborate mass production into mass customization.

170 The overwhelming reality of our online age is that everything can be available.

174 The more choice we have the more we have to decide what is it we really want. The more we reflect on what we really want, the more involved we get in the creation of the goods we buy and use [via customization]. The more we participate in the creation of products and services, the more choices we end up creating for ourselves.”

Never Eat Alone/Ferrazzi 215-221

221…whatever content you’re trying to pitch has to actually be oversimplified or overly universal.

“How does my content help others answer who they are, where they are from, and where they are going?”

223 And yet, truth to tell, few talents are more important to managerial success than knowing how to tell a good story.

So forget bullet points and slide shows. When you’ve figured out what your content is, tell an inspiring story that will propel your friends and associates into action with spirit and fearlessness, motivated and mobilized by simple but profound story-telling.

Winners Never Cheat/Huntsman 153-159

159 Monetarily, the most satisfying moments in my life have not been the excitement of closing a great deal or the reaping of handsome profits from it. They have been when I was able to help others in need—especially “the least of these, my brethren.” There’s no denying that I am a deal junkie, but I also have developed an addiction from giving.

The more one gives the better one feels; and the better one feels about it, the easier it becomes to give. It is a wonderfully warm, slippery slope. If you require a less altruistic reason to give, try this: Philanthropy is plan good business. It energizes a company.

The Long Tail/Anderson 157-163

160 In a sense, an online retailer is to a brick-and-mortar store what Google is to a library.

163 There may be a local demand for the goods, but again, the question for any store owner is whether there’s enough local demand. The calculation goes a little like this: Sales = The percentage of the population who might buy Minus The percentage not within ten miles of the store Minus The percentage that never comes in Minus The percentage that won’t see the item on the shelf And so on…

Stores leave business on the table simply because their economics doesn’t allow them to pursue it. In a nutshell, that is the business case for online retailers. Because they can reach all of those many low-density towns as efficiently as the high-density ones, they can tap the long tail of distribution demand.

Never Eat Alone/Ferrazzi 215-215

TIPS FOR BECOMING AN EXPERT.

1) Get in front and analyze the trends and opportunities on the cutting edge.
Identify the people in your industries who always seem to be out in front, and use all the relationships skills you’ve acquired to connect with them.

2) Ask seemingly stupid questions
3) Know yourself and your talents.
4) Always learn
5) Stay healthy
6) Expose yourself to unusual experiences.
7) Don’t get discouraged—Focus on the results and keep your eyes open for what is happing on the edges of your industry.
8) Know the new technology—techno geek
9) Develop a niche. Think of several area where your company underperforms and choose to focus on the one area that is least attended to.
10) Follow the money

Winners Never Cheat/Huntsman 146-153

148 Moreover, everyone wants to know the true feelings and heartstrings of their leaders, along with news on how the organization is faring. In truth, though, you can’t get a good read on the organization without knowing the feelings of the person who is leading it.

149 The greatest dividends are those paid to hardworking men and women through bonuses, gifts, scholarships and praise.

150 All companies—public or private—must create a culture in which employees come first and are treated like royally. Believe me, they always return the favor.

151 We are the mere trustees of what funds we are temporarily given on this earth. May we share those with others. Andrew Carnegie

153 Philanthropy ought to be the preeminent ingredient in everyone’s recipe for material gain.

Never Eat Alone/Ferrazzi 212-215

213 A unique point of view is one of the only ways to ensure that today, tomorrow, and a year from now you’ll have a job.

…competitive advantage in terms of knowledge and innovation. …today’s market values creativity over mere competence and expertise over general knowledge.

Becoming an expert was the easy part. I simply did what experts do: I taught, wrote, and spoke about my expertise.

215 Starting today, you’ve got to figure out what exceptional expertise you’re going to master that will provide real value to your network and your company.

…find someone who has already connected the dots and become an expert of their content.