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Book Review: The Hockey Stick Principles, by Bobby Martin

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What do your favorite huge, successful companies have in common? What did their founders do right (or avoid doing) as they were building their business?

In Hockey Stick Principles: The 4 Key Phases of Entrepreneurial Success, Author Bobby Martin explores the patterns of behavior, strategies, and key decisions that define some of the most admired companies of our generation.

The four phases are:

1. The Tinkering Stage
2. The Blade Years
3. The Growth Inflection Point
4. Surging Growth

The book reviews each phase in detail, with real-world stories from founders both successful and unsuccessful. The reader can then apply the lessons learned while avoiding the bumps and bruises along the way.

Don’t just plunge into writing a finely crafted business plan; give your business idea some road testing and let the market have input. Don’t be afraid to shift your strategy or tweak your product along the way.

Sometimes you’ll have to take three steps back on one track just as you’re taking two forward on another. Th e sooner you begin getting used to this, the better, and it’s more helpful to not even have a conception in your mind—or on paper—of a linear orderly series of next clear steps.

The author gives solid advice for navigating each phase of the entrepreneurial journey. He also debunks some of the most precious beliefs of some new entrepreneurs– the need to hold new ideas close to the vest, the unhealthy focus on venture capital, and the reliance on friends and family for feedback.

I’d recommend this book for anyone who has an idea, and wants to turn it into a thriving business.

Where are you on the path to entrepreneurship?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

 

I was given a free digital copy of this book for review purposes. Opinions expressed are my own. ~Rosemary

Book Review: Hug Your Haters, By Jay Baer

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My grandfather would have called Jay Baer “a gentleman, a scholar, and a judge of good whiskey.” In other words, the highest compliment he could give.

Jay is all of those things, and his latest scholarly work is his new book, “Hug Your Haters.”

I was not given a free review copy of this book (what’s up with that?); I purchased it with my own hard-earned dollars because I have been hugging haters for almost 18 years.

Haters come with the territory if you expose yourself by starting a business or promoting an idea. They will come in many different forms, both in-your-face, in person, and anonymously, online.

If you don’t have a strategy for dealing with them, you can find yourself distracted from your mission or worse, with a damaged reputation.

Hug Your Haters teaches you who complains, why they complain, and how to capitalize on those complaints. And the book is built on a solid foundation of data that Jay collected in collaboration with Edison Research.

Capitalize? On complaints?

Do tell…

The research showed that “answering complaints increases customer advocacy, across all customer service channels.”

The book is packed with real-world case studies (refreshingly moving beyond Zappos and Nordstrom). You will be able to recognize your own “hater” situations, as well as some you may need to be prepared for down the road. It’s meant to be a reference book, and I already have highlighted numerous passages for my own future reference.

Below are two quick peeks into the strategies for dealing with offstage haters (private communication behind the scenes) and onstage haters (social media or public comments). You’ll just have to go buy the book to get the complete action plan (and I highly recommend it).

Dealing with OffStage Haters – H-O-U-R-S

  • Be Human
  • Use One Channel
  • Unify Your Data
  • and Resolve the Issue
  • with Speed

Hugging Onstage Haters – F-E-A-R-S

  • Find all Mentions
  • Display Empathy
  • Answer Publicly
  • Reply Only Once
  • Switch Channels

If you have a business, or if you are thinking of having a business, or if your job requires you to communicate directly with customers, you need to read Hug Your Haters.

You’ll thank me later.

And your customers might, too.

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

 

7 Principles For Building Your Resiliency in Life and Business

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By Zaheen Nanji

Resiliency means the ability to bounce back from misfortunes, challenges or setbacks. What does bounce back really mean? It’s not about forgetting all that happened and continuing in misery. Bouncing back is the ability to get unstuck from a problem by finding a solution and continuing to function. Bouncing back is the ability to feel the fear and do it anyway because you will come through with new learnings. In my research on resiliency, these seven principles are important to bouncing back.

1. Approach challenges with flexibility

When something doesn’t work, do you tend to give up after the first try and think you’ve failed? View a challenge like a chess game where you have to not only think ahead but come up with several different strategies. This demonstrates flexibility. Finding different methods to overcome a challenge keeps a person more in control of the situation. Having only one strategy is inadequate preparation.

2. Excellent communication skills

Think of a leader or manager whom you admire and notice how he or she interacts with you or with others at all levels in the company or when networking. You will notice that she’s listening to your words and your communication style and communicates back in your style. She’s looking for the underlying reason behind your communication so she can relate to you. Finally, she’s subconsciously picking up on your body language and tone of voice and mirrors it. These communication skills come naturally to resilient individuals because they want to create rapport with you.

3. Live life with positive attitude

When resilient individuals approach a difficult situation, they have an attitude of being curious, but a positive attitude also encompasses the following three traits:

Realistic Optimism – All the research on optimism says that people who are optimistic are happier, have great relationships and are good at problem solving. However, what makes a person happier? It’s when they maximize their strengths and accomplish what they want knowing there are risks involved.

Embrace Change – research has shown that change becomes easier when we have the resources we need or seek out the resources we lack. Most people hate change because they fear the unknown. If you seek out the resources that can help you, managing change becomes easier.

Sense of Humor – laughter is the best medicine and being able to laugh at life’s frustrations is a great way to bounce back and strategize your next move.

4. Have a mentor

When a resilient individual feels stuck and finds herself in a worrisome state, the first thing she’ll do is contact a mentor or pretend to be her mentor. Imagine you’re faced with an obstacle right now. Think of a mentor who’d be able to overcome that obstacle. Now pretend you are your mentor and step into your mentor. Ask, as your mentor, “What would I do to overcome this problem?” Make sure you are seeing life through his/her eyes and listening through his/her ears. You’ll notice that you’ll have solutions right away.

5. Turn a challenge into an advantage

When you focus on your failures, you dwell on the past and the problems you experienced, which in turn, drives the fear of failure even deeper. Resilient individuals don’t view failure as failure; instead they view it as learned outcomes. Why? They look for insights that can be used as great learning opportunities. They then use that learning to their advantage which leads to the creation of new possibilities and outcome.

6. Create an outcome mindset

Most of us get stuck in the “blame mindset” when we are faced with challenges. In this mindset, you may catch yourself saying things, such as:

• Why do I have this problem?

• How long will I have this problem?

• Whose fault is it that I have this problem?

When you use this type of questioning method, you’ll feel oppressed and you’ll lack choices. However, it’s possible to re-program yourself to an “outcome mindset” by asking alternative questions, such as:

• What do I want and when do I want it?

• When I get what I want, what else in my life will improve?

• What resources do I have available to help me with this challenge?

• Can I use these resources to the best of my ability or do I require extra help?

• What can I do now to improve this situation and get what I want?

Having an outcome mindset propels a person to start thinking of solutions right away.

7. Park negative emotions and live for fulfillment

Resilient individuals accept hardship and work through it instead of dwelling in negative emotions and thoughts. They have the ability to park these emotions by using positive language while simultaneously focusing on the current challenge and finding solutions. This principle of dominating their negative emotions allows them to shift their focus from feeling anxious to feeling hopeful.

Zaheen Nanji is a resilience champion and a business owner in Alberta, Canada.  Embracing change and fear is Zaheen’s trademark because she overcame her speech impediment, her struggles with weight and learned to live in a new country, at the age of 15, without her parents. Her book, The Resilience Reflex – 8 Keys to Transforming Barriers into Success in Life and Business, became an International Best-Seller on Amazon Kindle. Zaheen teaches people how to make resilience their first reflex using her 3-step system: Release, Re-program and Resolve. She can be reached at http://www.zaheennanji.com

Book Review: E.Q. Librium – Unleash the Power of Your Emotional Intelligence

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cover of EQ Librium bookHave you ever had a colleague who was totally brilliant, but had no clue how to handle office politics?

Whenever humans are required to work together in an enclosed space, there is conflict. Those who can manage their emotions effectively become the leaders, and those who can’t, are always grumbling together in the break room.

E.Q. Librium, by Yvette Bethel, provides you with practical tools that can help you achieve balance through your emotions. The book offers a diverse array of case studies, stories, and examples that illustrate how emotional intelligence impacts every aspect of our lives.

The author draws on research as well as her own experiences over 20 years within a Fortune 500 company to offer guidance on how to improve one’s emotional intelligence. That’s the good news–while your IQ is pretty much determined at birth, your EQ can be lifted if you take the time to focus on it.

This book, along with the associated workbook, are no quick-read opinion pieces. You’ll want to take notes, read a chapter at a time, and put the ideas into action immediately. Be forewarned, though, you may catch yourself evaluating the emotional responses of others around you!

Value-Based Characteristics That Will Benefit You and Others

  • Integrity
  • Situational Ethics
  • Ownership
  • If you say you are going to do something, do it
  • Recognize biases
  • Demonstrate courage
  • Weigh as many sides as possible
  • Forgiveness
  • Communication
  • Responsiveness and resourcefulness

Ms. Bethel goes into detail for each of the above characteristics, providing a real-world case study and then research and explanation to go along with it. The chapter on resolving conflict is one I plan to refer back to in the future, as well.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in improving their relationships at work and at home. The principles outlined are applicable whether you’re a solo entrepreneur, a recent graduate, a small business owner, or CEO of a large company.

 

Featured image via Flickr CC: aboutmodafinil.com

Disclosure: I was provided a digital copy of the E.Q. Librium for review purposes. The opinions in this review are my own, unbiased reaction to the book.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

How to Promote Your Self-Published eBooks: Checklist

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By Jessy Troy

When it comes to self-publishing an ebook, authors are afforded all kinds of freedoms that they’d never be able to achieve when releasing a book through a traditional publishing house, allowing them to retain all of their profits even as they take pride in the fact that the good job done was all theirs.

Unfortunately, they also lose the typical advertising team that comes hand-in-hand with a publishing house, forcing them to play marketer all on their own.

Luckily for all of you self-publishing ebook writers out there, the internet has made it possible to do just that, and to do it well, with social media leading the way in that regard.

I highly recommend that you first read this article: 5 Myths About Writing an E-Book, by Ovetta Sampson.

Here are six creative steps to promote your self-published eBook:

1. Set up a Separate Website

It’s easier to brand your eBook if you have a separate mini website for it. It will rank easier for the eBook name and will accumulate links and exposure naturally. Plus you can use branding colors, calls-to-action and logos to make sure people remember the eBook and will be more likely to convert next time they hear about it.

SiteGeek can help you find the cheapest hosting for it. Plus it has all those user reviews so you can make sure you are making a good choice.

And here are some essential basics for you to easily build a website.

It’s amazing that we can actually handle website development ourselves these days!

2. Be Informed

First things first: when it comes to social media marketing, like any other task, a bit of planning is in order; while you’re very likely familiar with major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, have you ever really considered how to utilize them for business purposes?

Reading this article is a great start, but making the most out of what social media has to offer to you and your ebook means taking the time to do some serious research on each platform that you plan to tackle.

For example, tweeting your latest goings on simply isn’t the same as capturing an audience for a book in 140 characters or less, just as maintaining a personal Facebook account isn’t the same as leveraging a Facebook page to promote a product.

3. Be Informative

In order to get your campaign off on the right foot, start things off by tackling the big players in the niche. You’ll need to create thorough, in-depth, and always engaging social profiles that give your visitors – a fickle bunch, to be sure – a reason to stick around and learn more about who you are and what you have to offer them.

To achieve this, be sure to create fleshed out profiles that give visitors a good idea about who you are and, more importantly, why they should take an interest in your ebook.

4. Push Your Content Far and Wide

No matter what kind of content you find yourself adding to your social media streams, it is invariably true that the further it reaches, the more effective it is. With that in mind, it’s very important that you utilize all aspects of the social web in order to help your content grow wings and fly.

One excellent example of a social tool that can help you to achieve just that is Viral Content Buzz, a platform that brings together content creators in order to help each other to like and share content on the social web at large.

5. Engage Your Fans and Followers

One of the biggest tricks that needs to be utilized by any social marketer, especially one pushing a product as intimate and personal as an ebook, is to present yourself as a living, breathing human being to your followers.

The social web is full of content that looks as if it came straight from a spam bot and falling into that game, even inadvertently, is an easy way to turn off fans – and potential buyers – for good.

In order to stay approachable and engaging, be sure to always present your content additions as something deeper than simply trying to sell another copy of your ebook, and always make a point to engage one-on-one with fans and followers who take the time to ask questions and leave comments.

6. Stay on Top of Your Social Game

Even when the fans, followers, and sales start to roll in, be sure to stay on top of your social game, continuing to indulge your social enthusiasts by engaging them on a daily basis. This should continue to include the posting of content relevant to your ebook, one-on-one and group discussion, and teasers about your upcoming work.

More useful ebook marketing ideas:

Besides allowing you to continue to successfully push your existing work, these efforts will also help you to build a platform with which to generate interest in and sell future works!

Author’s Bio: Jessy Troy is a creative writer and editor at Social Media Sun. She Tweets as @JessyTroy.

Book Review: Content Code, by Mark W. Schaefer

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I suppose it was Mark Schaefer’s responsibility to write this book after he set off the earthquake that was his original post about “content shock” last year. He terrified huge swathes of marketers who were happily cranking out useful, relevant content and hoping for the best. After all, what can a small business or entrepreneur do when they’re up against big brands with agency resources, editors, and video crews?

According to Mark’s newest book, The Content Code, the secret is that content marketing doesn’t end when you create the content. That’s only the beginning.

Content Code book, by Mark W. Schaefer

Mark is, at his heart, an excellent teacher, and that shines through in this very approachable book. Each chapter lays out one of the ways you can “ignite your content” and crack the code.

He explores concepts like how to differentiate your voice, get attention for your brand, and be the go-to resource for your customers.

He has actually lived through the experience of cultivating his own community and successful consulting business, so he is speaking from direct knowledge, not from hypothetical concepts.

Here are the six factors of the content code:

  • Brand development
  • Audience and influencers
  • Distribution, Advertising, Promotion, and SEO
  • Authority
  • “Shareability” embedded into each piece of content
  • Social proof and social signals

There are so many concrete ideas for you to implement, but here are a few great ones just to whet your appetite:

  • Get emotional. Find a way to weave inspiration, laughter, awe, or entertainment into your next blog post.
  • Don’t abandon your older content. That great thing you wrote two weeks ago is still relevant and engaging, and useful to your customers, right? Build in a mechanism where you can re-share older content down the road, and watch it get shared more! Go one step further and re-share content that accrues lots of shares the first time you post it.
  • Comment on new research or ideas. Many of your readers want to share your content because it makes them helpful to their own readers (double karma). Be the one who reads the whole trend report for your industry and makes incisive commentary first.

I strongly recommend this book for anyone involved in marketing, regardless of where they are in their career. There are tidbits in the Content Code for the new marketer as well as the seasoned veteran.

Get the book now, before your competitors do.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Disclosure: I was provided with a digital copy of the book for review purposes.