I read this simple little book years ago and just thought of it today, it may be useful for anyone struggling with change at the moment..

In the turbulent corporate world it is important to anticipate, recognize, and understand change. Who Moved My Cheese? is a book which describes how to deal with change.

Who Moved my Cheese? is a story about how two mice and two little men look for cheese in a maze. The cheese pictures what we want to have in life, whether it is a small income or a life of luxury. The maze pictures where we spend our time looking for what we want. Some people are content with what they have and resist change, while others are constantly looking for new opportunities.

The mice are named Sniff and Scurry. Sniff sniffs out changes early and Scurry scurries into action. The two little men in the parable are Hem and Haw. Hem denies and resists change because he fears that something worse will happen. Haw learns to adapt in time when he sees that change can lead to something better. Throughout the book these four characters search and jog through the maze, occasionally getting lost.

On their journey the four characters barely survive until they finally see the “light at the end of the tunnel” and proceed to eat lots of cheese and are very happy. Then things begin to change. Sniff and Scurry soon notice changes in their environment. Hem and Haw, however, think they are “out of the woods” and take the cheese for granted. These two develop a comfort level in their newly found stash of cheese. Gradually the cheese begins to dwindle. Sniff and Scurry are not concerned. They see that the cheese is not going to last forever so they put on their running shoes and search for new cheese.

Meanwhile, Hem and Haw do not notice the dwindling supply of cheese. They are not alert to what the future holds for them. When all the remaining cheese is finally consumed, Hem and Haw throw two huge fits like little babies. This does not bring the cheese back, yet they remain unwilling to search for new cheese.

Change occurs and Hem and Haw are left behind. Hem is bitter and reluctant to leave the cheese station in order to find new cheese. He is very stubborn. He is too set in his ways to make the necessary changes. He thinks he deserved the cheese, and wants the cheese to be returned. He is not interested in searching for new cheese. His old cheese is the only cheese he wants and he refuses to leave the empty cheese station. Many people stick with old ways of doing things because it is too frightening or difficult to change with the times.

Haw begins to be concerned that they are spinning their wheels. For a while he hopes that the old cheese will return. He is afraid of venturing back out into the maze, so he waits with Hem. Finally, after being very hungry from the lack of cheese, Haw, out of desperation, decides to go search for new cheese. This takes a great deal of strength for Haw to face his fears and to leave Hem behind. On his journey Haw leaves several notes on the walls of the maze as he learns new truths.

A few of the writings are:

-The more important your cheese is to you, the more you want to hold on to it.
-Smell the cheese often so you know when it is getting old.
-Movement in a new direction helps you find new cheese.
-The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.

Haw eventually finds his way to the new cheese. There he discovers Sniff and Scurry, who have already found the fresh cheese and have been enjoying it for some time. Haw is sorry that he had not set out in search of the new cheese sooner. However, he misses his friend Hem, who took himself too seriously.

This entertaining little parable is a quick read which illustrates that sometimes we get too accustomed to our cheese being in a particular place and fail to notice when the supply gets smaller or is about to disappear. Then when we finally notice, we are often too frustrated to look for alternative sources of cheese, or else we eventually start looking while losing valuable time.

Some people, of course, are more astute and prepare themselves for the inevitable after observing a dwindling cheese supply. This book illustrates how some people foresee that they are going to need to make major changes in their lives. Therefore, they start searching for new alternatives before the change actually has to be made. When the change finally must be made, they are already prepared to take the appropriate actions.

This story is simplistic, but there are good philosophical points made throughout the book. It points out these basic concepts:

§ “They keep moving the cheese.” (Change happens.)
§ “Get ready for the cheese to move.” (Anticipate the change.)
§ “Move with the cheese.” (Actually make the change.)
§ “Enjoy the taste of new cheese.” (Enjoy the fruits of change.)

Many reviews give Who Moved My Cheese? great marks and compliment its easy reading and brevity. The book is very simple and makes a great point. As you read this book you will probably start relating the different characters in the book to people that you know, and how they react to change. Who Moved My Cheese? is not just for business professionals or organizations, but can be very helpful for everyday life.

Alan Sugar was brought up in a busy council estate in Clapton, Hackney in 1947. He saw his father struggle to support his family, not quite knowing from each week if he would still have a job…

In his autobiography he describes his amazing journey, from schoolboy enterprises like making and selling his own ginger beer to setting up his own company at nineteen; from Amstrad’s groundbreaking ventures in hi-fi and computers, which made him the darling of the stock exchange, to the dark days when he nearly lost it all; from his pioneering deal with Rupert Murdoch to his boardroom battles at Tottenham Hotspur FC. He takes us into the world of The Apprentice, and describes his appointment as advisor to the government and elevation to the peerage. Like the man himself, this autobiography is forthright, funny and sometimes controversial.

Having read many autobiographies of successful and rich people, I was really looking forward to picking up the book to see what made this man work. I was especially interested to see how he got started. I’m pleased to say this book delivers on exactly what you’re looking for!

What you’ll notice while reading the book is Alan’s ability to connect the missing business dots that created him the fortune he has today. Each and every wonderful story contains straight to the point ideas and solutions that provides a detailed outlook on how this savvy businessman works. He doesn’t sing his own praises in the book, far from it! It’s very straight to the point and no “sugar” coating account of exactly what has happened in his life with great detail.

Alan Sugar Biography – What You See Is What You Get is a wonderful read and definitely something you’ll enjoy time and time again.

I rate this book 8 out of 10.

Too Big to Fail – The Inside Story of how Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System – and Themselves

This book gives an indepth overview of the events leading up to the collapse of the financial markets in the US and the subsequent fallout worldwide.

The book was written based on interviews the author conducted with the major players in the financial crisis. These interviews are documented through tapes, notes, presentations, calendars, call logs, and more. The level of detail is nothing short of amazing.

This book attempts to provide a moment-by-moment account of the worst calamity to ever affect the U.S. financial markets since the Great Depression. It became a tsunami that triggered financial collapse in the world markets as well.

Sorkin builds a story of how the financial collapse of Wall Street in the fall of 2008 actually started much earlier – in the spring of 2008. Wall Street and Washington were intricately tied together in the collapse and Sorkin details the level and depth of these ties. At the start of the book, he lists his cast of characters. They include the management of all the major investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, along with AIG, Bank of America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as overseas organisations from countries like China and Korea.

The cast of characters also includes a whole raft of attorneys, individuals from Great Britian, as well as from the U.S. Congress, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the White House, and the FDIC. This is not an exhaustive list.

Because of the author’s position at the New York Times, he had unprecedented access to this cast of characters and was able to write a book with all the detail supporting the drama of what led up to the collapse of Wall Street and the financial system in 2008. The major players on Wall Street knew that the dominoes were going to fall as early as the spring of 2008 as Lehman Brothers started to fail. Sorkin discusses the events leading from that time to the collapse.

Summary

Too Big to Fail is actually a thriller about a time in America’s financial history when the entire economy could have crumbled and almost did. Greed, the hunger for power, the hunger for money, and the lack of financial regulation all led to the financial collapse. You will see inside the egos of the cast of characters including the politicians involved.

If you want to truly understand what happened when the financial system failed and the economy went into a deep recession because of it, read this book. At the end, you will be astonished and amazingly well-informed.

4/5

Fascinating book on how the billionaire Chuck Feeney made his money and then gave it all away…

In his superbly written page-turner, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune, Irish journalist Conor O’Clery chronicles Feeney’s fascinating life. He also probes the psychology behind Feeney’s stark rejection of life as an exercise in conspicuous consumption. Feeney’s Depression-era childhood, Catholic upbringing, charitable parents, and poor-kid status at ritzy schools all conspired to influence his largesse. In crisp, Dickensian detail, O’Clery gives us the smells, sights, and sounds of Feeney’s hardscrabble upbringing; his explusion from Manhattan’s selective Regis High School; and his financing his way through Cornell University’s hotel management school as the “sandwich man,” selling 700 baloney-and-cheeses a week out of a wicker basket.

Feeney’s early days in business were an exercise in frugality. He held meetings in coffee shops and had an entertainment budget of zero. With his business partner, Robert Miller, he built Duty Free Shoppers into an international behemoth. That part was known throughout the 1970s and ’80s. What wasn’t known until 1997 was that 15 years before, Feeney had decided to systematically give it all away. He had grown tortured about the state of the world and his having so much. In 1982 he secretly transferred his share of Duty Free to an offshore Bermuda foundation he’d set up named Atlantic Philanthropies. It was one of the biggest and most unusual philanthropic feats in history.

Feeney was obsessed with concealing his identity and even keeping the endowment a secret from Miller, who revels in a life of ostentation and whose socialite daughters went on to marry a prince, a Getty, and a von Furstenberg. Any grant from Atlantic came with hyper-lawyered nondisclosure agreements and vows of secrecy. He agreed to this book only because the story was already leaking out, and he wanted to make sure the details were correct.

O’Clery also shows how Feeney used his philanthropy to further political ends—notably Feeney’s role in trying to advance the Irish peace process through backdoor diplomacy. Irish leaders credit Feeney with helping to build reconciliation in that country.

As the father of the “giving while living” school of philanthropy, Feeney has had a great deal of impact in philanthropic circles. This carpe diem approach has influenced other super-philanthropists, including Bill Gates and Michael Dell, to donate their fortunes during their lifetimes as opposed to bequeathing riches posthumously. The philosophy goes against the grain of most American philanthropy, where charities limit annual giving to 5% of their endowments. In 2003, Feeney’s Atlantic made a stunning announcement: It planned to spend itself out of business over the next 12 to 15 years, giving away $350 million annually to four causes: disadvantaged children, the care and treatment of the elderly, global health problems, and human rights.

Feeney’s spend-it-now philanthropy has also influenced others to better prepare their children for lives of privilege minus the psychological hex wealth can sometimes be. In keeping with his ideas that life should not be an acquisition spree and that work and a sense of purpose ultimately bring a richer existence, Feeney long ago bestowed modest sums on each of his five children. He did the same for himself. The worth of his stake today? $1.5 million. Feeney isn’t just influencing current philanthropic practice. He’s also picking up where Andrew Carnegie left off: As the legendary steelman said: “The man who dies rich dies disgraced.”

4/5

Say Everything:
How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters
By Scott Rosenberg

In late January of 2001, in the depths of the dot-com crash, a San Francisco startup called Pyra Labs ran out of money. Its staff departed. The co-founder of the company, a young Nebraskan named Evan Williams, decided to make a go of it alone. He scraped together $40,000 in new funding and moved Pyra’s servers into his apartment. This permitted the company’s 100,000 registered customers (and counting) to keep using Pyra’s service, Blogger, to publish their online journals, or blogs.

A year later, Blogger had 700,000 subscribers. Whether sharing cookie recipes or commenting on weapons reports from Iraq, those writers were constructing a significant new form of grassroots media. Blogging turned traditional publishing on its head, allowing anyone with a computer and modem (or even a smartphone) to gain a global voice for free. By 2003, Williams was able to sell his business to Google for a lucrative pile of pre-IPO stock. Three years later he and his partners launched yet another tool for global publishing, the micro-blogging phenomenon, Twitter.

Williams’ story is just one thread in the narrative of Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg’s account of the blogging revolution. Rosenberg, co-founder of the online magazine Salon.com, describes a remarkable chapter in the history of communication. At this point it’s hard for some to remember that even in the late ’90s most people regarded Web pages as things to read, not places to post and publish. It’s an important story, one that leads not only to YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia but also to the transformation of corporate and government communications. Rosenberg writes gracefully and appears to have researched thoroughly. His book may be a bit heavy in detail, historical and technical, for a general interest audience. But many bloggers are sure to relish the history of the drama they’ve stepped into. I certainly learned a lot.

Rosenberg introduces readers to pioneers such as Justin Hall. A Swarthmore College dropout who was itching to share, Hall in 1993 began publishing details of his life and linking to things he was finding online, including bootleg music and porn. He established a cult readership. It quickly became apparent that if Justin Hall could publish his stuff, everyone else could, too.

Could blogging be a business? Entrepreneurs such as Nick Denton, a former Financial Times journalist, would lead the way. Denton hired journalists to post on sites such as Gawker, for gossip aficionados, and tech gadget blog Gizmodo. He established an early model: lots of attitude, frequent posting, strong focus—and entry-level pay. Then came rival Jason Calacanis, who launched the blog network Weblogs (TWX), luring away some of Denton’s stars with equity stakes. Enter Arianna Huffington in 2005 with another model: persuading bloggers to labor for free—while boosting their brands—as contributors to her popular Huffington Post.

The blog wars make for fun reading. The impact for society comes from the stream of eyewitness reports and opinions flowing onto Web pages. As customers and employees blog, corporations lose any hope of controlling news as they used to and push instead to influence it. And as we see in the streets of Iran, angry voices carry around the world and construct their own compelling narrative, even when dictators censor the press.

It’s easy to focus on stupid or trivial blogs and dismiss the lot of them. But as more people add their voices every day, Rosenberg writes, “saying that ‘ninety percent of blogs are crap’ begins to feel misanthropically close to saying ‘ninety percent of people are crap.’ ”

He quotes an American Army major, Andrew Olmsted, who left an entry to be posted after his death, which came near Sadiya, Iraq, in January 2008. “The ability to put my thoughts on (virtual) paper and put them where people can read and respond to them has been marvelous,” Olmsted wrote, “even if most people haven’t agreed with them.” Thanks to the technology and media Rosenberg describes, all of us have that same marvelous power to reach out to the rest of the world. It’s astonishing how quickly the change has come.

If you are interested in using the Internet to grow your business virally, then “Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves” is a must-read.

Viral Loop literally dissects and breaks apart the code behind what makes some businesses and ideas go viral and others go fizzle. The first sentence of the book had me completely hooked.

“Two Heinekens into a lazy Tuesday afternoon, James Hong, a twenty-seven-year-old dot-com refugee from Mountain View California, was listening to his roommate, Jim Young, a Berkeley graduate student in electrical engineering, wax on about a woman he had spotted at a party the previous weekend. Young, also twenty-seven, insisted she was a “perfect 10.” Hong didn’t believe him. He knew his roommate had a thing for “goth,” while Hing’s own tastes were more Abercrombie & Fitch. What the world needed, they agreed, was a metric to reliably rate someone’s looks.”

This book was not only educational, but really entertaining. That’s because the author, Adam L. Penenberg, is a journalism professor and assistant director of the Business and Economics Program at New York University. He has written for Fast Company, Inc., Slate, Wired, and a series of other well known magazines. And you can tell that he is an expert in explaining highly technical information to an audience that needs to learn and understand it, but doesn’t have the time or the inclination to do all the research that’s required to get there.

How to Read Viral Loop

The book is broken up into three major sections:

•I Viral Businesses:

Penenberg gives context to the viral business model by going into detail about the grandfathers of the viral business model: Tupperware, Mosaic and Ning are just a few. If you’re thinking about using a viral model, you’ll want to pay attention because each of these stories holds a key to the foundations of a good viral loop.

•II Viral Marketing:

This section continues to lead the reader from the basics of viral marketing and shows you how these same principles are applied to other businesses. Perhaps the most striking thing to me about this section is how perennial a good business model is. In this section the key story is about Hotmail and how they used the “home party” idea as inspiration to spread the word about Hotmail by placing something in the footer of their e-mails.

•III Viral Networks:

This is where everything you’ve read before comes into play. This book is not for the weak-at-Internet-strategy-heart. In this section you learn about building an architecture that can sustain the masses that will throng to your site if your viral loop is good enough.
You’ll want to read this book slowly and surely page by page, chapter by chapter so that you can be sure to get every bit of viral history, company story and business model.

Why Read Viral Loop

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, you can’t afford to run a business in this economy without reading this book. The historical perspective combined with the real-life stories and wrapped up in the high quality story telling that Penenberg brings makes Viral Loop a must read.

Why Read It?

•The first full biography of Warren Buffett, the most famous investor of all time, written with his full cooperation and collaboration.

•Gives a lucid account of his life and career, from his first financial forays to becoming a revered investment guru.

•Analyses his business deals and strategies, as well as mistakes, by looking at the development of his investing style, his many investment partnerships, and how he built up his fortune.

•Snowball is a thorough and inclusive biography of the world’s greatest investor, examining his family history, his youthful adventures, and how he developed his investment acumen.

•It shows how Buffett came from a line of small business owners, and how his parents toiled through the Great Depression, and how his somewhat unbalanced mother shaped his outlook on life.

•Reveals that his investment career took off with the purchase of textile firm Berkshire Hathaway, and explains how he grew it into the 12th largest corporation in the United States.

•It combines biographical detail with an examination of his business deals, focusing on the development of his expertise, strategy, and investment philosophy.

•Lays bare the real Buffett—his moral viewpoint, honesty, and integrity, as well as his many contradictions, such as his frugality, eccentric eating habits, and choice of clothing.

•Details how he built up his business expertise, and the success of his many investment partnerships.

•Gives a detailed account of his investments over the years, how he selected companies in which to invest, his definition of risk, and how he decided how much to actually invest in each company.

•Shows his successful preference for long-term investing in sound businesses that he can understand, as well as belief in stewardship and integrity towards these companies.

•Examines how he has evolved into the figurehead of value investing after his guru Benjamin Graham, rather than as someone who follows market bubbles, such as the tech boom of the late 1990s.

•Looks at his dependence on friends and a network of business associates, and how his collaboration with other investment managers proved essential to his success.

•Provides insight into Buffett’s focus on customer loyalty, the quality of management, choosing allies carefully, and avoiding unnecessary diversity.

•Shows how he was one of the first to point out the inherent danger in derivative products, and how they could affect the financial system.

Quotations
“Warren may have said he wanted to become a millionaire, but he never said that he would stop there.”

“Berkshire’s best opportunities always came at times of uncertainty, when others lacked the insight, resources, and fortitude to make the right judgments and commit.”

“Cash combined with courage in a crisis is priceless.

You may ask, why a book written by a politician who has no business background is included in my business book reviews? My answer is that there are lessons to be learned from an extraordinary performer in any field, and it is apparent that Barrack Obama is an extraordinary performer by any standard. Because this book was written before Barrack entered politics it is perhaps more honest than it is possible for him to be now. This honesty allows the reader to gain a great insight in to Barrack’s personal character and makes it possible to identify some reasons why he has been such a success.

1. Successful People are People Too!

Generally when he hear stories of very successful people, we hear about their amazing work ethic and drive, they are presented as people with almost superhuman focus. So what was refreshing for me as a 23 year old was to find out that at one time Barry (as he was called at the time) was just another college student, unsure of who he was or what he wanted to do with his life, who enjoyed parties and girls just as much as the next guy!

2. It is Never Too Late

Barrack Obama did not graduate from Law School until he was 31. The general consensus is that you got to college, pay off your loans, and work until its time to retire, probably changing companies and roles a few times along the way. But it is evident from Obama that it does not have to be done this way. Obama did what he wanted to do after college. Then after a few years he decided that he would go to Grad school and increase his knowledge and skills and begin a new departure in his life. I think it is fair to say that Obama’s journey to the presidency did not begin until Law School. He did this at an age where most people have accepted that the way their life is now is how it will continue to be. But he has shown in the time since he graduated that it is never too late to try and change and improve.

3. Passionate Perseverance

You only get once chance at life, therefore it makes sense that we should all do what makes us happy. While this is easier said than done, there is a generally held belief that we should all work at something we have an interest in and we are passionate about. But in our busy world filled with bills, invoices and doctors fees, it often doesn’t seem practical to pursue your passions or something gets in the way of our dreams. Most people prefer to take the safe job that they might hate, rather than take a chance on something they love but may not seem practical or provide enough financial support. Barrack Obama though, did what very few people do. After college he chose his career based on his passions not his paycheck. He became a community organiser in the south side of Chicago. He wasn’t making much money, but he was truly doing what he loved. The result of this (although he is modest in the book) is that he was fantastic at his job and had a profound impact on those he worked with in the community and their lives. Obama then went to Harvard Law School and on completion of his degree, he again turned down the option of pursuing a career with great financial rewards, and began work as a lawyer helping the poor in Chicago. From that point on we all know that he rose quickly in politics and eventually became Senator and eventually President. I think this shows the power of passionate perseverance. Obama was passionate about helping people and trying to improve government and this passion has lead him all the way to the White House.

The two main lessons I took from this book can be universally applied. If you are passionate about something, whether its playing a sport, volunteering in your community or writing a blog, the extra time, effort and energy required always seems worth it. And secondly if you are passionate about something but haven’t done it yet, joined a team, cooked for a bake sale or started writing, then why not just start now, because it’s never too late…

Thanks Fiscal Student…another great review.

Did you ever see someone at work or in school achieve something really great, and think to yourself, you know what, I knew that guy/girl a while back and she didn’t seem that much better than me. Well the good news is your right, the bad news is that they succeeded where you failed through tremendous hard work. Geoff Colvin’s book is quite comprehensive in its study of excellent human performance across multiple fields from chess to golf to business and music. In all cases the greatest performers had been practicing extremely hard for at least 10 years before any exceptional performance was achieved.

You often hear commentators say of Tiger Woods, he makes it look so easy, the truth is that the shot he is playing probably is easier than he’s used to. A good example of this is a technique used frequently by Tiger to practice bunker shots. He drops a couple of balls in the sand trap, and then stands on them, burying them into the sand, before practicing this shot for hours. So if he is faced with what most people would consider a difficult bunker shot in a major tournament, it is much easier than what he has been preparing for. Extraordinary achievers practice consistently over long periods of time and continually make that practice more challenging as their skills improve.

This book comes to the conclusion that while a certain amount of performance is unaccounted for by hard work, the success which is attributed to innate gifts is overrated. If anything is the difference between great performers and the rest of us it is the motivation to do the required work.

This is a well researched and well written book. I also found it very inspiring because what your parents tell you when your younger is true, anything is possible if you work hard enough. Or as the old saying goes, “You know how to get to Carnegie Hall?” practice, practice, practice….

Thank You FiscalStudent….looking forward to reading this one!
www.fiscalstudent.com

This book rocks!, hilariously funny and full of great advice. If you looking for a practical how-to, what’s-it-like guide to becoming a rich entrepreneur, written by an expert and eccentric, Felix Dennis’s How To Get Rich is probably for you.

I really like his writing style — direct, bold, and funny in a self-effacing way– truth be told, with a title like “How To Get Rich”, I lowered my expectations a bit in case it turned out to be the usual drivel you usually find in the Business Profiles section of a bookstore. You know, the 18-point font, double-spaced, full-of-motivating-platitudes stuff that you get when flipping through Trump and Kiyosaki or worse. Those books have their use, but in general, once you’ve read one, the next one isn’t going to be much different. (Actually, Dennis has some pretty harsh words for all the authors out there who write how-to-get-rich books without actually having done so, except by selling copies of their how-to books!)

Enter Felix Dennis, a British publishing mogul who loves writing poems, outstanding wines, and telling it like it is. If you’ve never heard of him, he started Dennis Publishing in 1974, hit it big by publishing magazines related to the PC revolution back when no one else thought it would last, and nowadays publishes some of the most successful men’s lifestyle magzines in the US, like Maxim, Stuff, and Blender. By his own estimation, he’s worth about $400-$900M before tax.

Dennis emphasizes in his book that it’s a definitive how-to guide to being rich, and he regularly repeats, more than half-seriously, that if you’re not using his book to get rich, then you’re wasting your time and might as well give it to someone who will use it properly. Though I have no foot to stand on, I disagree wholeheartedly. You’re going to get good advice from this book regardless of whether you’re aiming to become rich, want to run your own simple business, or even if you work for someone else.

Sure, for those who are looking to get filthy rich, Dennis’s advice is probably spot-on. In a nutshell: choose a good industry (he gives some guidelines on what to avoid), mix in some luck (he gives advice on how to improve your chances of catching Lady Luck), and, finally, the most important part, retain 100% ownership of it through thick and thin (much easier said than done). Dennis truly believes that getting rich really isn’t hard, and anyone can do it, as long as they’re willing to make the sacrifices that are required to get there. On this point, I like that Dennis handles being rich even handedly (something you won’t find with Trump or Kiyosaki). He says outright that being rich won’t make anyone happier and is in fact more likely to lead to distress and loneliness, because getting there and maintaining wealth always requires personal sacrifices that most people aren’t willing to make, and for good reason.

So what is it I like so much about this book?

I suppose the reason I enjoy this book so much and will read it over and over again is that you seldom have the opportunity to hear someone’s philosophy and conclusions about living life, let alone someone who has probably done things you’ll never get to do (but might like to). I like that Dennis gives examples of his thought processes, and I don’t mean only on his successful ventures. More often than not, he gives examples of how he missed opportunities and made errors. He talks about what he’d do differently if he had the chance to start over. He gives some advice on managing talent (what he considers the important asset in a business) even though he also says that entrepreneurs shouldn’t be focusing on managing people.

This book will give you perspectives that you’ll seldom hear from other people in your life.
5/5