Posts Tagged ‘Book Review’
Keep Your Friends Close, and Your Frenemies Closer: Why Real Estate Professionals Need to Read "Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate"
Many real estate professionals are still ambivalent about Zillow. They remember how that Zillow came to market ten years ago with a much less industry-friendly attitude than it developed once it realized there was more money in pursuing the industry as a client rather than a competitor. And maybe they’re just naturally wary of a…
Read MoreBook Review: Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life (1998).
I blame Who Moved My Cheese for the slew of copycat animal parables that followed through the last decade. I also think that Cheese is a seriously overrated book, not only because the message is simple – not deceptively simple, just plain simple. I also found the parable itself confusing and poorly written, trying to…
Read MoreBook Review: Ken Blanchard, Whale Done: The Power of Positive Relationships (2002).
Ken Blanchard’s book Whale Done is one of his “parables” about management success based on lessons learned by a disgruntled manager who learns a new method of motivated people from an unlikely source. The lead character in Whale Done learns from the trainers at the Sea World show in Orlando. Specifically, how is it that…
Read MoreBook Review: Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money — That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Rich Dad, Poor Dad became a phenomenon based largely on its simple allegorical concept: that the author had two dads, one rich and one poor, who gave him conflicting advice about how to achieve success. The poor dad advised him to stay in school, study hard, get a good job, buy a house, and save…
Read MoreDavid Bach, The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich (2004)
David Bach has created a cottage industry out of conventional financial planning wisdom artfully packaged. The Automatic Millionaire is the core of that pursuit, a practical, simple, conventional guide to financial planning wrapped around the concept of “automaticity.” Essentially, Bach points out that you can become a millionaire by incorporating automatic deductions from your income…
Read MoreBook Review: Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, The Millionaire Next Door
The Millionaire Next Door is an insightful study of millionaires in America and the characteristics they share in common. The book is based on a set of research surveys conducted by the authors combined with interviews and other research. The findings of the studies, and the book, are counter-intuitive insofar as they point out that…
Read MoreBook Review: Stephen C. Lundin, FISH!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results (2000).
Stephen Lundin’s Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results quickly became a revered text in modern management styles after its publication a decade ago, particularly well-known for its promotion of “fun” in the workplace to motivate employees. There’s actually a lot more in the book, though, than just its “fun”-orientation, particularly in…
Read MoreBook Review: Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
The E-Myth books are highly recommended by a lot of other business authors, and by a number of business people I have met. I found The E-Myth Revisited to be very flabby – lots of good insights throughout, but woven around a series of stories and staccato imprecations that made the book a tougher read…
Read MoreBook Review: Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right — Achieving Operational Excellence in the Real Estate Industry
Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto is a powerful book, one of the best and simplest articulations of how to achieve operational excellence that I have ever read. Gawande’s message is simple: the world has become increasingly complex, and we need to actively create systems and processes that will simplify the tasks that we have to…
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