2017

The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama

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December 22, 2017
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The Big Idea: You have everything you need to achieve happiness. Happiness is achieved through mental practice.

  • Service to others is the best way to live.
  • If you can’t live your life in service to others, at least refrain from doing harm to others.
  • Happiness is not a luxury but the purpose of our existence.
  • Eliminate habits that lead to suffering.
  • Cultivate habits that lead to happiness.
  • In Buddhism, there are four factors to happiness: wealth, worldly satisfaction, spirituality, and enlightenment.
  • The real secret to happiness is a disciplined mind.
  • A calm mind, or one that is engaged in meaningful work, equates to happiness.
  • A basic way to happiness is to cultivate affection and connection with other human beings.
  • Always look for what you have in common with others and you will never be lonely.
  • All emotions, negative and positive, grow in size if practiced regularly.
  • Don’t confuse happiness with pleasure. Pleasure lacks meaning. Happiness depends on meaning and is often felt despite negative external conditions.
  • Become a student of happiness and practice how to improve happiness.
  • Replace anger and hatred with tolerance and patience.
  • Compassion means seeking to truly understand others. Compassion is the key to communicating and bonding with others.
  • The cure for loneliness is to recognize the need to open your eyes to all the people who surround you and to connect with them.
  • Instead of loving someone so that they love you back, seek to love them by increasing their happiness.
  • Without attempting to feel another’s pain, we set ourselves up for isolation.

 

Extraordinary Experiences by Denise Lee Yeon

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December 12, 2017
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The Big Idea: creating extraordinary customer experiences is an essential part of building a great brand.

Intro.

  • Brands matter more than ever.
  • The internet has increased transparency, so now brands need to be more authentic than ever.
  • Image manipulation through marketing muscle is not enough.
  • Great restaurant and retail brands rely heavily on great customer experiences and are worth studying.
  • Benefits of a strong brand: higher profit margins, customer loyalty, lower overhead costs, greater market valuations, and good will for when things go wrong.

1. Great Brands Start Inside: Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen

  • Prioritizing the needs of franchise owners (not shareholders, customers, or employees) resulted in a dramatic turnaround for Popeye’s.
  • The change in priority led to more training, better communication, improved culture, motivated front-line employees, and improved customer experience.
  • A strong company culture is a competitive advantage.

2. Great Brands Avoid Selling Products: H-E-B

  • Selling food can be a commodity business, but HEB has managed to differentiate itself from Walmart and others by designing a stellar customer experience that is about more than commodity groceries.
  • Examples: longer sampling hours, a greater variety of wines, attractive displays, demonstration kitchens, in-store restaurants, take-out bbq.
  • HEB also makes Texas part of its identity. People tend to do business with people like them.
  • HEB knows their customers better because they are local.
  • HEB’s charitable giving “Helping Here” also supports the local branding and commitment to the community to be more than a place to buy groceries.

3. Great Brands Ignore Trends: Buffalo Wild Wings

  • While other casual restaurants lowered prices during the Great Recession, Buffalo Wild Wings reinforced its positioning as the ultimate sports bar by increasing service, improving the experience, and highlighting its unique personality.
  • The result was a better customer experience, more customer loyalty, lower employee turnover, stronger differentiation, and increased market share.
  • Most companies don’t pioneer, they follow the leader. They will always be behind.

4. Great Brands Don’t Chase Customers: Costco

  • Costco succeeded by stating, “this is who we are, these are the customers we care about” and then doing everything they can to meet those customers’ needs.
  • Costco’s $55 membership fee weeds out low-income customers and selects for higher-income customers who want higher-quality goods but still want a bargain.
  • In return for lower prices on higher-quality goods, customers make a commitment to shop there regularly by paying a membership fee.
  • Costco is able to earn customer loyalty with better customer service enabled by paying employees well.
  • It’s okay to alienate some customers to serve other customers better. You can’t be everything to everybody.
  • A mass, undifferentiated marketing strategy might produce big gains in the short-term but won’t differentiate the brand or attract/retain customers in the long-term.

5. Great Brands Sweat the Small Stuff: PIRCH

  • PIRCH is a luxury appliance retailer with eight showrooms.
  • PIRCH differentiates itself by playing attention to every detail.
  • Examples: a barista greets you at the front door then asks you if you would like a tour or prefer to wander, free samples of food as you shop, cooking demonstrations, working showers, thoughful design of the company headquarters.
  • “Retail is detail.”
  • Note: company may or may not be profitable yet.

6. Great Brands Commit and Stay Committed: Jason’s Deli

  • Privately held company with more than 240 locations. Based in Beaumont, TX for over 40 years (I see a pattern).
  • Prices were always low, but portions are always generous and food quality is high.
  • They decided against breakfast even though it would increase sales short-term because it would affect lunch and catering long-term.
  • Basecamp mandates a 4-day workweek in the summer because balance is part of its culture.
  • In-N-Out pays front-line employees generously because they understand that they drive the customer experience and drive the business.
  • Jason’s Deli prefers to stay private because their culture would not be a good fit with Wall Street
  • They discovered their own values. They didn’t hire a company to decide them.
  • Instead of chasing growth, they grow when feel they are ready to grow.

7. Great Brands Never Have to ‘Give Back’: sweetleaf

  • sweetleaf is a restaurant chain focused on local food and environmental friendliness.
  • By being authentic to its values, sweetleaf attracts customers who share those values.
  • Great brands who choose to pursue social impact – do it as a core element, not as a bolt-on program for good publicity.

Summary

  • Be different and memorable.
  • Branding is not taglines, promotions, logos, or advertising.
  • Branding is expression of the company’s values, mission, and personality.
  • Short-term success may come at the expense of long-term success.
  • Brand-building can’t be delegated to the marketing department or an advertising agency. It starts from leadership and company culture.

Kellogg on Branding by Kellogg School of Management

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December 10, 2017
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The Big Idea: a strong brand is one of the most important economic moats a company can build. Building a brand is not easy but, if done well, can pay dividends for many years.

Intro

  • A brand is much like a reputation.
  • A strong brand will reshape perception.
  • Cash: Executives are pressured to focus on short-term financial results, however, brand building is a long-term project.
  • Consistency: Brands are built at every touchpoint with the customer.
  • Clutter: A strong brand needs to be focused and unique to stand out from the clutter.

1. Brand Positioning

  • Develop a formal brand positioning statement to guide internal marketing managers.
  • Once a brand is well-established, it is difficult to change.
  • Who is this brand for?
  • What does it help the customer accomplish?
  • How is it different from the alternatives?

2. Designing Brands

  • Begin with a strong brand concept.
  • Incorporate specific cues into the design.
  • The best technique for evaluation of brand design is to expose the design briefly and then ask consumers what they remember.

3. Brand Meaning

  • A strong brand is differentiated from the competition in a meaningful way. Consumers are willing to pay a premium and to repeat purchases over time.
  • Effective brand management involves the discovery, creation, and constant revision of stories.
  • Brands can promote and proclaim brand affiliation (Harley Davidson, Apple.)
  • Conduct a brand meaning audit to track and guide brand management efforts.
  • Brand stewards must become astute meaning managers.

4. Competitive Brand Strategies

  • The pioneer who creates, then dominates, a category enjoys a significant advantage for years and, sometimes, decades.
  • Late entrants have three broad competitive strategies: fast-follower, differentiation, and innovation.

5. Brand Extensions

  • A familiar brand name signals trust which can persuade consumers to try a new product launched with the brand name.
  • The brand extension must make sense.
  • Too many brand extensions can confuse consumers.
  • Sub-brands are sometimes a better choice. Eg., Sony Walkman, where Sony is the parent brand and Walkman is the sub-brand.

6. Brand Portfolio Strategy

  • Brands are a long-term asset.
  • A company with many brands has two broad strategies: house of brands or branded house.
  • House of brands: Proctor and Gamble, the brands are kept distinct and little effort is made to market the parent company to the consumer.
  • Branded house: Apple, the parent company has a strong brand and the sub-brands are natural extensions of the parent brand.

7. Building Brands Through Effective Advertising

  • Advertising should reflect the consumer’s aspirations.
  • Advertising should resonate with prior beliefs, not try to change them.
  • Advertising should resonate with existing goals.
  • Some advertising strategies: hard sell (Visa and “we’re everywhere you want to be”), big idea (Delta stands for convenience because of X, Y, Z), story grammar (follow a character from problem to solution.)
  • Keys: selecting the right media and the right timing.

8. Relationship Branding and CRM

  • CRM can be used to build a personal connection with the brand.
  • First, subsegment the market.
  • Second, personalize the touch points to improve the customer experience.
  • Segmentation methods: monetary value, sociodemographics, purchase behaviors.
  • Cluster analysis is a statistical method used to find natural groups.
  • Well-defined rewards (loyalty club benefits) generally work better than discretionary rewards (complimentary upgrades).

9. Brand Strategy for Business Markets

  • Managing business brands presents unique challenges.
  • The foundation of branding is positioning.
  • A positioning statement declares who that target customer is, what you offer, and why it’s customers should prefer your offering.
  • Brand equity is determined by the associations that are established in the customer’s mind with your brand.
  • The brand associations can be functional (easy to use, high quality, affordable) or they can emotional (exciting, fun, trustworthy, exclusive.)

10. Services Branding

  • A brand name is a promise made to the customer.
  • Customers are either delighted, satisfied, or disgruntled.
  • In contrast to goods, services are generally more intangible, complex, variable in their delivery, process-dependent.
  • For services, the front-line employee (the primary touch point) is the brand.
  • Since the front-line employee is the brand, marketing the brand internally is critical.
  • Front-line employees must view their role as partners. Treat employees like part of the brand.
  • Using self-service technology can reduce variation in customer experience. Service machines make remaining human employees even more valuable.
  • Since the company is the brand, be careful to control communications of the company identity (from sponsored events to ethics to social media.)
  • To manage and improve the customer experience, map all the touch points.
  • Service blueprinting is a mapping of all the touch points with the customer.
  • The blueprint will help identify bottlenecks, ensure consistency, and reveal opportunities to distinguish the brand from competitors.
  • Ex. Mayo Clinic “patientfirst”.
  • Be careful when selecting partners because they become an extension of the brand, for better or worse.

11. Branding in Technology Markets

  • There has been a cultural bias in technology towards engineering and features and against branding.
  • Technology firms need to learn from the CPG firms.

12. Building a Brand-Driven Organization

  • The strongest, most resilient brands have a strong internal company culture that upholds the brand promises.
  • A strong brand leads to customer loyalty, which leads to lower marketing costs, more repeat purchases, and a higher customer lifetime value.
  • A strong brand leads to a higher willingness to pay, which leads to more revenue per customer, and a higher customer lifetime value.
  • A strong company culture motivates employees, reduces employee turnover, and lower operating costs.
  • A strong company culture motivates employees, which improves touch points with the customer, which leads to a strong brand.
  • The touch point wheel consists of interactions during pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.
  • At companies with a strong brand, CEO is the lead brand builder. But all leaders must build the brand in their departments or business units.
  • Form an executive brand council (EBC).
  • To communicate the brand to the employees, segment them like you would segment customers. Then customize the message and the delivery for each employee segment.
  • 1. Make the Brand Relevant to Employees. (What does this mean for me?)
  • 2. Make the Brand Accessible to Employees. (What is our brand, more specifically?)
  • 3. Reinforce the Brand Continuously to Employee. (What is our brand, again?)
  • 4. Make Brand Education Part of New Employee Training
  • 5. Reward On-Brand Behaviors (What’s in it for me?)
  • 6. Hire Based on Brand Fit
  • What gets measured gets managed. Set up employee-focused brand metrics. Surveys, suggestion boxes, focus groups.
  • Common pitfalls: relying on broadcast instead of conversation, not allocating sufficient resources, being seduced by sexy but shallow tactics, and relying too much on technology.

13. Measuring Brand Value

  • What gets measured gets managed.
  • Book: Managing Brand Equity (1991) by David Aaker
  • 1. Customer-centric metrics: qualitative and quantitative measurements of consumer awareness/attitudes, eg. BrandDynamics model
  • 2. Sales-centric metrics: marketing mix modeling (measure ROI via statistical analysis), predictive modeling (customer most likely to respond, Customer Brand Value)
  • 3. Company-valuation-centric metrics: specialists determind brand valuation using accounting and finance principles, for M&A or brand management via scorecards

14. Using Positioning to Build a Mega-brand

  • 1999, NetZero invested remaining capital to position itself against AOL and MSN as “Defenders of the Free World.”
  • The campaign was a big success, NetZero launched premium extensions, and NetZero eventually became United Online.
  • 1. Start with a tangible point of difference that resonates with consumers.
  • 2. Create the impression that you’re bigger than you are.
  • 3. Be nimble in responding to changes in the marketplace, but be true to your brand.

15. Marketing Leverage in the Frame of Reference

  • Do not underestimate the impact of the right frame of reference.
  • 1. Broaden the frame of reference: BMW is not a sports car, it’s the ultimate driving machine; DeBeers is not in the diamond business, it’s in the gift business
  • 2. Compare your offering to the gold standard even if it’s not your primary competitor: it’s not delivery, it’s Digiorno; Visa positioned itself as better than Amex even though its primary competitor was Mastercard
  • 3. I am what I’m not: it’s not TV, it’s HBO

16. Finding the Right Brand Name

  • If your brand name is distinctive and memorable, it can make the difference in winning.
  • Your name must be memorable and ownable.
  • Be careful of descriptive names, fad-ish names, or names that define a product or benefit too narrowly.
  • The brand and its name should convey a personality.
  • Eg. Mrs. Dash

17. Building Global Brands

  • The ideal strategy is to complement global standardization with local customization.
  • Consumers have high expectations of global brands, so it’s best to focus on superior benefits.
  • The brand essence should stay consistent globally, with a little bit of flex for local tastes.
  • Local changes include: sizing, pricing, distribution.
  • Eg. Philadelphia Cream Cheese

18. Branding and Organizational Culture

  • Strong brands in healthcare begin with a strong internal culture.
  • Begin with a clear mission and value statement.
  • If your brand is tied to your employees, they must buy into the mission and purpose of your organization.
  • Eg. Northwest Memorial Healthcare.

19. Branding and the Organization

  • 1. Match the brand to the internal culture and reality.
  • 2. Involve senior management in the branding process.
  • 3. Manage the brand actively with marketing professionals.
  • There is an advantage to scale in building a brand, but there is also an advantage to small size in maintaining a strong company culture and strong core values.

20. Internal Branding

  • Don’t forget your employees when communicating the brand.
  • Employees can be powerful brand ambassadors.
  • Good internal branding can motivate employees to provide exceptional service.

Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday

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December 4, 2017
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The Big Idea: you can’t trust the media.

  • Clicks equal revenue. Therefore, online news sites care more about clicks than truth.
  • Since all news is online now, established media has to compete for clicks with millions of blogs, twitter accounts, and satirical news sites.
  • The result of this competition is that the media we consume is flooded with sensational headlines, click-bait, rumors, and unsupported fake news.
  • Most blogs serve no real purpose in our lives than to distract.
  • Read books instead of following blogs.
  • Subscription-based news sites are more trustworthy than free sites because they are not solely dependent on clicks and ad revenue.
  • If you must get coverage for your company or organization, the basic formula is simple: manufacture an effective story, submit it to a small news site, *quickly* trade it up the chain to a larger news site, and repeat until you are mentioned in The New York Times.
  • Afterwards, you can forever say “as seen in The New York Times.”
  • Other tactics: press releases, Wikipedia, leaked stories, HARO, effective headlines.
  • Ryan Holiday knows this topic first-hand because he was one of the pioneers of media manipulation.

Permaculture for the Rest of Us by Jenni Blackmore

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November 19, 2017
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The Big Idea: With creativity and persistence, you can live well on a small homestead, even if the climate is difficult and the soil is subpar.

  • Every homestead will be unique. Contours, zones and sectors should be mapped out on paper before getting started.
  • Zones are concentric circles around your home. Zone 0 is your home. Zone 1 is next out and will contain herbs, etc. Zone 5 is further away and will contain less visited trees and bushes.
  • Sectors are like slices of a pie-chart  that clearly define sunniest spots, wind tunnels, water courses, etc.
  • Develop the land slowly so that you have time to experiment, adjust, and enjoy.
  • Develop intimate knowledge of every corner of your land.
  • Encourage what wants to stay and let the rest go away. This will lighten your work immensely.
  • Soil is made of sand, silt, and clay. There is an ideal ratio of all three for plants.
  • Important layers are: topsoil (2-8″), subsoil (12-30″), and bedrock.
  • Only a few plants (comfrey, dandelions, daikon radish) have roots long enough to penetrate subsoil and bring nutrients up.
  • Amend soil by adding good organic material like compost, humus, and worms.
  • A well-designed compost bin can speedy up decomposition and keep things clean.
  • Red Wrigglers are the best compost worm.
  • Chickens can be a great help turning compost.
  • Chicken manure must be aged one year before using on plants.
  • Comfrey fixes nitrogen, attracts bees, can reach down into the subsoil, and can be used to supplement compost piles or as green mulch. Just be careful to plant comfrey in an unused area of land.
  • Digging and tilling disrupts the organisms living in good soil. Try the no-till method instead.
  • Instead of digging vegetable garden beds, use raised bed gardens.
  • Try hugelkultur raised bed gardens.
  • Try keyhole raised bed gardens.
  • Try lasagna raised bed gardens.
  • Copper mesh along the top sides of raised bed walls keeps slugs away.
  • An herb spiral is a classic permaculture design.
  • Every vegetable has its own growing preference. Proper timing and environment is essential to learn.
  • Easy starter crops: garlic, chard, potatoes, squash.
  • Crop rotation is essential to healthy gardens.
  • Get at least on really comprehensive gardening guide to explain each plant’s preferences.
  • Legumes are great for the soil.
  • Greenhouses are not a luxury. They are integral to a successful homestead.
  • You can find lots of inexpensive DIY designs online.
  • Traditionally, greenhouses are placed with maximum southern exposure but this is not a hard rule.
  • Three purposes of a greenhouse: starting seeds, growing plants that prefer warmth, prolonging seasonal growth. If you’re a gardening enthusiast looking to extend your growing season, consider buying a greenhouse.
  • Brussel sprouts are underrated vegetables and should be started inside.
  • Ladybugs are fantastic for dealing with an aphid problem.
  • Even the smallest homestead should have a wild Zone 5. (Zone 4 is a food forest. Zones 2 and 3 are gardens, compost, and animals.
  • Hugulkulture is ideal in colder climates because it creates a warmer environment for growing.
  • Natural or manmade microclimates help protect plants from wind and cold.
  • While not required, good livestock design makes permaculture easier.
  • Chickens are great for eggs, manure, composting scraps.
  • Chicken manure always needs to be aged before using.
  • Chickens need to be well-protected from predators
  • Ducks are great for eggs and slug control.
  • Ducks are harder to keep because of their water requirements. Minimum 4 inches of water to dunk their heads.
  • Rabbits are great for meat production.
  • Rabbit manure can be used immediately in gardens.
  • Turkeys are good for meat and eggs and very easy to care for.
  • Build a chicken tractor and a henposter if you raise chickens.
  • Principle 1: Feedback loops: accepting and responding to change.
  • Principle 2: Integrated symbiotic support between all systems: every system must support other systems and in turn be supported by other systems.
  • Principle 3: Cultivate local species: avoid introducing invasive species.
  • Principle 4: Ensure the fair distribution of yield and empower others to become self-sustaining.
  • Principle 5: Continuous and mindful observation.
  • Principle 6: Intelligent design and the observation of naturally occurring patterns.
  • Principle 7: Capturing and storing energy and the efficient use of resources.
  • Principle 8: Ensure a yield.
  • Principle 9: Start small and move slowly.
  • Principle 10: Introduce renewable, biological resources only.
  • Principle 11: Celebrate and value diversity.
  • Principle 12: See creative solutions not problems.
  • Save any valuable seeds in labeled pill bottles or envelopes.
  • Learn to preserve harvest with canning, drying, root cellars, cold rooms, freezing.
  • Cold frames and greenhouses help to prolong the growing season.
  • Read Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets.

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

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November 15, 2017
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The Big Idea: the key to success in life is relationships + creating with others.

  • Real networking is about helping others succeed.
  • Make goal setting a lifetime habit.
  • Young Bill Clinton would record the names and backgrounds of everyone he met on index cards.
  • Older Bill Clinton is famous for creating instant rapport with everyone who meets him.
  • Build your network long before you need it.
  • Before you meet someone, always do your homework (personal, professional, hobbies, company.)
  • Invest time in organizing your contacts using databases and LinkedIn.
  • Learn how to make a warm call. Never cold call.
  • Learn how to send a warm email. Never cold email.
  • Treat the gatekeeper with warmth.
  • Keep your social+work calendar full of events.
  • Formal networking events are lame. Instead, network on planes, at the YMCA, at church, at conferences, at dinner parties, at charity fundraisers, etc.
  • Good follow-up will separate you from everyone else. Develop a system for following up, thanking others, and finish with “next step.”
  • The real value of conference is not the content, it’s the networking. Do your research on the attendees, organize meta-events, or help the conference organizers.
  • Nourish your relationships with super-connectors.
  • Small talk is underrated as a way to connect with others.
  • Take the time to understand what motivates someone. Usually, it’s: health, wealth, or children. Help others achieve their goals.
  • Real power comes from being indispensable. Help to connect others. It costs you nothing but might change others’ lives.
  • When you hear someone has a problem, try to think how an introduction you make might lead to a solution.
  • Always be pinging. Pinging takes effort. Create an automated system for pinging.
  • An anchor tenant is someone particularly unique or interesting to make your dinner parties memorable for everyone.
  • Arrange regular dinner parties to connect people.
  • The main value of social networking is curation and learning of knowledge.
  • Robert Scoble is very selective about who he follows. Through this, Scoble stays on top of key trends in technology and then curates information to his followers. He is so effective at doing this and adds so much value that his time is in great demand from venture capitalists and business leaders.
  • Have a large, diverse social network and a small core of intimate relationships.
  • The best online networking crosses back and forth between virtual and in-person.
  • Don’t waste time trying to connect to the obvious mega-celebrity. Invest your energy connecting with the rising micro-celebrity. Connect with him before anyone else knows him.
  • When sharing content online, it’s better to be authentic, vulnerable, and candid.
  • When appropriate, co-create content to widen your audience.
  • Lucky people know how to engineer luck by creating a broad network that funnels opportunities their way.
  • If you don’t want to be in Silicon Valley, New York City, or Los Angeles, travel frequently, attend conferences, and connect online.
  • If you plan your whole life, by definition, you can’t get lucky.
  • As a leader, focus less on “todo” lists and more on “to-meet” lists.
  • Be an interesting person yourself by developing hobbies, reading voraciously, and having new experiences.
  • Remember that journalists are hungry for ideas. Develop those relationships early and ping regularly.
  • The best way to become an expert in a topic is to teach it.
  • Your message to journalists and the public must be both simple and universal.
  • In an economy that values emotion over numbers, storytellers have an edge.
  • Be the guardian of your own personal brand.
  • The best strategy for producing viral content is curation, not creation.
  • A PR firm can help you connect to journalists, but you’re the one they should be talking to.
  • Get closer to influence by joining Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), attending political fundraisers, and participating in charity fundraisers.
  • Mentors are another key to success. They teach skills and also make valuable connections.
  • Mentors expect gratitude and application of what they have taught.
  • For leaders in today’s connected age, balance is a myth. Successful leaders blend professional into personal as one.
  • Remember that people are hungry for meaning.
  • Stay focused on the big picture and helping others.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree by Eric Barker

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November 10, 2017
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The Big Idea: how to succeed in business and life using science.

Chapter 1: Should We Play It Safe and Do What We’re Told If We Want to Succeed?

  • Grades are a great predictor of self-discipline, conscientiousness, and compliance.
  • Grades are a poor predictor of career success.
  • There are two types of leaders: filtered (rise up the ranks), and unfiltered (leap forward).
  • Unfiltered leaders break things but can also transform.
  • Good leaders are usually filtered leaders. Great leaders are usually unfiltered.
  • Ex: Winston Churchill vs Neville Chamberlain.
  • Swedish expression: most kids are dandelions but a few are orchids.
  • Some traits that lead to bad stuff can actually lead to great stuff in a different situation. Ex: eccentric pianist Glenn Gould.
  • A “hopeful monster” is an individual that deviates radically from the norm because a genetic mutation that confers a potentially adaptive advantage. Ex: Michael Phelps, geniuses.
  • All of Silicon Valley is based on character defects that are rewarded uniquely in this system. (Intensifiers theory.)
  • Ex: Israeli Defense Force recruits autistics to help surveil.
  • Ex: to reinvigorate Pixar, Brad Bird recruited “black sheep”.
  • Extremely creative people have a far higher incidence of mental disorders. The Mad-Genius Paradox.
  • Poor people are called crazy while rich people are called eccentric.
  • Ten thousand hours requires an unhealthy obsession.
  • 10% of the Fortune 400 founders never finished college.
  • Silicon Valley founder stereotypes indicate hypomania, a relentless, euphoric, impulsive machine that explodes towards its goals while staying connected with reality.
  • Marc Andreesen invests in flawed founders who can be extreme successes.
  • Know thyself. Know if you’re filtered or unfiltered. Know your signature strengths.
  • Pick the right pond. Which environments value your signature strengths?

Chapter 2: Do Nice Guys Finish Last?

  • Jerks definitely win in the short-term.
  • Work teams with just one bad apple underperform by 30%.
  • In the long-term trust matters.
  • Ex: criminal organizations know that selfishness, internally, doesn’t scale.
  • Pirates were so successful because they treated their people well.
  • Professor Adam Grant found that Givers were found at the very top and at the very bottom.
  • On average, jerks do better, but at the very top, Givers do better.
  • The most successful Givers surround themselves with Matchers, who punish Takers and protect Givers.
  • Don’t be envious. Let others win too.
  • Start off by giving.
  • Never betray anyone, but if a person cheats you, don’t be a martyr.
  • Pick the right pond. Connect with Givers if you’re a Giver.
  • Cooperate first. Get others to like you. Do small favors.
  • Don’t be a martyr. Sometimes you’ll need to retaliate. Giving too much can lead to burnout.
  • Work hard but make sure it gets noticed. You need to be visible. Your boss needs to like you.
  • Think long-term and make others think long-term. People who act like family treat each other better than colleagues.
  • Forgive to prevent death spirals.

Chapter 3: Do Quitters Never Win and Winners Never Quit?

  • Sometimes you need grit to be successful. Sometimes you need to know when to quit and start over.
  • Navy SEALs use positive self-talk to pass BUD/S.
  • Optimistism is telling yourself the kind of stories you need to keep going.
  • Optimistic people are happier, healthier, and luckier.
  • Optimistic people tell themselves that bad things are: temporary, aren’t universal, and are not their fault.
  • Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust because his stories were greater than his suffering. He was living for something greater than himself.
  • Hearing how couples tell their story can predict with 94% accuracy if they’ll get divorced.
  • Stories rule our thinking, because they impose meaning on events.
  • When schools are structured like a game, students perform better.
  • Games change the struggle to something fun instead of something that requires willpower.
  • Games are another kind of story.
  • Change the story and you change the behavior.
  • Games must be: Whiny Neutered Goats Fly (WNGF)
  • Games must be: Winnable (not too hard, not too easy), Novel (new challenges), Goal-Oriented (clear goal), Feedback (small wins)
  • Strategic quitting recognized the concept of opportunity cost.
  • If you quit something, it frees up time for something else.
  • Peter Drucker’s book The Effective Executive highlights the supreme importance of time.
  • Jim Collins’ book Good to Great highlighted that most of the turnarounds involved quitting something instead of starting something.
  • Lucky people maximize opportunities. They are more open to new experiences. They try lots of new stuff. They don’t dwell on failures, they see the good side of failures and learn from them.
  • Ex: comedians know the importance of trying lots of material until a joke clicks.
  • Ex: successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with brilliant ideas; they discover them.
  • Devote 5-10% of your time to small experiments to make sure you keep learning and growing.
  • Thinking about love as a journey, with twists and turns and challenges, leads to more success.
  • Stoics used “premeditatio malorum” (premeditation of evils). What’s the worst that could happen?
  • US Special Forces use if-then scenario planning.
  • How do you know when to quit? WOOP. Wish-Outcome-Obstacle-Plan.

Chapter 4: It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know (Unless It Really Is What You Know)

  • Eg. Mathematician Paul Erdos loved to collaborate.
  • Research shows that extroverts make more money, have more satisfying careers, are luckier, and happier.
  • People who speak early and often are seen as leaders.
  • Introverts are more likely to be experts in their field.
  • In some fields, introverts outperform. Eg. math, athletics, music, chess.
  • Extroversion is also linked to crime, infidelity, car accidents, overconfidence, and financial risk-taking.
  • Extroversion is a skill one can develop.
  • The best networker in Silicon Valley is Adam Rifkin. He’s a shy introvert nicknamed Panda. His secret? Be a friend, share knowledge, offer introductions.
  • Similarities create rapport.
  • Ask questions and then listen.
  • Flattery works. Even obvious, insincere flattery works if needed.
  • Ask people what challenges they face.
  • Offer to help others.
  • Reconnect with old friends. Send a few emails every week, asking ” What’s up?”
  • Find your super-connectors and ask them “who should I meet?”
  • Budget time and money every week to connect with people.
  • Join groups and be on the lookout for “Interesting People” dinners.
  • Be a part of diverse social groups.
  • Checking in every now and then matters.
  • Be the hub not the spoke. Organize events.
  • Following up and staying in touch is more important than meeting new people.
  • Top performers at work tend to have bigger networks.
  • Everyone needs a mentor. It’s one of the biggest shortcuts available.
  • Five tips to find an amazing mentor: be a worthy pupil, study your mentor’s work, never waste a mentor’s time, follow up and show them your completed homework, make your mentor proud
  • Mentoring makes mentors happy, too.
  • Want to win a negotiation? Get them to like you. Eg. NYPD hostage negotiators
  • Negotiation tips: keep calm, use active listening, label emotions out loud, ask questions that force them to think
  • Gratitude is the most certain strategy for happiness. Eg. Walter Green’s happiness tour.

Chapter 5: Believe in Yourself…Sometimes

  • Successful people are confident. They over-rate themselves relative to their peers.
  • Overconfidence increases productivity and causes you to choose more challenging tasks.
  • In a way, successful people are “delusional.” They interpret the past positively and increase the chance of future success.
  • Confidence gives you a sense of control.
  • Should you “fake it until you make it”? Eg. U.S.A. Ghost Army in WWII.
  • “The CEO who misleads others in public may eventually mislead himself in private.” –Warren Buffett
  • Confidence is dangerous when it leads to hubris and delusion. Eg. Kung Fu master’s $5,000 challenge.
  • Also, power reduces empathy, causes us to be more selfish, and makes us better liars.
  • If you don’t have any fear, bad things can happen. Eg. Urbach-Wiethe disease.
  • Humility has incredible benefits: drives self-improvement, improves performance, inspires leadership.
  • Abraham Lincoln is the epitome of humility in politics.
  • We need a balance of optimism and pessimism.
  • Bosses that show vulnerability and underrate themselves are the most popular.
  • The best is to develop self-compassion, which has all the benefits of self-esteem without the downsides. Self-compassion allows you to forgive yourself and increase your grit.
  • How do you increase self-compassion? Positive self-talk, mindfulness, meditation.
  • Eg. Emperor Norton I of San Francisco was both delusional and humble.
  • Believing in yourself is nice. Forgiving yourself is better.
  • Confidence is a result of success, not a cause. So focus on competence and self-improvement. Focus on improving your skills, not your outcome.
  • Don’t fake confidence. Present the best version of yourself.

Chapter 6: Work, Work, Work…or Work-Life Balance

  • Extreme hard work produces extreme success.
  • The top 10% of workers produce most of the results.
  • Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer’s keys to success: energy and stamina.
  • Talent + hard work = success.
  • Hard work also leads to unhappiness and stress, unless your work is meaningful.
  • A meaningful career boosts longevity.
  • A boring job can kill you.
  • Einstein strained his family to the breaking point, even creating a duties contract with his wife.
  • Ted Williams was a baseball perfectionist but also divorced three times.
  • Perfectionism is poison to relationships. And relationships are the key to happiness.
  • Burnout is virtually nonexistent in monasteries, Montessori schools, and religious care centers where people consider their work as a calling.
  • Resilience often comes from optimism. Burnout is the flipside of grit. Burnout is the result of pessimism towards your job.
  • Remember to have fun. A playful attitude is associated with better grades.
  • Money and promotions weren’t nearly as important to people as working someplace fun.
  • Predictable time off increases employee happiness and employee performance.
  • Creativity requires rest and freedom to let your mind wander.
  • Early morning hours are statistically the most productive.
  • Three highly productive hours is usually better than ten mediocre hours.
  • Technology increases choice but also increases comparisons with others and therefore dissatisfaction.
  • You need a personal definition of success because you can no longer rely on external comparisons (Facebook.)
  • What does the good life mean to you? If you don’t decide, the world will decide for you.
  • “Just Enough” authors say the good life is: a) happiness (enjoying), b) achievement (winning), c) significance (making a difference), and d) legacy (extending).
  • How did Genghis Khan conquer the world? He had a goal and a plan.
  • Without a plan, you’ll default to what’s easy.
  • A plan gives you a feeling of control and keeps you motivated.
  • Andy Grove says track your time in a journal to see where each hour goes and note which hours are contributing to the good life and which hours are the biggest time-wasters.
  • Todo lists are evil. Schedule everything. Make sure you give time to whatever is priority. Schedule work, not interruptions. Schedule time for deep work. Schedule free time. (Cal Newport.)
  • Control your environment. Create a distraction-free zone. Shawn Achor says make important but ignored tasks 20 seconds easier to start and make unimportant time-wasters 20 seconds harder to start. Reduce temptations (close that browser, put your phone in another room.)
  • Cal Newport recommends a shutdown ritual to settle your brain and help you relax.

Conclusion

  • The path to success is to dream and then do something about that dream. Example: Martin Pistorius and locked-in syndrome.
  • The key to success is alignment between you, your values, your environment, your peers, and your goal.
  • Know thyself.
  • The key to happiness is relationships.

Step 24: Gandhi’s Funeral, Stephen Covey’s Wars, and Flurries Of Activity

benmunoz
October 28, 2017
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The Big Idea: Know Your Endgame In Life. Win Wars, Not Battles. 

  • Depression’s function is to tell you to change.
  • Ask yourself: when I die how many people will show up at my funeral?
  • When Adolf Hitler died, the world celebrated.
  • When Gandhi died, the world mourned.
  • Most people are rewarded for flurries of activity. Do stuff. Stay busy.
  • Parkinson’s law says that people will take as long as you give them to complete a task.
  • Consider paying for the task instead of time.
  • The battle mentality is getting paid for your time.
  • The war mentality is focusing on winning the war over winning the battles.
  • Some friends don’t show up but send you immense apologies afterward (flurry of activity.) Other friends just show up (winning the war.)
  • Win wars, not battles.
  • Know (and write down) your end goals regarding: Health, Wealth, Love, Happiness.
  • Reach your goals and you’ll win the war and pass the funeral test.
  • Making less than $80k is probably scarcity.
  • Your goal may not be to be a billionaire but there is much to learn from their success.
  • People are programmed to be happy around other people.
  • Remember Dunbar’s Number is 150 strong relationships.
  • Win 4 wars for a successful life: Health, Wealth, Love, Happiness.
  • Most successful people start immediately on their goals as children. Steven Spielberg start making movies at 7.
  • Time spent defining your life goals will save you time in the long-run.
  • Who is the epitome, for you, of someone who passed the funeral test?
  • Do you have a clear endgame for your life?
  • What does success in Health, Wealth, Love, Happiness look for you?
  • Where is there a flurry of activity but no results in your life?

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  

Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin

benmunoz
September 9, 2017
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The Big Idea: Today’s level of overconsumption and resource-depletion is unsustainable.
Ch. 1: Children, Chores, Humility, and Health
  • Historically, children had chores and responsibilities that taught them how to be an adult.
  • Our children were homeschooled, never had television, and were encouraged to pursue entrepreneurial adventures.
  • I don’t believe in allowances.
  • 50 years ago, 50% of produce grown in America came from backyard gardens.  Gardening teaches children about responsibility and nature.
  • According to the hygiene hypothesis, sheltering children from dirt and minor pathogens leads to allergies, asthma, and a weaker immune systems.
Ch. 2: A Cat Is a Cow Is a Chicken Is My Aunt
  • Traditional agricultures has always used grazing animals to replenish the soil.
  • The circle of life demands that something must die for something to live.
  • Animal activists will learn more working on a functioning organic farm with animals than sitting in air-conditioned home, reading articles on the internet.
  • Chickens and pigs are great for turning scraps into fertilizer.
  • Nobody in the world goes hungry because of lack of food production.  What kills people is food distribution problems.
  • Heifer International is getting it right, by starting with livestock.
  • Not all plants are good.  Many grains, grown industrially, devastate our topsoil.
  • If people knew more about where food came from, we would all be better off.
  • Can you name four vegetables that grow underground?  Above ground? Legumes?
  • Spend some serious time on a farm.
  • Start a backyard vegetable garden.
  • Eat more grass-fed beef and less chicken and less pork.
  • Raise small livestock (rabbits, chickens).
  • Take your kids hunting.

Ch. 3: Hog Killin’s and Laying in the Larder

  • The average town only has three days’ supply of food.
  • The first supermarket in America appeared in the 1940’s.
  • Nobody goes hungry because of lack of food.  They go hungry due to a lack of distribution.
  • Having all food available all year is not natural.
  • Lack of food security, caused by our current system makes us vulnerable.
  • Buy more food from local farmers.
  • Learn how to preserve food.
  • Buy a big freezer and store more food.
  • Start a 19th-century hobby.
  • Grow some food on your property.

Ch. 4: Wrappings, Trappings, and Foil

  • Book: Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman
  • Learn how to preserve your own food.
  • Learn how to extend your gardening season with cool-season crops like brassicas, carrots, beets, and greens.
  • Take your own containers to the farmer’s market and grocery store.
  • Reduce or eliminate buying processed foods.  They are responsible for all the wasteful packaging.
  • Get a ton of stackable, reusable containers.
  • Get a good thermos.

Ch. 5: Lawn Farms and Kitchen Chickens

  • Long distance distribution now defines the modern food system.
  • Half of all food fit for human consumption never gets eaten.  Much is lost to long-distance transportation.
  • Lots of farmland is going underused because farmers are getting older and the children are not farmers.
  • You can’t preserve farmland without preserving farmers.
  • Urban farm example: raised beds, chicken yard, worm farm.
  • Will Allen, Growing Power in Milwaukee: fish, hoophouses, warm farm.
  • Small Plot Intensive Farming (SPIN): half-acre, vertical stacking, polyculture.
  • Combining plants and animals gets the best of both worlds.
  • America has 35mm acres of lawns and 36mm acres of land for recreational horses.  And much more for golf courses.
  • Cheap energy masks the true cost of our food system.
  • We’ve traded our backyard gardens and neighborhood farms for Chinese imports and mega-crops filled with diseases.
  • Plant edible landscape.
  • Use marginal land.
  • Eat locally.
  • Raise backyard chickens.

Ch. 6: Dino-the-Dinosaur-Shaped Nuggets Don’t Grow on Chickens

  • People today have forgotten how to cut up a whole chicken.
  • Get a slow cooker.
  • Today’s kitchen is nothing more than an unpackaging center for packaged food.
  • Learn how to cook a complete meal from scratch.
  • Process something simple for yourself, like applesauce.
  • Everyone pitches in with cleaning up after dinner.

Ch. 7: We Only Serve White Meat Here

  • A quarter of all food is now eaten in automobiles.
  • Eat more home cooked meals and save more leftovers.
  • Eat more soups.  They are easy to prepare/store and way better than fast food.

Ch. 8: Disodium Ethylenediaminetetraacetate-Yum!

  • Quit buying processed food with ingredients you can’t pronounce.  It’s terrible for your gut biome.
  • Buy organic and local from farmer’s markets.

Ch. 9: No Compost, No Digestion

  • Food that doesn’t decompose isn’t normal.
  • Get chickens to turn kitchen scraps into fertilizer.
  • Get earthworms to turn kitchen scraps into earthworm castings for your garden.
  • Buy only perishable food.
  • The only stable foods at ambient temperature are normally nuts and dehydrated foods.

**Ch. 10 The Poop, the Whole Poop, and Nothing but the Poop

  • On some farms, half the workload can be shoveling manure.
  • Cities in the early 1900’s would suffocate in horse manure.
  • Soil fertility is linked to manure.
  • Cheap energy led to chemical fertilization.
  • Soil is fundamentally a living organism.
  • Book: The Complete Book of Composting by Rodale
  • Composting + intensive pasture management with herbivores and electric fencing = productive soil.
  • We should not be feeding herbivores grain.  It’s not their natural diet.

Ch. 11: Park, Plant, and Power

  • We are too dependent on cheap oil, even as we are reaching or have reached peak oil.
  • Before petroleum people acquired their own energy.
  • Before petroleum, people didn’t commute.  They lived where they worked.
  • Without petroleum, the suburbs will have to become more self-sufficient or else collapse from lack of food.
  • Green trend: living where you work
  • Green trend: passive solar gains at home
  • Green trend: edible landscaping
  • Green trend: backyard chickens and rabbits
  • Green trend: biodiesel

Ch. 12: Roofless Underground Dream Houses

  • Earth-sheltered home are naturally cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
  • A methane digester can take care of human waste.
  • A solar water heater would run showers and hot water faucets.
  • A clothesline would replace a dryer.
  • Gray water would irrigate vegetables and fruits.
  • Rain water would collect in the cistern.
  • A small woodstove would supplement passive solar gain.
  • A solar array or windmill would supply energy.
  • Earth berming would keep the house cool in the summer.
  • Tiny houses are replacing McMansions.
  • Buy tiny homes that are built with local materials.
  • Book: Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire.
  • Book: The Moving Feast
  • Hogs in forests help to stimulate growth.

Ch. 13: Grasping for Water

  • Water is the most essential and overlooked resource.
  • Less than 22 inches of annual rainfall is brittle (vs. temperate.)
  • Permaculturists are deep ecologists who understand the need to collect, preserve, and use water efficiently.
  • The key concept is to slow down and hold onto rainwater on your land.
  • Use water barrels.
  • Use greywater instead of clean water for toilets and landscaping.
  • Consider alternative toilets like composting toilets or moldering toilets.
  • Dig more ponds.

Ch. 14: Mob Stocking Herbivorous Solar Conversion Lignified Carbon Sequestration Fertilization

  • Traditional farms used to be very diversified, with varieties of plants and animals working together. Modern farms specialize in one crop or animal.
  • Perennials and herbivores build soil naturally.
  • Perennials are great for building soil because they put all their energy into accumulating root reserves. They sequester lots of CO2.
  • Herbivores forage on these grasslands and close the loop.
  • Too much grain production leads to deserts.
  • Herbivores + grazing management + grasslands + compost can build great soil on eroded bare rock.
  • Traditionally, herbivores (cows, sheep, goats) were a stable and omnivores (chickens, pigs) were a luxury. Grains were expensive.
  • Cheap oil reversed this. Omnivores > Herbivores.
  • Grassland is as efficient as trees at sequestering carbon.
  • Grass + herbivores is nature’s miracle cycle.
  • Eat more grass-fed beef, less chicken, less pork, less soy.

Ch. 15: Let’s Make a Despicable Farm

  • Today’s animal farms are kept alive only by cheap oil, animal pharma, and money.

Ch. 16: Scientific Mythology: Centaurs and Mermaids Now in Supermarkets

  • Buy organic, local, unprocessed, non-genetically modified food.

Ch. 17: You Get What You Pay For

  • Farmers are often synonymous with peasants.
  • To save our environment, farming needs to attract more of our best and brightest people. Even at the very small-scale with backyard vegetable gardens and chicken coops.
  • Buy less, but higher quality food and be willing to pay more if needed.

Ch. 18: Get Your Grubby Hands

  • When you tax inheritance, you destroy farms.
  • Prosecute anyone who pollutes, especially industrial agriculture.
  • Reign back eminent domain.

Ch. 19: Sterile Poop and Other Unsavory Cultural Objectives

  • Our legal system is set up to support industrial, mono-species farms, not small, diversified family farms.

Ch. 20: I Hereby Release You from Being Responsible for Me

  • Frivolous lawsuits cost millions of dollars.
  • Due to the risk of litigation, people confuse safe with sterile.
  • Our legal system needs reform.

Ch. 21: I’m from the Government, and I’m Here to Help You — Right

  • The two enemies of the people are criminals and government. –Thomas Jefferson
  • If we want to raise responsible children, we cannot protect them from every risk.
  • Quit buying from industrial food systems.
  • The answer is not regulations that limit competition but favor industrial agriculture.

Ch. 22: The Church of Industrial Food’s Unholy Food Inquisition

  • The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is the small farmer’s version of the NRA, built to protect small farmers and food rights.

Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street

benmunoz
August 18, 2017
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The Big Idea: to win in business, learn how to recruit A players.

CHAPTER 1: YOUR #1 PROBLEM

When do most hiring mistakes happen?

Most mistakes happen when managers are:

1. Unclear about what is needed in a job
2. Have a weak flow of candidates
3. Do not trust in their ability to pick out the right candidate
4. Lose candidates they really want to join them

Why is it preferable to hire internally?

One of the hardest challenges is to hire people from outside the company. A resume is a record of a person’s career with all the accomplishments embellished and all the failures removed.

What are the ten voodoo hiring methods you should avoid?

1. The art critic: going on instincts
2. The sponge: let everyone interview; no assessment is very deep
3. The prosecutor: aggressive interviews and brain teasers
4. The suitor: all talking and no listening; sell the job but not learn about the candidate
5. The trickster: gimmick questions and gimmick scenarios
6. The animal lover: nothing but pet questions; favorite but irrelevant questions looking for creative answers
7. The chatterbox: small talk
8. The personality tester: not predictive of performance on the job
9. The aptitude tester: helpful but only part of the larger equation
10. The fortune teller: hypothetical, behavioral questions; academic literature makes a strong case against; not predictive of actual performance

What is an A Player?

You are who you hire. An A Player is a candidate who has at least a 90% chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10% of possible candidates would achieve.

What is the “Who Hiring” Method?

1. Scorecard: not a job description; outcomes and competencies that define a job well done
2. Source: have a talent pool before you have slots to fill
3. Select: series of structured interviews
4. Sell: don’t lose the perfect candidate at the 11th hour

CHAPTER 2: SCORECARD

What is the Position Scorecard?

Scorecards describe the mission for the position, outcomes that must be accomplished, and competencies that fit with both the culture of the company and the role.

What is the first failure point of hiring?

The first failure point of hiring is not being crystal clear about what you really want the person you hire to accomplish.

What are the three parts of the scorecard?

The scorecard has three parts: job’s mission, outcomes, and competencies.

What is the mission part of the scorecard?

The mission is the executive summary of the job’s core purpose.

Mission statements help you avoid one of the most common hiring traps: hiring the all-around athlete. All-around athletes have impressive pedigrees, speak well, learn well, and seem able to do it all. Hiring all-around athletes rarely seems to work. A family-practice doctor knows something about a lot, but you wouldn’t let him perform open heart surgery on you. If you need solutions to specific problems, you want the specialist.

What is the outcomes part of the scorecard?

Outcomes, the second part of the scorecard, describe what a person needs to accomplish in a role. 3-8 outcomes, ranked in order of importance, is usually right.

Set the outcomes high enough so that you scare off B and C Players and excite A Players.

Job descriptions focus on a list of things will be doing, but scorecards describe what a person must get done to consider themselves successful in the role.

Seek to make the outcomes as quantifiable and clear as possible.

New hires will appreciate the clarity, since they know what they’ll be judged on.

What is the competencies part of the scorecard?

Outcomes describe what must be accomplished. Competencies define what a new hire needs to have/be to achieve the outcome.

What are critical competencies for A Players?

Critical competencies for A Players (from University of Chicago, used by author’s consulting firm)
1. Efficiency
2. Honesty/Integrity
3. Organization and planning
4. Aggressiveness
5. Follow-through
6. Intelligence
7. Analytical skills
8. Attention to detail
9. Persistence
10. Proactivity

What are some other possible competencies to include?

Other possible competencies, depending on position:
1. Ability to hire A Players
2. Ability to develop people
3. Flexibility/adaptability
4. Calmness under pressure
5. Strategic thinking
6. Creative thinking and innovation
7. Enthusiasm
8. Work ethic
9. High standards
10. Listening skills
11. Openness to criticism
12. Communication
13. Teamwork
14. Persuasion

How strict should you be with competencies?

Don’t create a rigid checklist of competencies, because there are multiple ways to succeed in a position. One person might rely on creativity to succeed, while another person might rely on aggressiveness and persistence in the same role.

What does the CEO of Heinz look for?

CEO of Heinz looks for: 1) chemistry, 2) commitment, 3) coachable, 4) humble, 5) smart

Why is cultural fit so important?

One of the biggest hiring mistakes made by CEOs is not evaluating cultural fit.

Bad cultural fits hurt in the short-term for the position, but they also hurt in the long-term, because they affect other people around them.

How do you start to define your company’s culture?

Begin by evaluating your company’s culture. Write down keywords in a brainstorming session. Generate a tag cloud.

Don’t be afraid to write down what cultural competencies might seem blindingly obvious. In the midst of hiring, the clearest things sometimes get overlooked.

Part of successful hiring means having the discipline to pass on talented people who are not a fit.

Why are scorecards so important?

Scorecards are the guardians of your culture.

Scorecards become the blueprint that links the theory of strategy to the reality of execution.

1. Set expectations with new hires
2. Monitor employee progress over time

What is in a scorecard?

1. Mission: 1-5 sentences answering “What is the core mission for this position?”
2. Outcomes: 3-8 specific, quantifiable objectives to achieve
3. Competencies: a) List competencies that describe what behavior is needed to achieve the outcomes for this position. b) List global, cultural competencies that describe your culture for all positions.

CHAPTER 3: SOURCE

Always be working on a talent pipeline, before a new hire is needed.

What are the best ways to find candidates?

Ads are a good way to generate lots of resumes but a lousy way to generate the right flow of candidates. Using recruiters depends heavily on the quality of the recruiter assigned to your project.

The number one method is to ask for referrals from your personal and professional networks. This stance is unanimous among everyone interviewed.

A good question to continuously ask people you meet: “Who are the most talented people you know that I should hire?” Then call them and stay in touch. Do this for years and you’ll have a tremendous talent pool.

Ask your customers and business partners to look out for talent.

Ask your current employees for referrals. In fact, make it part of the job description (and employee scorecard) to refer new A Players.

Incentivize your team with gifts, cash, and PTO for referrals.

Early stage companies often use their advisory board as recruiters.

Being a member of a CEO network gives you access to a network of great recruiters.

Are recruiters helpful?

External recruiters can work well but they need to know the inner workings of a firm. They are like a real estate agent in that they are most helpful when they know your budget, your preferences, your dealbreakers, and your true needs.

You can also hire recruiting researchers. They don’t do the interviews but only identify names. It’s a low-cost way to augment your recruiting. Just be careful about lack of filtering and qualification.

How do you avoid having a weak talent pipeline?

Sourcing talent is not hard. The hard part is having to discipline to source while doing your regular daily work.

Create a system to automate and organize the talent recruitment part of your job. Use spreadsheets and weekly call lists. Or use an applicant tracking system. Spend 30 minutes each week calling potential A players, until you have one live conversation. End those calls by asking them “who are the most talented people you know who might be a good fit for my company?”

CHAPTER 4: SELECT

What should you use instead of traditional interviewing or voodoo interviewing?

Traditional interviewing is terrible at selecting A players.

Four Interview Sequence
1. Screening interview
2. Who Interview
3. Focused interview
4. Reference interview

What is the screening interview?

The screening interview is a short phone interview to clear out B and C players. This is the opportunity to save lots of time later by screening out people quickly.

Use the same questions every time to ensure consistency and quickly learn how to qualify candidates.

What is the structure of the screening interview?

1. What are your career goals?
2. What are you really good at professionally?
3. What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally?
4. Who were your last five bosses, and how will they rate your performance on a 1-10 scale when we talk to them?

1. What are your career goals? Don’t talk about what you’re looking for, to avoid tainting the discussion. Anyone lacking career goals needs to be screened out. Listen for candidates with passion and energy about topics relevant to the role. Alignment is more important than skill.

2. What are you really good at professionally? Push candidates to tell you 8-12 positives so you can build a complete picture of their professional aptitude. Ask them to give you examples. If you see a major gap between someone’s strengths and your scorecard, screen that person out.

3. What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally? Push for a real weakness or a real area for development. Don’t let them weasel out. If you still need to push, rephrase as “what will your references say is your weakness or area for development?” If you see any deal-killers relative to your scorecard, screen them out.

4. Who were your last five bosses, and how will they rate your performance on a 1-10 scale when we talk to them? Note the assumption that we WILL talk to them. Find out why they were rated that. 7 is a neutral, anything below requires explanation. Occasionally someone is fired but actually an A player.

How should you start and end the screening interview?

Start the screening call by reviewing the scorecard, then launch right into the screening questions. If you don’t like what you’re hearing, end the call after 15 minutes. If you like what you’re hearing, schedule a follow up to finish the screening. End the call with an offer to answer questions.  After the screening call, compare your notes to the scorecard.

What are some other tips for the screening interview?

Stick with the four screening questions but if you want to learn more, ask a follow-up question that begins with “what”, “how”, or “tell me more”.

Weed people out as soon as possible. Try to weed out 80% of people at the screening stage. Listen to your gut when something doesn’t match what’s on paper.

What is the Who interview?

Start your next stage, 2. Who Interview, when you have narrowed your list down to 2-5 candidates. This is the key interview. The literature says that this interview is the most reliable predictor of performance. Use the power of data and patterns of behavior for making predictions about future performance.

What is the Who interview?

The Who Interview Guide is a chronological walkthrough of a person’s career. Ask the same 5 questions for each job. Learn the story of a person’s career. Remember that people love talking about themselves, so this should be easy.

Always conduct the Who Interview starting with the first job on the resume and talk forward.

What is the structure of the Who interview? What are the 5 questions you ask for each job?

1. What were you hired to do?
2. What accomplishments are you most proud of?
3. What were some low points during that job?
4. Who were the people you worked with?
5. Why did you leave that job?

1. What were you hired to do? Learn what their original scorecard was. What were their missions and outcomes?

2. What accomplishments are you most proud of? Let them elaborate on the high points of their career. See if those accomplishments match your scorecard. See if there is a mismatch between the accomplishments and the original scorecard for that job.

3. What were some low points during that job? If hesitation, reframe it. “What went really wrong? What was your biggest mistake? What would you have done differently?”

4. Who were the people you worked with? Get all bosses’ full names with full spelling! This forces them to tell the truth. Then ask what they thought it was like working with each boss. Look for overly negative answers. Then ask what each boss will say about their strengths and weaknesses. Keep pushing until you get the truth about what their boss will say. Ask how they would rate the team they inherited and what changes they implemented to make a better team. What will they say your strengths and weaknesses are as a manager?

5. Why did you leave that job? Were they promoted, recruited, or fired. Were they taking the next step or running from something? Get as specific as possible. Don’t let the candidate off the hook with a vague answer.

How long should the Who interview take?

The Who Interview takes 3 hours on average. For every hour you spend on a Who Interview, you’ll save hundreds of hours by not dealing with poor performance.

Who should conduct the Who interview?

Conduct the Who Interview with two interviewers, not one. So that two people can take alternate taking notes and asking questions.

How do you start the Who Interview?

Start the Who Interview by explaining the question structure and there will be room for candidate questions at the end.

What are some tips for the Who interview?

1. You have to interrupt the candidate. But do it with positivity instead of reprimanding.
2. Use 3P’s when assessing an accomplishment. How did the accomplishment compare to P=Previous year, P=Plan, and P=Peers?
3. Being pushed out of a job vs being pulled out of a job = very important difference.
4. Get as specific as possible until you can completely visualize what the candidate is saying.
5. Look at body language for a mismatch in verbal vs nonverbal communication.

What is interview #3, the Focused interview?

Use the Focused interview to gather specific information about your candidate. The Focused Interview is focused on the scorecard (mission, outcomes, and competencies.) Go through each point in the scorecard and make sure you ask about it. Include cultural competencies to ensure cultural fit.

What might a typical interview look like?

Typical Interview Day
8:30-8:45: team huddle
9-12: Who Interview
12-1:30: other employees take the candidate to lunch
1:30-4:30: Focused Interviews x 3 (or on a second day)
4:30-5: team debrief

What is the reference interview?

Don’t skip the references. Conduct reference checks for all hires.  Ignore references your candidate gave you and contact former bosses, peers, and subordinates. Ask around to find those people. Tip: ask the candidate to make an introduction to help facilitate the calls. Check 7 references = 3 bosses, 2 peers, 2 subordinates.

What questions do you ask in the reference interview?

1. In what context did you work with the person?
2. What were the person’s strengths?
3. What were the person’s biggest areas for improvement back then?
4. How would you rate the person’s overall performance on a scale 1-10? Why? (Note: adjust for inflation. A 6 is really a 2.)
5. The person mentioned he struggled with ____ in that job. Can you tell me more?

What are some code words you might hear when talking about a risky candidate?

Code for risky candidates: can only confirm dates of employment, “if…then” responses to qualify their reference, lots of “um’s and er’s”, hesitation instead of enthusiasm, lukewarm or qualified praise, neutral references

What are some general red flags to watch out for during the who and focused interview?

1. Doesn’t mention past failures.
2. Exaggerates answers.
3. Takes credit for the work of others.
4. Speaks poorly of past bosses.
5. Cannot explain job moves.
6. For managers, no hire/fire experience.
7. More interested in compensation vs job.
8. Tries too hard to look like an expert.
9. Self-absorbed.
10. Too much talk about winning. (might be petty)
11. Adding too much value. (instead of giving praise, tries to always improve, too much ego)
12. Starting sentences with “no,” “but,” and “however.” (overactive ego and overly argumentative)
13. Blaming others.
14. Making excuses.
15. Proclaiming “that’s just me” indicates a fixed mindset.

How do you make your final selection?

1. Review scorecards
2. Review your ratings of candidates vs score card (A, B, C)
3. Eliminate B and C’s
4. Rank all A’s and start with #1

With Winning in Mind by Lanny Basham

benmunoz
August 16, 2017
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The Big Idea: winning consistently requires the mental programming of a champion.
Principles of Mental Management
  • Your mind can only concentrate on one thing at a time.  If you are picturing something positive in your mind, it is impossible, at the same time, to picture something negative.  Choose to think about what you want to create in life.
  • What you say is not important.  What you cause yourself or others to picture is crucial.  Give yourself commands in a positive manner.
  • The Subconscious Mind is the source of all mental power.  You perform best when you allow your all-trained Subconscious to do the work.
  • The Subconscious moves you to do whatever the Conscious Mind is picturing.  Positive pictures demand positive results from the Subconscious.  If we think negatively, we have to expect negative results.
  • To change your performance, you must first change your Self-Image.  Some people hope they can win.  Some people expect to win.  Winning Olympians control their Self-Image.
  • You can replace the Self-Image you have with the Self-Image you want, thereby permanently changing performance.
  • When the Conscious, Subconscious, and Self-Image are all balanced and working together, good performance is easy.
  • The more we think about, talk about, and write about something happening, the more we improve the probability of that thing happening.  Do not spend time thinking about failures.  Think only about your successes.
  • The Self-Image cannot tell the difference between what actually happens and what is vividly imagined.  Mentally rehearse and replay good performances.  Rehearsal can help reduce fear by giving you many positive mental experiences before the actual performance. Rehearsal can help restore relaxation.
The Balance of Power
  • When beginning any new activity, we have to use the Conscious Mind since we have not yet developed Subconscious skill.  Also our Self-Image tells us we are beginners.
  • If we practice properly and are encouraged, our Subconscious and Self-Image circles will grow to match the Conscious circle and we will be in balance.
  • Learn how to make your circles (Conscious, Subconscious, Self-Image) larger, while keeping them in balance.
The Mental Management Goal-Setting System
Only the super successful ever bother to set personal goals and plan their work.
  1. Decide exactly what you want.
  2. Decide when you want it.
  3. List the pay-value.
  4. Create a plan.
  5. Start.
  6. Never quit.
Improve Concentration by Running a Mental Program
Winning requires you to develop a consistent mental picture.  A mental program is a series of thoughts that when pictured, will trigger the Subconscious to perform the appropriate action.  A mental program controls the thought process occupying the Conscious Mind.
  • Initiate: just be consistent
  • Attitude: picture the feeling of success
  • Direction: rehearse success
  • Control: center concentration on the most critical part of the action
  • Focus: the last thing you picture
How to Develop Skills
  • Catch yourself doing something right.  Study only your successes, not your failures.
  • Train 4-5 days a week.  2-3 is not enough.
  • Wherever you are, be all there.
  • Rehearse the match day within the training session. Treat every training day as if it had the same importance as the most crucial competition day.
  • When you are shooting well, shoot a lot.  If you are having a bad day, stop training.  Do not practice losing.
  • We raise or lower ourselves to the standard we are around.  Train with people who are better than you and you will get better.
  • Make a bet with yourself, when you win it, pay off.
Performance Analysis
  • Keep a performance journal or diary.  In it, record your schedule, diary, solution ideas, successes, and goals.
  • Use your journal to document and track your training program.
Building a Powerful Self-Image
  • Remember to run a mental program and record successes in your journal.
  • The Directive Affirmation is the most powerful tool for changing your Self-Image.  The Directive Affirmation is a paragraph written in the first person present tense that describes a goal, a plan, and habits and attitudes required to achieve the goal.  Write it down on index cards, placed in prominent places around your home and work.  Rehearse it every time for 21 days and rest for 9 days.
  • Constantly promote and praise others, your coaches, teammates, and colleagues.
Seven Strategies of the Mentally Tough
  1. The Principle of Transportation: transport the habits and attitudes you need to perform at the higher level and adopt them today.
  2. Your Past Is Not a Prison: do not think about the past, focus on the future
  3. Imitate the Champions: find out what the best people in your space are doing and copy what they are doing.  Go to the places where these people train to learn from them.
  4. Train Hard, Compete Easy: outwork the competition in training, but not in competition.
  5. Visualize Before Game Day: mentally rehearse the competition before the competition.
  6. Take All Problems As Positive: problems identify areas we need to work on.
  7. Have Big Dreams: don’t settle for mediocrity, dream big, achieve big

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

benmunoz
July 1, 2017
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The Big Idea: focus on fundamental principles and foundational movements until they are unconscious.

  • Tao Te Ching is a life changer.
  • I’ve been keeping journals of my chess study since I was twelve.
  • Eventually, the foundation is so deeply internalized that it’s no longer conscious.
  • The boating life has also been a wonderful training ground for performance psychology.
  • Carol Dweck says that winners have a growth mindset, vs a fixed mindset.
  • The risk of a process-first mentality is no importance placed on the outcome at all.
  • A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns.  He has two options – one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals.
  • Become at peace with noise and distraction.
  • Beginners who memorize moves lose their composure under adversity.
  • Leave numbers to numbers. Learn the fundamentals and then strive to make them unconscious.
  • Learn to meditate.  Study Qigong.
  • Have a beginner’s mind and be willing to invest in loss.
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
  • Learn the micro to understand the macro.
  • Common beginner mistake: taking on too much at once.
  • It can take months or years to perfect the right straight punch.
  • Depth beats breadth.
  • Embrace adversity (injury, loss) as an opportunity for improvement.
  • The Grandmaster looks at less, not more. He is aware of more, but focused on less.
  • With training and experience, you will learn to anticipate your opponent’s moves.
  • Interval training (sprint + recovery) is a critical building block to peak performance.
  • Create a trigger that will put you in a state of high performance.  (Music, food, warmups)
  • Instead of trying to block out emotions in the heat of battle, just be comfortable with them.
  • Record and watch yourself on video.

Step 23: Landing Your Plane On The Great Wall

benmunoz
June 25, 2017
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The Big Idea: Problems are going to confront you.  Be prepared by expecting them, putting them into perspective, developing the fortitude to overcome, and learning how to innovate past them.

  • To succeed, you must learn how to bypass the obstacles of life.
  • Life will deal tremendous blows to you.  This is the reality.
  • Statistically, something bad will happen to you and you will have to overcome it.
  • Psychologically, things are not nearly as traumatic if you expect them.
  • You must develop the force of will (backbone) to overcome major obstacles.
  • How do you learn to put problems into perspective?
  • Travel around the world to understand first-world vs third-world problems.
  • Read more history (Will Durant) and focus less on the last 24 hours.
  • Reading more history puts your life in perspective.
  • Read about Louis Zamperini (movie Unbroken).
  • Jeff Bezos: you must innovate your way out of problems.
  • Einstein: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
  • There are always many ways around problems, so keep on innovating until you overcome.
  • Another core strategy is to break down big problems into smaller problems.
  • Lastly, learn to start loving the wall, because there will always be another wall.

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  

SAS Survival Handbook by John Wiseman

benmunoz
May 27, 2017
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The Big Idea: if you head out to the wilderness, tell someone exactly where you are going. Take a wilderness survival course to learn how to survive for a few days until you are found.

  • The average person requires 0.5 liters of water a day.
  • Three fires are an internationally recognized distress signal.  SOS is also widely recognized.
  • Carry matches and learn how to build a fire.
  • Learn how to forage for edible plants and mushrooms and how to avoid poisonous ones.
  • Learn how to identify and use a few key medicinal plants.
  • Take a wilderness survival class and a wilderness first aid class.

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

benmunoz
May 13, 2017
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The Big Idea: Productivity can be learned.

Chapter 1: Motivation

  • To feel motivated, people must feel like they are in control.
  • Leadership is learned.
  • Don’t praise people for intelligence; praise them for effort.
  • A bias towards action keeps people motivated.
  • Start with why; why are you doing what you’re doing?
  • Examples: Marine boot camp, renegade nursing home patients.

Chapter 2: Teams

  • Group norms (culture) matter more than anything.
  • People need to feel safe to make and report mistakes, to experiment.
  • Friends working together works because they feel safe.
  • Teams need to believe their work is important.
  • Teams need to believe their work is personally meaningful.
  • Teams need clear goals and defined roles.
  • Team members need to know they can depend on one another.
  • Teams need psychological safety.
  • Examples: Google People Analytics, hospitals, Saturday Night Live.

Chapter 3: Focus

  • Cognitive tunneling is when brains are forced to transition abruptly from relaxed automation to panicked attention.
  • People who remain calm and show good judgment in stressful situations tend to create mental models and engage in constant forecasting.  They visualize scenarios.
  • Productive people engage in fewer projects, challenge themselves constantly, and love to forecast future scenarios.
  • Try to anticipate what’s next through scenario planning (Southwest Airlines book).
  • Examples: Air France flight 447

Chapter 4: Goal Setting

  • Having SMART goals will help you to continuously improve.
  • However, only having audacious, inspirational stretch goals will lead to the big leaps forward. Stretch goals force you to challenge assumptions and try completely new approaches.
  • Examples: Yom Kippur War, Toyota high-speed rail.

Chapter 5: Managing Others

  • It’s the culture that makes Toyota successful.
  • “Star-based” startups had the most home runs but also the most failures.  “Culture-based” startups had the highest probability of survival and success.
  • Lean management requires handing decision-making control to the front line worker. This requires a culture of trust.
  • Example: Frank Janssen kidnapping, Toyota Production System.

Chapter 6: Decision Making

  • Learn to be comfortable with uncertainty.
  • Study statistics for better decision-making.
  • Examples: poker professional Annie Duke.

Chapter 7: Innovation

  • Most innovation is a new application of an old idea.
  • “Creativity is just connecting things.” — Steve Jobs
  • Mild disturbances to a team or situation can yield innovation.
  • Sometimes, stress and pressure can yield innovation.
  • Examples: Disney’s Frozen, Westside Story.

Chapter 8: Absorbing Data

  • Too much data results in information blindness and the inability to make good decisions.
  • Data is vital, but people must also be trained in the ability to use the data.
  • Being forced to do think critically about the data (take careful notes, teach it to someone, apply it) is much more important than having access to the data.
  • Examples: Data in Cincinnati public schools, typed notes vs hand-written notes.

Aquaponic Gardening by Sylvia Bernstein

benmunoz
May 6, 2017
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The Big Idea: Aquaponic gardening is a symbiotic, permaculture-friendly version of gardening in which fish supply nutrients to plants, which then remove all fish waste from the water.

  • Aquaculture dates back to 5th century B.C. China
  • Benefits of aquaponics: completely organic, cheaper than hydroponics, minimal maintenance, minimal fertilizer, lots of vegetable production, fewer diseases, no weeding, no watering, growing fish is a bonus
  • In warm weather states, you can have an aquaponics system outdoors year-round.  Just watch out for insects.
  • The “basic flood and drain” setup is good for beginners. In this system, gravity carries water from the grow bed to the fish tank and a pump carries it back.
  • Use a 1:1 grow bed volume to fish tank volume for the basic flood and drain setup.
  • More advanced setups: CHOP, CHOP2, Barrel-ponics
  • Stock your tank with 0.1-0.2 lb of fish per gallon of tank water.
  • Place your fish tank in the shade if you put it outdoors.  Also partially cover it to help prevent debris and algae growth.
  • IBC totes are ideal for aquaponics systems. You can also use a bathtub for a vintage look.
  • For your grow media, use gravel or expanded clay (Hydroton). Grow media is the replacement for soil, and houses beneficial worms and bacteria.
  • Use only dechlorinated water.  Protect your water from changes in temperature, pH, oxygen levels.
  • Fish that work well: tilapia, goldfish, catfish, koi, shrimp.
  • Choose a fish depending on your needs and climate.
  • Supplement commercial fish feed with duckweed, worms, black soldier fly larvae.
  • All plants (except those requiring acidic or basic soil) grow well in aquaponics systems.
  • Nitrosomonas and Nitrospria bacteria convert fish waste into nitrites and nitrates, which are less harmfell to fish and nourish the plants.
  • Worms digest solid waste and dead root matter into valuable vermicompost tea for the plants.
  • Cycle the system with half of your fish to get your system started.
  • Check system levels of ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates regularly.
  • Check pH. temperature, and check for insects regularly.

Step 22: The Seven-Fold Path To The Obvious Signs

benmunoz
April 15, 2017
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The Big Idea: Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.

  • Set the right goals and cut out anything that is not moving you towards your goals.
  • Don’t delude yourself.  Embrace the truth when you’re asking yourself if you’re moving towards your goals.
  • Jeff Bezos is one of the best in the world at seeking and embracing the truth, especially through experimentation.
  • The seven steps towards moving towards your goals
    • 1. Ask question. (set a goal)
    • 2. Research answer. (find some approaches)
    • 3. Make a hypothesis. (try one approach)
    • 4. Test it.
    • 5. Observe.
    • 6. Evaluate observation.
    • 7. Ask smart people to review your progress. (don’t quit; just try a different approach)
  • People are more likely to be consistent than to experiment to find the best approach.
  • Don’t be stuck by the need to be consistent with your first approach.  Consistency and commitment are very common cognitive biases.
  • Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox

benmunoz
April 5, 2017
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The Big Idea: identify the bottleneck.  Relieve the bottleneck.  Repeat.

  • The Goal is one of Jeff Bezos’ three required books for his senior team. (Also, Effective Executive and Innovator’s Dilemma)
  • Cost accounting conventions lead businesses to focus on the wrong things.
  • The goal of a business is to make money. Therefore, every operational metric should link back to profit.
  • There are only three operational metrics that matter: 1) throughput, 2) inventory, 3) operational expense.
  • Throughput is money generated when products go out the door.
  • Inventory is money locked up in work in process until products go out the door.
  • Operational expense is money required to generate throughput.
  • Of these, throughput is by far the most important.
  • The most important objective is to increase throughput.
  • How do you increase throughput?  Identify the bottleneck (ignore everything else), relieve the bottleneck, repeat.

Step 21: Mastering The Four P.A.S.E. Energies & Casanova’s Chameleon

benmunoz
March 13, 2017
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The Big Idea: Understand your strengths. Work on your weaknesses. Learn to identify the strengths of other people. Speak in the language of other people’s strengths.

  • When you’re a worker, technical skills determine your success.
  • When you’re a leader, social skills determine your success.
  • Understand your core strength (P, A, S, E).
  • Understand your weakness (P, A, S, E).
  • P=practical: likes to plan ahead, likes numbers, conservative, diligent, doesn’t like uncertainty, patient, focus on planning with these people
  • A=action: likes action, starts but doesn’t always finishes, smart, easily distracted, concentrate on action with these people
  • S=social: doesn’t like plans, doesn’t like conflict, easygoing, likes being around people, sometimes flaky, keep it light and fun with these people
  • E=emotional: sensitive, intuitive, good at reading people, easily offended, sometimes driven by fear, connect emotionally to these people
  • Exercise a weakness to make it a strength.
  • Learn to quickly assess people in terms of their strength (and language).
  • When working with others, speak in *their* language.
  • Casanova was a social chameleon.
  • Casanova would know others’ strengths and connect with them on their strengths.
  • The ideal leader is able to shift from PASE strength to PASE strength, depending on the situation.
  • Note: emphasizing one strength will often bring out that strength in other people.

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.

Step 20: Richard Branson’s Hurricane & The Imaginary World Of Kanye West

benmunoz
March 9, 2017
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The Big Idea: If you were independently wealthy, what kind of life would you create? Work backward from there to engineer your ideal life.

  • An entrepreneur creates the world in his own image.
  • Richard Branson created Virgin Airlines because a hurricane stranded him on an island.
  • There are three types of people: people who watch things happen, people who make things happen, and people who wonder what happened.
  • Book recommendation: Screw It, Let’s Do It by Richard Branson
  • If you were independently wealthy, what would you do?
  • What do you love? If you love reading? Create a book club.
  • Even if you are not an entrepreneur, think like an entrepreneur and act like an entrepreneur.
  • Imagine your ideal world in these four areas: health, wealth, love, and happiness
  • You can have anything you want but not *everything*.  So be clear about what you want and work diligently towards it.

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.

Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew

benmunoz
February 25, 2017
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As a beginner, gardening can be quite overwhelming, but learning from experience is key. Last year, I jumped right into creating a square root, raised bed vegetable garden without much prior knowledge or preparation. However, this year I plan to approach it differently and do some research beforehand. In addition to learning about plant care and maintenance, I will also research how to properly dispose of unwanted soil and other waste materials that may result from the process. This will not only make the gardening process more efficient but also more environmentally conscious.

I decided to explore gatreecompany.com as we have several stumps and I really want to get rid of them asap.

The Big Idea: Square foot, raised bed gardening will give you more vegetables with much less work, money, and space. For the home gardener, smaller is better. 

Why square foot gardens?

  • Makes your work easier since there is less soil and less garden to take care of
  • Makes water faster since there’s less garden to water
  • Makes weeding easier since there’s less garden to weed
  • Creates living mulch which helps create healthier soil and keep weeds away
  • Is more pleasant to look at, which makes you more like to spend time caring for your garden
  • Makes vegetable garden more practical for urbanites, since you can have a productive garden almost anywhere
  • Makes protective plants from the weather or pests with a cage or box possible since the garden is smaller
  • Gives the soil the right texture since you will never be walking on the soil.

How do you get started?

  • Build or buy a box with sides about 12″ high.
  • Place the box in an area with lots of sunshine.
  • Fill the box with good soil and compost.
  • Divide the box into 12″ x 12″ squares.
  • Each 12″ x 12″ square should get one type of vegetable.
  • Decide what you want to grow (look this up in a reference book or web site.)
  • Some vegetables (peppers) require the entire 12″ x 12″ square.  Other vegetables (carrots) can fit 16 to a 12″ x 12″ square.
  • Keep tall-growing plants on the north side of your garden.
  • Support your tall-growing, vining plants like tomatoes and cucumbers with stakes, cages, or trellises.
  • Look up which month to plant which vegetables.  (The average growing season is May to September.)
  • Water with a bucket of warm water and a cup.  Daily, when they are just starting, then weekly, or more, if you live in a hot climate.
  • Weed your garden once a week.
  • Remove pests by hand if you can, or use natural pest deterrents.
  • Fertilize as needed. Worm castings can also provide increased yields.
  • Harvest when ready (look this up in a reference book or web site.)

Made in America by Sam Walton

benmunoz
February 18, 2017
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The Big Idea: Walmart succeeded through a combination of unique culture, very effective strategies, and lots of hard work. Nadine West’s two favorite role models are 1) Southwest Airlines and 2) Walmart, for their shared focus on affordable prices, lean operations, and Texas/Arkansas authenticity.

Wal-mart Culture

  • Building a great team is a given. Hiring only people with good attitudes is a given. Hard work is a given.
  • The whole point of retailing is to service the customer.
  • It’s always been more important for Wal-mart be the best than to be the biggest.
  • Wal-mart looks for action-oriented, do-it-now, go-getter types — not brilliant intellectuals who can’t get anything done.
  • Consider yourself lucky if you are short on cash early on.  It’s the best to build frugality into your DNA.
  • We’ve always tried not to take ourselves too seriously. Let’s have some fun.
  • Constant change is a vital part of the Wal-mart culture.
  • Wal-mart is not about big mansions or fancy cars.  We’re about serving our customer.
  • Wal-mart loves competition.  It only makes us better.
  • Big egos have no place at Wal-mart.  They tend to lead to bureaucracy and myopia, followed by decline.
  • Think small to grow big.  Remember what got us to where we are.

Wal-mart Strategy and Tactics

  • Always buy direct.  Using a middleman means you’re paying for their inefficiencies.
  • Don’t rely on third-party.  It’s harder to build your own logistics and distribution systems, but once you do, it’s a huge competition advantage.
  • Build stores in small towns that retailers are ignoring.
  • Use technology to improve the quality and speed of information.
  • Study your competition and copy what’s working.
  • Try lots of different things. Learn from the failures. Double down on what works.
  • Talk to everyone. The best ideas usually come from the front-lines, not headquarters.
  • If everyone else is going one way, think about going the opposite direction.
  • If you can, fly under the radar until you’re too far along to catch.
  • Share profits with employees and they will reward you with effort and loyalty.
  • Happy customers = word of mouth, which saves you a ton on advertising.
  • Be transparent about financials and share store financials with the people who work there.
  • When in doubt, over-communicate.
  • Focus on one store at a time – what they are getting right and wrong. Solve it for them and you can apply some of those solutions everywhere.

The Best Place to Work by Ron Friedman

benmunoz
February 2, 2017
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The Big Idea: Happy employees are a competitive advantage.

 Chapter 1: Success is Overrated, Why Great Work Places Reward Failure
  • make it okay to try new things and fail
  • learn something from every failure, always
  • reward attempts, not just results
Chapter 2: The Power of Place, How Office Design Shapes Our Thinking
  • office design matters
  • eg. red invokes attention to detail, but also anxiety
  • eg. silence invokes focus, but also anxiety
  • optimal: caves + campfires
  • caves are quieter spaces where people can focus and think
  • campfires are interactive spaces where people can collaborate and communicate
  • good to have: safe and warm environment, nice views, scenes of nature, sunlight, lots of plants, aquariums,
  • use your workspace to convey what your company is about: Apple Store = simplicity, framed pictures, employee artwork,
  • let the team design their workspace
  • don’t forget about nice bathrooms (art, plants, magazines)
  • if possible, let people telecommute. You can also try this web-site for the best plumbing services for your bathroom.
Chapter 3: Why You Should Be Paid to Play
  • to improve problem solving and creative thinking, go on a walk
  • exercise improves your mood, triggers chemicals that reduces stress, and improves thinking
  • napping also improves problem solving and creating thinking
  • a careful balance of work and recovery is vital
  • late nights and burnout culture lower long-term productivity
  • disconnecting is important
Chapter 4: What Happy Workplaces Can Learn from a Casino
  • small, frequent pleasures can keep us happier than large, infrequent ones
  • perks communicate on an emotional level and provide a motivational boost
  • on-the-job rewards are significantly more motivating than cash bonuses
  • variety increases happiness
  • variation of activities make the workplace more enjoyable
  • unexpected pleasures deliver a bigger thrill
  • unexpected events have greater emotional weight
  • a constant flow of surprises keeps you engaged (movie, massage therapist)
  • experiences are more rewarding than objects; they involve other people, the memories improve with age; they can be relived
  • we don’t always know why we’re happy
  • color/scent/music can give an unconscious happiness boost
  • a grateful mind is a happy one;
  • gratitude: gratitude journal; ask staff to share what they are most proud of since last meeting; ask staff to thank someone else for a contribution made
  • excessive/extreme happiness can increase tendency to make mistakes, reduce motivation; people who don’t have negative emotions are called psychopaths
Chapter 5: How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Community
  • the strongest predictor productivity: friendship at work
  • how to create workplace friendships: proximity, familiarity, similarity
  • how to accelerate friendship: share personal information
  • shared group activities (sports) >> happy hours and cocktail parties, because of interaction
  • a shared purpose (or common enemy) can unite factions
  • friendships at work help people stay emotionally and physically healthy
  • gossip can be a problem but it can also be useful to establish company culture and norms
  • gossip tends to happen when people are feeling powerless or insecure
  • identify strategic and persistent gossipers early
  • gossip tends to be a problem when leaders gossip
Chapter 6: The Leadership Paradox, Why Forceful Leaders Develop Less Productive Teams
  • intrinsic motivation > extrinsic motivation
  • emphasizing rewards reduces intrinsic motivation
  • the more emphasis placed on salary and bonuses, the more employees are going to focus on them
  • autonomy increases intrinsic motivation
  • let your team set their own calendar
Chapter 7: Better Than Money, What Games Can Teach Us About Motivation
  • the only thing that sustains happiness is status, respect and admiration among friends/family/peers
  • being recognized feels good
  • recognition feeds our need for competence
  • competence increases intrinsic motivation
  • being ignored is often more psychologically painful than being treated poorly
  • undeserved positive feedback is demoralizing to others who actually deserve the recognition
  • feedback is more effective when it is provided immediately
  • feedback is more effective when it is specific
  • compliment the behavior, not the person
  • public praise is more powerful than private praise
  • reward high performers with more responsibility
  • encourage peer-to-peer recognition
  • find a way to give meaning to the work (eg. nonprofit fundraisers)
  • to experience flow, work needs to be not too easy and not too hard
  • consider making on-the-job learning a requirement
  • acquiring new skills releases feel-good chemicals like dopamine
  • consider peer-to-peer coaching (pods of 3)
Chapter 8: How Thinking Like a Hostage Negotiator Can Make You More Persuasive, Influential, and Motivating
  • good communicators listen much more than they talk
  • good bosses listen much more than they talk
  • good listeners do a lot of paraphrasing and repeat backs
  • resolve workplace conflicts by understanding there is a task channel and a relationship channel
Chapter 9: Why the Best Managers Focus on Themselves
  • attitudes, emotions, and behaviors are contagious
  • leaders attitudes and habits are adopted by the members of their teams
  • culture comes from the top, so be aware that someone is always watching
Chapter 10: Seeing What Others Don’t, How to Eliminate Interview Blind Spots That Prevent You from Reading People’s True Potential
  • first impressions persist
  • referrals from your high performers (with no referral bonus) is the best strategy for hiring
  • interviews that involve a work assignment are optimal
  • cultural fit matters but too much similarity can lead to groupthink and impair innovation
Chapter 11: What Sports, Politics, and Religion Teach Us About Fostering Pride
  • pride in one’s company matters a lot
  • pride is fundamentally about status
  • share your company’s history with the team
  • share your company’s mission and vision with the team
  • being different is good (company culture)
  • include altruism alongside making a profit
  • emphasize everyone’s contribution: decision making, recognition by name
  • consider thanking a high performer’s family for that person’s efforts at work
  • avoid inflated job titles

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

benmunoz
January 15, 2017
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The Big Idea: the purpose of life (and business) is happiness, not money.

  1. Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and yourself.
  2. Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself.
  3. When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world.
  4. Never do anything just for the money.
  5. Don’t pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help.
  6. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working.
  7. Your business plan is moot. You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it.
  8. Starting with no money is an advantage. You don’t need money to start helping people.
  9. You can’t please everyone,
  10. Make yourself unnecessary to the running of your business.
  11. The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy.
  12. The best plans start simple.
  13. If you’re not saying, “Hell, yeah!” about something, say no.
  14. The way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers.
  15. Ideas are just a multiplier of execution.
  16. Care more about your customers (and employees) than about yourself.
  17. Don’t punish everyone for one person’s mistake.
  18. When you delegate, trust but verify.

Good to Great by Jim Collins

benmunoz
January 8, 2017
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The Big Idea: 

Chapter 1: Good is the Enemy of Great

  • Good to Great companies always had Level 5 Leaders.
  • Recruit the right people before choosing a direction/mission/vision/strategy.
  • Confront the brutal truth and move forward anyways.
  • Stick to your core.
  • Create a culture of discipline.
  • Use technology as an accelerator of existing greatness.
  • Focus on small, continuous progress, not grand transformations.

Chapter 2: Level 5 Leadership

  • Level 5 leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
  • Level 5 leaders put their company and their team before themselves.
  • Level 5 leaders are fanatical about results, not credit.
  • Level 5 leaders come from within the company, not from outside.
  • Level 5 leaders display workmanlike diligence, not celebrity charisma.

Chapter 3: First Who…Then What

  • Hold out for the best talent.  Don’t lower your hiring standards.
  • Hire slow, fire fast.  Then strive to zero turnover.
  • Don’t rely on one genius leader.  Have lots of great minds on board.
  • There is no right answer for how to structure executive compensation.  Just make sure it makes sense. The right people will deliver the best results, regardless of the compensation structure.
  • You can create an environment that attracts the best people, but no compensation structure will turn poor performers into rock stars.
  • Hire for attitude and character than for specific knowledge and skills.
  • The best companies build great teams.  They don’t work their people to the bone.

Chapter 4: Confront the Brutal Facts

  • Don’t be afraid to look at the brutal facts.
  • Create a culture that embraces truth and honesty.
  • Ask a lot of question and engage in open dialogue.
  • When something doesn’t work, take responsibility, figure out why but don’t blame others.
  • Pay attention to key metrics so you know early when something is wrong.
  • Regardless of the situation, have unwavering faith that the team will find a way to succeed.
  • The three circles are: what are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at?  What drives your economic engine?

Chapter 5: The Hedgehog Concept

  • Focus on the essentials and ignore the rest.
  • You will success if you can identify one simple concept that is good and execute it fanatically.
  • Eg. Walgreens key metric: profit per customer visit; Wells Fargo had profit per employee; Fannie Mae had profit per unit of risk; Kroger had profit per local population.
  • Everyone has strategic plans, but the good-to-great companies are more likely to be based around a simple idea.
  • Three key questions that define the hedgehog concept: what are you deeply passionate about, what can you be the best in the world, what drives your economic engine?
  • Don’t focus on mindless pursuit of growth. Focus on your core business, defined by your hedgehog concept.

Chapter 6: A Culture of Discipline

  • Startups often fail because they hire too many new people, acquire too many new customers, launch too many new products.
  • Things become too complex and problems start to surface.
  • Fast-growing startups will hire professional managers to reign in the mess, but also kill the entrepreneurial spirit.
  • Instead of installing bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, hire the right people in the first place.
  • Avoid bureaucracy and hierarchy and instead create a culture of discipline.
  • Build a culture around the idea of freedom and responsibility, within a framework.
  • Fill that culture with self-disciplined people who are willing to go to extreme lengths to fulfill their responsibilities.
  • Create a stop-doing list and focus on the hedgehog concept.
  • Develop a system and manage the system.  Don’t manage the people.
  • Culture beats great individual leadership.
  • A culture of discipline prevents you from expanding outside of your core.
  • A culture of discipline prevents you from an inflated overhead and layers of waste.

Chapter 7: Technology Accelerators

  • Be selective about which technologies you adopt.
  • Make sure your technology supports your hedgehog concept.
  • Technology by itself is never the primary cause of success or failure.
  • Reliance on technology can give you a false sense of invulnerability.

Chapter 8: The Flywheel and the Doom Loop

  • Success is an organic, cumulative process.  It never happens overnight.
  • Success takes patience and discipline.
  • Focus on continuous, incremental improvement, not miraculous transformations.
  • Once there is visible progress, keep the momentum going.  It is infectious.

Chapter 9: From Good to Great to Built to Last

  • The central concept of Built to Last: discover your core values and purpose beyond just making money (core ideology) and combine this with the dynamic of preserve the core/stimulate progress.
  • Hewlett Packard started with “who” before ever deciding what they would build (“what”.)
  • Walmart had taken 25 years to get to 38 stores, patiently defining their hedgehog concept.
  • Profits and cash flow are like blood and water.  They are necessary for life, but they are not the purpose of living.
  • Built To Last 1. Clock Building not Time Telling: culture and systems > single great leader/idea
  • Built to Last 2. Genius of AND: purpose AND profit, continuity AND change
  • Built to Last 3. Core Ideology: core values and purpose
  • Built to Last 4. Preserve the Core/Stimulate Progress: (except for core values) constant change, innovation, experimentation