Tag Archives: business

Goals – Got To Have Them

Let me tell you first what Seth Godin, marketing guru, author and blog celeb has to say about this subject: The thing about goals.

“Having goals is a pain in the neck.

If you don’t have a goal (a corporate goal, a market share goal, a personal career goal, an athletic goal…) then you can just do your best. You can take what comes. You can reprioritize on a regular basis. If you don’t have a goal, you never have to worry about missing it. If you don’t have a goal you don’t need nearly as many excuses, either.

Not having a goal lets you make a ruckus, or have more fun, or spend time doing what matters right now, which is, after all, the moment in which you are living.

The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run.

It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact… those people have goals.”

And I would add to that, if you don’t have a goal, you can wind up selling yourself short, leaving money on the table.

Let’s say you have a blog, a website, a brick and mortar business or a career,

Just to pluck some imaginary, hypothetical numbers out of the air, let’s say you’re making $80,000 a year. ( I know, you might be making $30,000 and I’m not feeling your pain. Or you might be making $250,000 and I’m insulting you, not giving you enough glory and limelight. Just bear with me. These are hypothetical numbers, ok?

I know I’ve been in situations where I was making $80,000 ( hypothetically) and vowed to make more from that particular business. But I didn’t set a goal, so I didn’t form a detailed strategy and set out the concrete steps it would take for me to get there. I might have made more money. I might have gotten to 100K. But if I didnt do the planning I would just keep on doing whatever I had been doing and not tie all my actions to specific steps to reach that goal. Even if I reached $100K, I would never know if I could have reached $200K instead.

And wouldn’t we all have rather reached 200K instead, (or a million or whatever your hypothetical goal might be)?

How To Recognize When You Need A Virtual Assistant, What They Can Do

: Cover via Amazon

I absolutely believe in delegating. If you’ve worked hard, been persistent and had just a tad of luck, you will reach the point where your business has grown enough that delegating becomes mandatory. You’ll know when that point comes. You won’t be able to handle all the work on your plate. You are working longer hours, getting tired. Your family starts grumbling that they don’t see enough of you or get enough of your attention. Your spouse starts asking about plans for the week-end and you, with a dazed, far away stare, start muttering about a difficult client or a tech system that crashed.

In short, you’re no fun at all and you’re not having any fun either. Work which was once invigorating is now becoming a series of painful tasks you hope you can complete. The diagnosis is simple. You need help.

And if it takes more convincing, recognize that, sure as the sun will come up in the morning, without help, you will burn out, your business will start a long down hill slide, and somewhere along the way down your family will start wondering if this grumbling workaholic they find themselves living with is worth putting up with at all.

So, you know. You’ve arrived at that point where help is no long a nice idea. Help is mandatory.

Here’s what a virtual assistant can do for you. In 10 Ways Web Businesses Can Use Virtual Assistants , Rebecca Zwar, a virtual assistant and owner of Social Web diVA offers this bit of guidance:

“The virtual assistant (VA) industry has literally exploded in the last few years. You may have heard of the very popular book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Richby Timothy Ferris. You might even know of a VA or two. But how do you know when you’re ready to start outsourcing?

Too many small business owners wait until they’re overwhelmed to start outsourcing, either because they feel they’re the only one who can do the job right, or because they fear it’s simply out of their budget.

The truth is that there are many tasks you’ll come across in your web-based business that do not fall within your area of expertise. The right virtual assistant will get you set up, going and on to the next task in the time it will take you to read the FAQ’s! Think of them as your virtual help-desk for developing, implementing and marketing your internet presence. So if you’ve been putting off outsourcing because you weren’t sure where to start, check out this list of 10 Ways Web Businesses can use VAs:

Design and maintain your blog or even website. There are many virtual assistants out there who can get you set up with an attractive and functional blog or website. And unlike traditional web designers, your VA can continue to help you with quick updates and changes, without exorbitant fees or long turn-around times.
Set up your ezine/newsletter. Is your time better spent generating business, or learning how to create and edit an HTML newsletter template? Your VA will set it up and send it out, without needing anything more than a text or Word file from you.
Manage your affiliate program. An affiliate program is a great way to increase sales for your product. But they do require some maintenance. A VA can help with writing promotional copy that draws in good affiliates, as well as manage payment schedules, promotions and more.
Create sales pages or landing pages. Do you have a new product, free report or teleseminar you’re promoting? Have your VA create an attractive landing page that generates lots of sign-ups.
Set up and manage your shopping cart. Shopping cart systems online can range from simplistic to highly complicated. It can be difficult to know which to choose, much less how to set it up for your business. Your VA can help you select the cart that’s best for you, and integrate it with your website.
Develop and maintain your social networking. Social networking was the buzzword online in 2008, and networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter experienced phenomenal growth. The right VA can sit down to create a strategy for your social networking, and help you maintain it so it’s a time-effective, not time-consuming, form of marketing.
Assist with formatting audio or video. If you’re interested in podcasting or producing videos, don’t let lack of technical knowledge stop you. A virtual assistant can take raw audio or video, edit, upload and promote it for you.
Create professional free and paid products. Provide a simple text file to your VA, and they can help you produce a professional product to sell or give away to build your list. Or, work with a VA that offers writing services, and you won’t even have to create the product yourself!
Act as technical support for teleseminars, training calls, webinars, video conferences and more – If you’re not familiar with the systems you’re using, having technical issues can make you look unprofessional or worse, cost you money. Having a VA standing by to help work through any technical issues can be worth the cost just for peace of mind.
Finally, remember that just because you’re a web-based business doesn’t mean that you couldn’t use some administrative help. Let your VA manage your schedule through online calendars, sort through emails, screen voicemails, manage your bookkeeping, or help with whatever task you find is consuming your time and costing you money.

Virtual assistants are more than simply secretaries—they can be business partners that bring essential skills to help you manage and market your business for the best of both worlds. They’ll save you time and help make you money!”

I can tell you, I reached that point in my business and the moment you realize you need help and act on it, your business and your life will change for the better. You will be able to take downtime to recharge and your business will be able to continue to grow without chewing up the founder in the process.

Just do it!

Hello Plinky! Hello Jane And Robot ! And Other Tales of Courage

Our hat is off to Jason Shellen! And to Vanessa Fox! These two brave souls left Google to start their own companies in the midst of a recession.

They don’t talk about gutsy, they epitomize gutsy.

“Jason Shellen, resigned as Google’s manager of new business development in 2007 to launch Plinky.com, a startup that’s designed to inspire bloggers and users of social media sites. Shellen says he was getting complacent working at Google, despite the company’s domination of the Web.”

Vanessa Fox, aka, the Google Lady Webmaster, the most well-known woman among the SEO community, who helped build Webmaster Central, one of the company’s most successful projects took the leap as well. A star at Google, Rand Fishkin, CEO of Seo Oz, in an anthem to her abilities and webmasters debt to her says:

” I don’t believe that anyone, outside of a few of Vanessa’s close friends, realize how much she’s done to help Google’s public image, their bottom line and their relations with webmasters, nor do most of us know how much Vanessa’s done to fight for webmasters internally at Google. … Webmaster Central was not only Vanessa’s department, it was her baby, her idea (right from inception), her show. If not for Vanessa, we might never have had the dedicated team of webmaster relations specialists (people like Jonathan, Amanda, Trevor, Susan & Maile). We might never have been able to send sitemaps to Google, see data about our sites (particularly the link data, for which Vanessa was always a fantastic advocate), verify ownership, select a preferred domain display or do any of the hundreds of other things that Webmaster Central enables.”

So, to Vanessa’s new company……. Hello Jane and Robot!

Most people in the high tech sector would kill to work at Google. All that money. All those stock options. Who could resist? And why would you want to?

In, CNN.com’s reporting, They left the corporate cocoon to blossom, Shellen says he decided to leave Google despite a shaky economy because he wanted to force himself to change.

“Being an entrepreneur is all about risk and innovation, not timing the market,” Shellen says. “A good idea doesn’t wait for the perfect time to emerge. The ability to build something new outweighed the need for stability.”

Now there’s a person with the entrepreneurial gene.

“Shellen believes the large resources of a company can actually slow down the creative process. A person might want to invent a product, but small things like the name of the product end up being discussed in a committee.

“You don’t find that in a small company,” he says. “At my new company, Plinky, we sometimes dream things up in the morning and by the afternoon have it live on the Web. That never happens at a big company.”

In another example of taking the giant leap, “greater freedom is also what inspired Vanessa Fox to resign from her position at Google. Today, Fox is the founder of “Jane and Robot,” which helps Web site developers ensure their sites can be found by potential customers, and “Nine By Blue,” which helps businesses use online data to better understand their customers.

Fox says the challenge of creating something in an evolving space like the Internet was too great to pass up.

“As hokey as it sounds, there’s more to life than money,” she says. “As much as I loved working at Google, I am really enjoying the flexibility I have now, as well as the ability to really make a difference in the direction I choose to go in.”

If any of these comments sound remotely like something you might say, if you took the leap then Congratuations! You have the entreprerial gene.

So go for it! Take the leap! I salute you, too. We hope to greet you out there launching your new business very soon. ( It certainly beats the cascading pink slips which will engulf many as gloomy economic times drag on and downwards, forcing many companies to cut back.)

In the meantime: Hello Plinky. Hello Jane and Robot!

Had Illusions? Been In The Entrepreneur Dip? Focus & Persist!

Probably every person who dreams of becoming an entrepreneur is looking at a bit of a rosy scenario. Life , or, in this case, success in business, through rose colored glasses. An Illusion.

Not just about the outcome. About the process as well

THE ILLUSIONS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP : The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By makes no bones about it. Launching a business is hard work and it doesn’t happen overnight. Businesses, like oak trees and flower gardens, take a long time to grow._

Want to know how long?

10,000 hours.

Yep, that’s what it takes.

More than talent and more than luck, although those certainly help, it takes a lot of nose to the grindstone, seat of the pants to the seat of the chair, actually improving your skills every hour.

Malcolm Gladwell‘s new book Outliers makes this point, among others:

: Cover via Amazon

Becoming a superstar takes about 10,000 hours of hard work.

As marketing guru, author and blogger extraordinaire, Seth Godin sagely points out : Bill Gates, the Beatles, Beethoven, Bill Joy, Tiger Woods–do the math, 10,000 hours of work.

Seth Godin also mentions this is somewhat a restatement of his concept and book, the Dip. It’s not easy to get there.

“What really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt-until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. In fact, winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can become number one in your niche, you’ll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and long-term security.

Losers, on the other hand, fall into two basic traps. Either they fail to stick out the Dip-they get to the moment of truth and then give up-or they never even find the right Dip to conquer.

Whether you’re a graphic designer, a sales rep, an athlete, or an aspiring CEO, this fun little book will help you figure out if you’re in a Dip that’s worthy of your time, effort, and talents. If you are, The Dip will inspire you to hang tough. If not, it will help you find the courage to quit-so you can be number one at something else.”

Someone has said that every success is a transformation of an earlier failure. So, if you don’t succeed, it’s because you quit too soon. ( I would put that right up there with another immutable tenet of success never run out of cash. Do those two, and you will succeed.)

Gladwell’s Book Examines Outliers Success

Green Business Opportunities

I thought you might be interested in a new umbrella of business sites I’m starting.

Green business.

I mention this because the new business landscape seems to present unusually favorable opportunities in several sectors. One such sector is in green businesses. Environmentally friendly businesses. And it certainly doesn’t hurt to get in early, before the field gets too crowded.

Two posts where I’ve discussed these opportunities, with the help of green future experts and gurus like Tom Friedman, are Bootstrapping A Green Business and Clean Energy Will Be Big – Just Look Who’s There

New Energy Research is the first of these sites. It deals with conversions you can make very simply to conserve energy for yourself. But it has a dual purpose, in that any of these methods suggest a business you may consider starting to help others take advantage of these new conservation techniques.

If you get a chance, take a look and let me know if you have something to add.

Investment In Women in Emerging Markets Promises Long Term ROI

For some time now, women have formed non-profits, and along with governments and non-governmental agencies, have sought to provide micro-loans to other women in emerging nations, in order for them to start their own businesses. Usually the loans were to automate a skill the women already possessed, such as enabling them to purchase an industrial sewing machine. Or to capitalize on an asset they already possessed, such as enabling women of a Latin American mountain village, which raised geese, to start exporting pate to France and goose down pillows to the United States. But the array of business skills they needed….in marketing, book keeping, product management…. was sorely lacking.

World Women Trade Fair

Ms. Okoli-Owube, 31, faced this dilemma first hand. Even with a university degree, she found herself struggling to start a business and learn business skills at the same time. When she “saw a local newspaper advertisement last spring for 10,000 Women, a global entrepreneurship program run by Goldman Sachs, she and about 100 other women jumped at the chance to apply.”

As reported by the New York Times in Business Skills for Women in Emerging Markets, the welfare of girls and women has long been on the agenda of international agencies. The World Bank, for example, announced steps earlier this year to increase support for women entrepreneurs by channeling some $100 million in commercial credit lines to them by 2012.

But corporations have also begun to take their economic power more seriously, especially in emerging markets.

Many corporate programs employ microloans, grants or gifts to promote business education. Goldman decided to take a different approach after its research showed that per-capita income in Brazil, China, India, Russia and other emerging markets could rise by as much as 14 percent if women had better management and entrepreneurial skills.

“It’s not only philanthropy they’re after,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the International Center for Research on Women. Goldman “had the idea that investment in women means a return on the gross national product of the country, and on household income.”

The company set aside $100 million over five years to bring business education to 10,000 qualified women business owners in developing countries, a commitment that remains unchanged despite banking industry turmoil.

Ms. Rao Gupta said the long-term view that Goldman and others were taking in emerging markets might help form a new economic stratum in societies where women’s participation in business traditionally had been restricted. Laws and customs in some countries, for example, bar women from opening bank accounts or require a husband’s permission to set up a company.

“This is the next step for women because it’s investing long term in business skills,” said Ms. Rao Gupta, whose institute researches and provides technical assistance for women in developing countries.

It has been said: “If you want to help a country, help the women in it.” We applaud this commitment to women in developing countries. We hope it continues and expands. There is no question, in my mind, it will be a success in enpowering these women and consequently helping their families and their entire communities.

Photo Credit: World Women Trade Fair – The Goal of the International Handcrafted Gift and Home Textile Expo . is to assist women entrepreneurs living in third-world countries to ACCESS GLOBAL MARKETS , and to also create awareness of the potential of TRADE as a mechanism for development and poverty reduction in developing countries. They use fair trade practices and eco-friendly products that do not destroy the environment. They are helping to reduce the level of poverty through community projects-building schools, health clinics, and providing training programs to other artisans leading to job creation.

Time to invest in emerging markets

Tweet Your Own Horn

If you’ve followed this blog at all, you know I’m a firm believer that self promotion is part of the game of business. The difference between business success and business failure often has more to do with effective self-promotion than with technical competence. If you want recognition, you must start promoting yourself.

So how do you promote yourself in a professional and sophisticated way?

One way is to deliver something of value. ( Your ideas and professional expertise, of course.) And one of the very best ways to do this today is using Twitter to tweet your own horn.

As Ron Miller points out: Your Business Needs to Pay Attention to Twitter

Over the past year or so, Twitter has become a full-blown communications phenomenon. For those of you who don’t follow every social networking trend. Twitter is a micro-blogging site where you enter your thoughts, whatever they may be, in 140 or characters or less. Experts say if you aren’t paying attention to Twitter, your business may be missing out on more than you think…

I’m a recent convert to using Twitter and am just trying now to set up a system myself to use it in a strategic way.

So let me turn to an expert, Michael Stelzner, and give you what I think is a stunning and very compelling example which Michael used in How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business on practical ways to use Twitter. Trust when we say your tweets can capture the attention and interest of top level people in your field, so best to learn how to do it:

“The Twitter Plan

Cindy King, an international sales specialist, saw a huge boost in business inquires by implementing a strategic Twitter plan.

“Following the right people on Twitter was key. There are some people very gifted at building relationships on Twitter. As I followed these online community builders, I realized that some of them are also excellent direct response copywriters. They get their Twitter followers to take action,” said King.

“Light bulbs went off, and I spent a weekend putting together a tweet marketing plan and entered in 6 weeks worth of tweets, 5 a day, using TweetLater. I used a mindmap, created categories, varied times on tweets and used BUDurls so I could track results and improve my tweet plan the next time around. That was a month ago,” explained King.

When King finds a spare minute between projects, she logs into Twitter and watches what folks are talking about. When she Tweets, about 90 percent of the time she presents useful information and resources to her followers. The remaining tweets are surveys and questions. Following this strategy, King saw an 800 percent increase in inquiries about her business after she setup her Twitter campaign.”

And another example:

“Getting In Front of High Profile People

B2B copywriter Terri Rylander took a much different approach. At first she was very skeptical of Twitter. “I looked at it but couldn’t figure out why people would continually send out messages about the size of a text message, unless they were a teenager. Twitter was for sending updates they said. I don’t have time for updates, and besides, who would care?” said Rylander.

She later came across a peer in her industry that was using Twitter and suggested Rylander follow her on Twitter. “That’s when I discovered Twitter as a business tool. I’ve been in my particular niche for over 10 years and know who the players are (though they don’t know me). When I checked who she was following on Twitter, there they all were! It read like a “Who’s Who” list.”

Rylander joined Twitter and began following and interacting with the people she respected. “Other than a cold call on the phone or e-mail, I would never have the chance to get my name in front of vendors, industry analysts, and industry experts. I’ve had a number of Twitter conversations that have also led to personal conversations.”

To stay top of mind with experts, she offers interesting links, responds to tweets, and posts her thoughts for conversation at least a few times a day.”

Michael Stelzner also offers a number of very useful tools for your Twitter Toolkit, and I suggest you go to How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business to collect them all. That’s what I’m going to do.

You can follow Michael here on Twitter . When I get my Twitter plan up to speed, I’m going to ask you to follow me on Twitter also, and I’ll follow you. Some of the Top Tweeters have 10,000 people following them. But they all started with just a few.

Wall Street Journal Trumpets Twitter

How to Get Really Rich!

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I hate just about all the articles and most of the books about “How To Get Rich in 6 Ridiculously Easy Steps” and everything remotely related to that genre. Usually, on the Net at least, there’s a photo of a 24 year old in front of a glamorous swimming pool or standing on a beach in Hawaii, Diamond Head peaking up in the distance. Of course, there’s no telling if the young man is simply occupying a room in the hotel with the swimming pool and the beach. ( Or even a waiter or busboy there.)

And a lot of you may have seen John Chow.com, self proclaimed “dot com” mogul, whose limitless ads about “making money online” look pretty cheesy to me. But that’s just me. His video on his website, The Dot Com Lifestyle, shows Chow, an ordinary looking guy in average clothes, walking his baby in an ordinary stroller to an ordinary park against a very average landscape. Pretty unimpressive stuff. Certainly not the stuff of which dreams of vast wealth are made. But who knows? He just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to downplay whatever he may have since he runs an ad proclaiming “Learn How I Went From Zero to $40,000 A Month By Blogging and How You Can Too! Hmmm…….

At least when Donald Trump tells you he’s rich you may argue about the details….. a couple of hundred million?…..a billion? …..a couple of bankruptcies?…..no, those are just his casinos, “less than 1% of his net worth“……. at least he’s got the flash and gaudy, gold plated grandeur to back it up. He has real buildings and real hotels and beauty contests and employees to authenticate he’s worth a lot of something.

So, imagine my surprise when I came across this post by someone who actually seemed to have some life experience revealing how many people actually do get rich.

From what I know, author Paul Sloane really has it nailed. He doesn’t mention inheriting money, or marrying for money but I’m not going to quibble because I think he’s talking about how to go about making money if you have to work for it. ( Marrying for money could be considered work but we’ll save that for another post.)

Sloan starts off The Six Best Ways to Get Rich” by saying:” We tend to assume that if we work hard and save money then one day we will end up wealthy. This is wishful thinking. We are more likely to end up with some modest but useful savings. If you want to accumulate serious wealth then there a number of approaches you can use and some are much more effective than others. The best ways are as follows:”

I’m not going to detail all 6 ways. I’m going to give you the two I think most likely for the majority of people. But you can always go to Sloane’s post if you want to read the rest:

“Start your own business and eventually sell it.This is the most effective and proven way to become rich. If you can find a new approach to a customer need and build a profitable business that addresses that need then you have created real value. It could be a cleaning business, a hairdresser’s, a consultancy or an investment bank. It will probably take years of very hard work to build up the enterprise. Most new businesses fail so the risks are high. You need all the skills, dynamism, perseverance and diligence of an entrepreneur. But if you can pull it off the potential rewards are huge. This is how many of the seriously wealthy people did it.” Of course most people don’t have the risk tolerance to start their own business and many lack the tenacity to stick with it, so this will be the minority. But many believe it to be a happy minority because they are doing what they want and at the very least, have their independence.
Join a start-up and get stock. Odds are low. But if you think you might be lucky, go read Sloan’s post.
Exploit your skill as a self-employed expert. Takes a lot of discipline to develop expertise. So, statistically, odds are low
Develop property. Here’s a real winner. Many people do it with their homes, just by buying in the right neighborhood and continuing to scale up at every opportunity. Sloan says:”Buying, developing and selling property is a well-established way to build a significant capital position. One of the key elements is that by borrowing money you can gain leverage on your investment. Say you borrow $200,000 and put in $50,000 of your own to buy a property for $250,000. Then you develop the property and sell it for $400,000. The property has increased in value by 60% but your $50,000 has now grown fourfold to $200,000. You have to select the right properties in the right areas and develop them wisely. You are at risk from booms and busts in the property market. However, in the long term this remains a proven way to accumulate wealth.” I can authenticate for you that this works. It’s not as fast as winning a lottery but it’s a sure thing. And you don’t lose all the friends who want to borrow money from you, if you win the lottery.
Build a portfolio of stocks and shares. Many don’t have the discipline to accumulate a portfolio of stocks and hold on to it through wars and recessions.

Oh. Now that I look at this post again I see that Sloan actually did mention the two I thought he’d forgotten Number 6 is:

Inherit wealth. It helps if you were born to successful or wealthy parents but failing that, you could marry fortuitously!

But the first you have no control over and the second is not as easy as one might think. So you may want to aim for starting your own business and buying a house you can afford in a great neighborhood, then putting a lot of energy into improving it over the years.

Do you have some other ways to get rich? Or do you have some examples we can learn from? Send them in..

15 Top Business Blogs

Of course, you know there are many more great business blogs out there. For the moment, these are some that strike me as particularly useful. If you’d like to add to the list, just post your comment and I’ll put it up.

So, here goes:

Career News & Job Search

All Top Career News: a cornucopia of career news, articles, tips by hundreds of bloggers.

Job Mob: has some insightful articles and good tips.

Entrepreneurship

How To Change The World: Guy Kawasaki, is a pretty down to earth guy, but he is actually world famous as a tech entrepreneur, evangelist, author, speaker and blogger. He gets it, big time, and he shares his insights generously.

Toilet Paper Entrepreneur: If you can get beyond the initial toilet paper analogy, which is humorous, if a little indelicate, Mike Michalowicz offers good advice and tips for new entrepreneurs.

About Entrepreneurs: Scott Allen’s practical guide for entrepreneurs.

Planning Startups Stories, the very seasoned and successful Tim Berry’s blog, sharing his insights on starting your business.

Bootstrap Me: about bootstrapping, small business, entrepreneurs, start up.

Escape From Cubicle Nation: a favorite and one which will start you thinking about how to move on.

Marketing

Duct Tape Marketing: John Jantsch has to be at or close to the top when it comes to marketing.

Seth Godin’s Blog: marketing guru has insightful things to say about all things marketing

Winning the Web: internet marketing strategy and other very insightful tips on running a blog.

Social Networking

How To Change The World: Guy Kawasaki, from time to time, has more social networking how to information in one blog than others do all year. Yes, I know I mentioned Kawasaki under entrepreneurs, which he definitely is, but he is an uber successful guy, who wears many hats, so I thought I’d mention him again in this context.

ChrisBrogan: one of the most popular social networking bloggers, sharing many moments of his life with you and informed tips on how to raise your social networking IQ.

Tech
TechCrunch: Tech news for those in the know.

Silicon Alley Insider if you like to keep up with gossip and goings on in Silicon Valley

10 Best Business Books 0f 2008

You know, I’m sure, these “10 Bests Business Books of 2008″ lists may vary. But whoever is creating the list, more than half of these books appear on just about every list.

My personal favorites are three of those on a list by by Drea, who also made some insightful comments in The 10 Best Business Books of 2008 | Business Pundit.

The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation by A.G. Lafley & Ram Charan, Crown Business. “Growing and sustaining profits is fundamental to any business, period. It’s also the focus of 98% of business books out there. What makes The Game-Changer different is that it’s written by Proctor and Gamble Chairman/CEO A. G. Lafley, whose company is doing astoundingly well relative to its global counterparts. Now, Lafley and consultant Ram Charan share the tricks to using innovation to thrive, including revitalizing your business model, creating new customers and markets, and mainstreaming innovation into your management style.In a rapidly changing world, innovation is the only way to survive. This book tells you what you need to do, from the mouths of leaders who have been there.”

Outliers: The Story of Success by by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown)“The brilliant Malcolm Gladwell strikes again, this time claiming that individual inspiration has little to do with success. Instead, circumstance, luck, timing, and culture explain why some individuals, such as Bill Gates and Mozart, are able to rise above others with similar talents. Gladwell’s trademark refreshing style makes you realize your traditional perspectives may be cliched.” And Hardy Green books editor for BusinessWeek says: “Finally, for an upbeat read, consider Outliers: The Story of Success . Challenging common wisdom about achievers, he says it’s key to have the right opportunities at exactly the right time—and the presence of mind to seize them. Examples range from Bill Gates to sports stars. Gladwell ends by arguing for educational reforms that, he says, could broaden opportunity. His points are well worth pondering.”

For some reason, the following book didn’t make Drea’s list but made many others and I, for one, would never dream of not including a book by the ever prescient and insightful Thomas Friedman. His book did make Hardy Green’s list in Business Week,and Green has some thoughtful comments, as well.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “Innovation is also vital to the nation’s revival, argues New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. His Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is a call to unleash creativity—and capitalism—on the challenges of energy and climate change. The author hops from Sumatra to Connecticut and China to document the interplay of trends.” And we know that’s always interesting : Friedman’s global hot spot hop, where we can see, at least vicariously, what’s really going on, the underlying dynamics and how they do or will impact us.

The Best Business Books of 2008 as selected in an article by Hardy Green, Business Week books editor – you decide which appeals to you….. there are a lot of lists out there:

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles R. Morris, PublicAffairs

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder, Bantam

The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs by Charles D. Ellis, Penguin Press

Hell’s Cartel: I.G. Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine by Diarmuid Jeffreys, Metropolitan Books

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely, HarperCollins

The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives by Michael Heller, Basic Books

The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation by A.G. Lafley & Ram Charan, Crown Business

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang, Spiegel & Grau

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown