Review: $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

$100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No by Alex Hormozi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I took copious notes, which I have started using in my business. I'm giving it 5 stars for now because I found it jam packed with useful advice, much of which was different and quite relevant to me. Of course, we'll see how it goes when I apply it.

In essence this seemed to be about as useful as information can be considering it doesn't focus on any one particular type of business. If I'm able to apply it well and it starts paying dividends, I will definitely be checking out his other books.

Some of my personal notes (they may not make sense without the book as reference):

Lower time delay and you raise perceived likelihood of achievement and effort required. 

Find every problem you can for the customer. The more problems, the better because you can solve more of them.

The longer you wait to make your offer, the more Demand you create, and the more you can charge

Create scarcity to increase demand. Urgency to increase demand. Bonuses to increase demand.

Offer something for limited slots (e.g. Sold out soon). Offer again the following month.

Scarcity:

Only accepting x clients. (An exclusive seminar. Then personal zoom call or email for a premium)

Urgency: I had a client just drop out, so there’s space on Monday.  Let’s get you started on this discount we have going on now. 

Never raise the price without letting people know first. 

Arbitrage opportunity: This is an opportunity. Most people don’t know about so jumping right now to find out about it.

Never ever offer discounts, only offer bonus add-ons. Always explain the bonus in detail and the bonus to be equal or even more valuable than the main offer. 

This will increase the perceived value of the main offer. I will add on XYZ bonus if you purchase today because I reward action takers. 

Great templates and tools and downloadable or anything that takes a while to create but is worth a lot. Offer these as a bonus. Use every webinar and similar as bonuses as well.

Guarantee: they f you don’t get value, your money back. The only way not to get help is not to buy (Or something like: as long as you updated your information as per the instructions, etc. If you have no results, then either money back or I will work with you until you find a job)

Or give no guarantee and say all sales are final because you show proprietary boxes. That also shows confidence.

Find a good way to track for guarantees. Make sure they followed steps you laid out.

Naming: 

      Rhyming, alliteration

Attention

Discrimination 

Purpose

Timing 

Method

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Review: How to Get Paid for What You Know: Turning Your Knowledge, Passion, and Experience into an Online Income Stream in Your Spare Time

How to Get Paid for What You Know: Turning Your Knowledge, Passion, and Experience into an Online Income Stream in Your Spare Time by Graham Cochrane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I took copious notes, especially toward the end (the first part is mostly about convincing you you can do it, and why you should do it, and how to pick your topic, etc.). 

I feel like I shouldn't rate it until I've applied the notes, so we'll see. I'll give it 4 stars for now, since I've been in the game for a bit and his advice seems solid (plus he's done this before). If his methods work for me, I'll increase it to 5. 

I'm curious about Kajabi too. I'm hoping it's as good as he claims, and he wasn't just pushing it in order to get the commission. I'm using Thinkific for now and the prices seem comparable. 

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Review: The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Make Great Money. Work the Way You Like. Have the Life You Want.

The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Make Great Money. Work the Way You Like. Have the Life You Want. by Elaine Pofeldt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a re-read for me. It would be a great (and sorely needed) book, but it's just a collection of case studies. Even a final chapter with conclusions and tentative guidelines would've been excellent. Seems like a missed opportunity. Too bad. 

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Review: Zero to IPO: Over $1 Trillion Worth of Advice from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs

Zero to IPO: Over $1 Trillion Worth of Advice from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs by Frederic Kerrest
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great book if you have anything to do with silicon valley, or are looking for investment (especially from silicon valley or somewhere along those lines). The author has been in there in the trenches and got a big investor (Andreessen Horowitz), so he knows his stuff. These only touch me tangentially, but I still found quite a few interesting tidbits, including how the average age of the founders Andreessen Horowitz invest in is in the 40's, so substantially higher than you tend to hear about. 

I will probably give this another read if and when I have to do a road show for any business, in the meantime it was good background knowledge. 

Much of the advice (how to deal with a team, talk to investors, etc.) probably doesn't apply outside the US. 

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Review: Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went From Street Corner to Corner Office

Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went From Street Corner to Corner Office by Zack O'Malley Greenburg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great look into the life of one of the most interesting (and successful) people alive. It's too bad Jay-Z didn't agree to be interviewed for this, but on the other hand, much like happened with "Sam Walton - The Inside Story of America's Richest Man", this was just because Jay-Z was writing his own autobiography. When this happens, I tend to choose the version that will be less biased and (likely) more thoroughly researched. And this was definitely well-researched. Finding the link between Jay-Z and Armand de Brignac was quite impressive sleuthing. 

Unfortunately, however, this book leaves off around 10 years ago. So no mention of his children, of other endeavors like Tidal, tours with Beyonce, etc. 

If a revised version ever comes out, I'll probably check it out. 

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Review: The Introvert’s Edge to Networking: Work the Room. Leverage Social Media. Develop Powerful Connections

The Introvert’s Edge to Networking: Work the Room. Leverage Social Media. Develop Powerful Connections by Matthew Owen Pollard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was excited to read this book since I am very much an introvert, although I completely understand how essential networking is in business. 

I must say a couple of things seemed odd in this book. First of all, the author keeps saying he's an introvert, but then goes on to have certain stories that don't really square up. For example, as a younger kid in Australia, he knew some owner of a hot club (I can't remember the exact position), so he could get in without waiting in line, and could even bring his mates in. Obviously this is cool, but hardly the life of an introvert. 

More importantly, I have to say that pretty much every time I've been to a networking event, the people there from large companies are usually NEVER there to network, but to relax with some friends and drink some beers. In fact, at my last event, I was asking some people which chamber I should join, and they literally advised me not to join this and that chamber because all the networking events are so 'serious' and 'everyone is networking'. Obviously this isn't true for entrepreneur events, but still. 

Apparently this isn't the case for him, since he talks about networking with some IBM exec at some event and how it got him some supersales. 

One other bone of contention was a detail. He said if you go to an event and 2 people are in a conversation then you shouldn't approach them because you'll be interrupting. His reasoning is anecdotal (he was chatting with the aforementioned IBM exec closing a deal). This, however, goes against his own advice NOT to sell at the event itself. And in fact, I've found often the opposite to be true. If it is a networking event (especially for entrepreneurs), then 2 people talking to each other either A) know each other already, in which case they know they should be networking even though they aren't, so someone who approaches them saves them the trouble, Or B) don't know each other, in which case they're probably having an awkward 1st time conversation, and welcome a newcomer, or even if they are having a good conversation, they can always end it on a high note (as the author recommends doing) and decide to meet up again over coffee one day, so the 3rd person will be a welcome addition. 

Anyway, all of this makes it seem like I didn't like the book. I actually found it very useful, which I guess is why these other points rankled. I plan on using his information, especially preparing before the meetings, and the follow-up after the meetings (Probably not so much during the meetings, for the reasons mentioned above). 

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Review: Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author basically equates your brand message with a movie, and, using movie plots, shows you how to structure the message. It seems a bit of a stretch, to be honest, but it is very well structured and I took quite a few notes so I'm curious to see how it works. We'll see...

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Review: Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter

Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter by 50 Cent
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This has some excellent advice with some incredible stories. 

As always, some of the advice can be found in other books, just packaged in a different way. But this book seems to be more self-aware than many. For example, 50 cent talks about how, after reading Robert Green's 48 laws of power, only one really stuck with him (never outshine your superiors), and it served him really well over the years. Likewise, he hopes we find at least one of his rules that resonates with us and we can carry along with us. 

Some of my notes:

“Fear dominates most people’s lives. Fear of loss. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. Fear of loneliness.”

The thing most people are comfortable with is fear. If you're afraid of flying, you don't fly. If you're scared of going for it, you don't go for it. This is very dangerous. 

“If you’ve put in the work, and know your shit, raise your damn hand!”

You can be really smart, but you need to speak up otherwise others won't know. 

You may out-rhyme me, and even out-smart me, but you'll never out-hustle me. 

The story about vitamin water is interesting

Very interesting how/why other rappers around him didn't make it

If he comes up with a good rhyme now, he'll give it to a young rapper with tight jeans and facial tattoos, because no one will want to hear it from him. 

His anecdote about Mike Pence's "won't eat with a woman without my wife present" is very interesting. 

He leaked his "album" to bootleggers to create buzz, which seems like a great strategy. 

He mentions how competition is good, and he seems to make use of it from the underdog point of view. He will shoot for something doing better (targeting GoT when he has his show Power). He knows he won't win that battle, but it will get him more viewers and more buzz. 

He also mentioned the tour in Switzerland where I saw him! (in passing but whatev)

And boy, what a life. 

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by 50 cent. 

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Review: Business Model Generation

Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I remember hearing about this book around 10 years ago, and when I was in Taiwan it was very popular (I think it had been recently translated into Chinese), and there was more than one entrepreneur meetup where someone showed up carrying this book. So I had been curious about it for a while and, when I saw it at 2nd and Charles, I decided to give it a go. 

We'll see how well this pans out for me. All I can say is I have gone through this and will be applying these steps to my business. Going through the model and following the steps already allowed me to find some alternate options for my business (e.g. adding a freemium option and trying to partner up with some providers). 

In the meantime I actually really found it useful. It allowed me to look at all the aspects of my business with an objective eye. Some points didn't apply to me (as can be expected), and I found the "creative" design to be a distraction at some points, but all in all it was a great exercise. I ended up using a bunch of post-it notes on all its tables, and found the progression made sense. 

I also appreciated that it was somewhat 'academic', for lack of a better term. Too many of these business books try to be too user-friendly, which often means trying to take away any exercise or process that might seem tedious. Not so with this book. So at times it felt like a bit much, but I think these exercises were needed in the end. Once again, we'll see how it pans out...

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Review: 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur by Ryan Daniel Moran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is probably a great book for anyone who: A) sells physical goods to B) end consumers (as opposed to other businesses). 

If you are in a B2B business or wish to enter one, then there is next to nothing for you here. 

If you sell a service to end consumers, there are probably still many good tips. In fact, I plan on implementing them for my online courses, so we'll see how that goes. 

Some of my (copious) notes. I haven't put them in order yet:

It's not about your product, but your customer. Understand your customer

Where does your customer hang out? (who else does he/she follow/listen to?)

Create a promotional video (even on your phone, find tutorials online)

Find an influencer (around 10K followers) to promote it (and/or your product)

Stack the deck. Find people who will buy before you launch (1,000 fans, 100 friends, 1 microinfluencer). Get to 100 sales on launch day.

Goal: Get 10 reviews

Next: See what your customer will want next (CV? Networking? Translation agency? Sales?)

All courses need to follow a trend. What type of person do I want to be (what type of brand/business)?  - What do I want to be? 

Find influencers with 10K followers. (similarweb.com). Make a list of 10 people you can talk to. GIVE them something. What will help them. 

Stage 1

1. Find your core customer (this should make you cut off a good portion of your customers). Make your core customer love your product

2. Outline 3-5 products your core customer buys (that you can create later)

3. Choose first product

4. Share your progess. (document your journey). Where your audience can see. 

5. 

6. Stack the deck (even with ads for first few hundred fans). Find influencer with 10K followers

7. Take an order as quickly as possible

Stage 2. Growth

1. Does your audience want your product? They like it but sales are slow (need marketing to right people?)

2. Think small. Get 1 review today. Make one customer happy. Post EVERY good piece of feedback on Social media

3. Cultivate a core group of buyers (VIP list? FB group? 

4. Use PPC ads

Stage 3:

Launch as many products as you can

Advertise via influencers and audiences

Make relationships

Pay yourself (so you can work fulltime in business)

take strategic risks

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Review: No B.S. Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Guide to Really Getting Rich

No B.S. Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Guide to Really Getting Rich by Dan S. Kennedy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Things I hate about the book:

Geez could it look any scammier? I was literally embarrassed to carry this around and even to add it to my list here on Goodreads. I mean, did his direct marketing experience tell him this type of title/cover/look would be best? Regardless, I hate it. 

Things I don't hate about the book: 

Most, if not all, of the advice seems very sound and useful. Some of my notes:

If you understand how you're earning money (from a certain method or tactic), then teach it to others for a fee. 

Don't follow your passion. Find out what drives market demand, and find something you can do within that market that you're passionate about. 

You don't have to be motivated to get your work done. Just do it. 

His Behavioral Congruency point is the "Leading vs. Lagging indicators" point made by Cal Newport in Deep Work.

Other things I hate about the book (Albeit not as much as its overall look):

- He's always upselling his website and his products. It gets to be a bit much. Get me interested, then I'll be the one trying to look you up. 

- A lot of Donald Trump name dropping.

The final section of testimonials (so many of them from people in real estate!) is sort of a waste. One of them mentioned "the power of system", which was not mentioned in this book but that the author apparently covers in his sessions. It sounds like this is more or less the same as the one mentioned in E-myth revisited and Built to Sell, in which case it would have been nice to include that.

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Review: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll start with my issues with the book:

First of all, Calvin Coolidge pretty much figured this out around 100 years ago. The author calls it "perseverance and passion". Coolidge called it "Persistence and determination". Here is the full quote:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Sooo, yeah. Odd that the author doesn't even acknowledge this quote. Truth be told however, I always liked the quote, so the book was pretty much preaching to the choir from the get-go. 

Secondly, the book talks about finding something you're passionate about. In this book it is slightly more subtle than many other places (talking about pain and getting into the flow, etc.), and goes more into detail, but it's there. The issue I have with this, is I think most people are probably passionate about earning a living and giving a good life for their family. That's their main motivator for working, earning, getting promoted, etc. and I'm not sure that type of motivation works well for a book like this. Most shoemakers want to provide for their family more than change the shoe world. 

That's pretty much it. The rest is all good points, and I plan on keeping this book as reference 

By grit, she basically means what I would have called perseverance. She says it's perseverance mixed with passion, which makes sense. 

She admonishes Skilling at Enron for having a system that fired the bottom 15% each year, but GE did the same and it seemed to work well for them. 

I loved the anecdote of Scott Kaufman, who got rejected from Carnegie Mellon's cognitive science program, so he applied to their musical program, took psychology electives, took it up as a minor, and then changed his major to it. 

Strivers beat talented people because "as strivers are improving in skill, they are also employing that skill" (p. 50)

Having a long-term goal, but not knowing the intermediate goals needed to get there, is just positive fantasizing, which leads to disappointment, since you won't achieve your goal. (p. 65)

At a certain point the book seemed to concentrate more on children, and how to foster more grit in them, which, having a 2-year-old daughter, I really appreciated. I liked the KIPP pointers, as well as the things to say to children rather than the normal feedback you usually hear (p. 182)

Her points about follow-through are good as well (p. 228), and I think I will try applying the Hard thing Rule (p/ 241) in our family as well.

3.5 stars

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Review: The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World by Brad Stone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I should probably specify that I might be a bit biased when it comes to Airbnb. I've used their services all over the world, and never had a bad experience. But my parents also rented their place out on Airbnb. Since they weren't in the country, they had an independent "manager/agent" handle the comings, goings, cleaning, etc. Everything worked well for a year or so, and then suddenly Airbnb changed their payment system (apparently without any notification) and started sending the money to the manager account, rather than the owner account. My parents, being out of the country, didn't realize this right away. When they did it became a big issue, since the manager basically had around $10K he wasn't supposed to have. Long story short, my parents never got the money back. Granted, the manager was a crook, but it was definitely a crime of opportunity, and it was never clear why Airbnb suddenly diverted which account they were sending money to. I called them several times (I kept getting sent to different departments), and I half expected them to tell me my parents had messed something up, but apparently they hadn't. It was just their system. 

Also because of all this, this book resonated with me, in the sense that Uber always had the more bellicose reputation, while Airbnb seemed to be much more 'people' oriented. Well it turns out they are pretty much the same. 

Regardless, I found this an extremely interesting and insightful look into the tech scene of the early 2010's, the machinations of some great startups, as well as other factoids (the Samwer brothers really need a book about them as well, as does Didi). 

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Review: Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think the author and I started off on the wrong foot. His first way to stay creative was "Everyday is Groundhog Day", where he talked about how one day is just like the next, and he says it's because the creative life is not linear, but circular, and we "keep coming back to a new starting point". Well, while reading this I've been having the precise opposite feeling. Time seems to be flying by and I don't get enough time to work on what I'd like to. Far from each day being a repetition of the last, I find myself working on a new project and then amazed at how many days have passed, wishing I had more time to complete what I'd like to complete.

Regardless, once I shook that off, I found the other points quite useful, although I don't think there was anything groundbreaking. It was more of a repetition of things I had already come across.

I especially liked "Forget the noun, do the verb"

I found it amusing how anti-Marie Kondo he seems, and, although I found her a tad odd, I think I agree with her more than him (he says "Keep your tools tidy and your materials messy", but I'd rather keep it all tidy otherwise I find my brain is in chaos).

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Review: Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money

Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money by Pat Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

All in all I got some great notes. If you already have a business or product/service, you can pretty much skip the first chapters (although they're useful to review from time to time in life). Some great points later on. I especially plan on using the methodologies for searching forums for issues people may have, as well as the entire pre-order section. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

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