Books Are Great

A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business.  One sends back a telegram saying, SITUATION HOPELESS STOP NO ONE WEARS SHOES The other write backs triumphantly, GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY STOP THEY HAVE NO SHOES Would you see the opportunity like the first or second scout? In the Art of Possibility Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander give us 12 practices that can help you change the way you view the world and allow you to see all the opportunities in front of you.  Benjamin is a conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and Rosamund is a psychotherapist. Together they share with us their experiences leading children and adults to achieve things they never thought possible. Along the way they developed their own set of practices that they believe can help you transform the way you look at the world. In today's episode, we cover the seven central practices that Jeff found to be most helpful.  Practice 1: It's All Invented Practice

Ferriss dropped out of Princeton after what he describes as close to a mental breakdown, and decided the best thing for him to do was to travel the world. He spent years trying to build his online business, BrainQuicken LLC, only to discover that his new creation was more of a prison than a liberator.   The 4 Hour Workweek is a book about re-thinking the links between one's time and their income. Tim explores the boundaries between working to live and living to work. His years of experience led him to create infrastructures within his business that allow him to profit while not being on the hook for every aspect of fulfillment.   He describes tactics to be more effective, means to find a profitable business idea and how to ship an order without ever interacting with the customer or the product.

What is better: competing or winning? This question was asked to Pete Carroll on his first day as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. His answer was easy Competing. Why? Because it lasts longer.    Pete Caroll is a super bowl winning head coach of the Seattle Seahawks and legendary college football coach of the USC Trojans.  Ever since he was a little kid he always competed hard for everything he wanted. Early on in his coaching career, he used this attitude to help him rise in the coaching ranks, and he started to realize that if he was truly going to reach his potential as a coach he needed to stop worrying about winning or losing, and focus on just competing every day. He first implemented his newly found philosophy at USC and went on to win multiple championships, and later went on to the NFL where he led the Seattle Seahawks to a super bowl victory. All these experiences led him to create his own leadership philosophy.   "If you want to win forever, always compete"

What is the best way to get along with coworkers, make new friends, imbue your employees with a sense of pride or win an argument? How to Win Friends and Influence People is a seminal work on improving one's life and ability to deal with others. In the 80 years since its publication, How to Win Friends has become a classic, referred to by thousands of copycat works. The advice Carnegie offers is not nuanced, it's not ground breaking and it did not win any pulitzer prizes. However, this simple-to-enact advice is timeless. Dale breaks down the work into four major (overlapping) pieces: Fundamentals Techniques of Handling People Six Ways to Make People Like You How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking How To Lead People There are many redundant ideas throughout, for which Dale offers interesting stories and anecdotes. His writing is dated at times, reading it with 21st century eyes, but is always simple and entertaining. The book reads very quickly, and the reader leaves with a ton of good ideas as well as a

Miracle Morning is a book about a morning routine created by Hal Elrod. Hal believes that the key to reaching your potential starts with how you choose to wake up every single morning.    In this show, Jeff discusses with Joe two of his main takeaways from the book and discusses each one in detail throughout the show.  95% Reality Check: The challenge for most people is that they don’t want to take ownership of anything. They do not realize that to accomplish anything in life, it starts with themselves. Instead of looking at people you admire and saying, “I can’t be like them”, you need to start realizing that you can. And you need to realize YOU are in control. No one is responsible for your success, only YOU. Hals Morning Routine ("Savers"): S – Silence Meditate A – Affirmations Write down how you want to live each day. Check out my affirmations here: www.wakeupitsdayone.com/day-one-ritual/ V – Visualize See your day ahead and visualize the success you’re going to have E – Exercise Run, do si

How To Read A Book is a work that sets out to answer that specific question. Mostly in regards to nonfiction. How can we as readers open up that piece of literature, quickly come to terms with the author, understand and think through the arguments being laid out and make a decision as to how that information should be used. Joe and Jeff discuss the details of how we can best go about this process. In reading Adler's work they learned techniques that will help them read more books, and get more out of the ones they get through. This show will prove integral to understanding their thought processes and lines of questioning throughout the life of Books Are Great. Shownotes: www.booksaregreat.com/how-to-read

Shownotes: www.booksaregreat.com/Hard-goals What is this book about? Mark and his team studied 5,000 workers from all different type of industries to understand what makes people and businesses extraordinary. He also shares stories from people like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and many of our past presidents to discover what made them achieve things most dream of doing. What he learned was that they didn’t set easy or “SMART” goals, they set HARD goals. In his book, Mark walks us through what HARD goals are and how we can achieve them.  How is the argument laid out? The research studies conducted laid out with each chapter breaking down the specifics of how and what HARD goals can do for you Key Ideas and terms: HARD goals stands for Heartfelt, Animated, Required, and Difficult  

Shownotes: www.booksaregreat.com/mastery-greene   In as few words as possible. What is the book about?   The lives of many past masters can be analyzed and parallels can be drawn throughout certain periods in their development. We can take repeating patterns as a hint that those steps are crucial to success, especially when shown to repeat consistently over large spans of time. The best masters learned deeply, usually from a skilled individual, surpassed that person and engaged themselves wholly in the creative task throughout their career.   How is the argument laid out?   Greene tells tons of interesting anecdotes that give credence to his claims and give the reader nice stories to hook the main ideas onto.   Key ideas and terms   Apprenticeship - Absorb the master’s power. Technical skill and observation. Social Intelligence - See people as they are, no more and no less. Creative-Active - Engage playfulness and a sense of childlike wonder to breed creativity.

What is the book about:   The view we adopt of ourselves determines how we live our lives. The author Carol Dweck shares with us research that shows humans have two types of mindsets: Fixed and Growth. People who believe their abilities are fixed are less likely to succeed while people with a growth mindset believe learning from failure and hardwork is the key to reaching your potential. Carol shares with us stories of athletes, coaches, parents and business leaders to help us understand how we can shift our mindset to help us achieve our goals.    How is the argument laid out?   Dweck shares with clinical studies she conducted along with stories of athletes, business leaders, and coaches that show examples of both fixed and growth mindsets   Key Ideas and terms: The belief of Fixed Mindset individuals: We were born a certain way, and we remain that way forever. Our personality traits, IQ, and skills cannot change. When something gets hard, they quit. When someone gives them feedback, they deny it. The belie