I picked up Shoe Dog on a recent trip through Hong Kong airport. I’d first heard about it on Bill Gates’ excellent blog. I read this in less than a week. It’s that good a page turner. It’s the story of how Phil Knight went from selling shoes in Oregon to building a $30bn empire. What stands out about this book is its raw honesty. Knight never puts a nice spin on things. In many ways, he’s a very difficult man. He doesn’t omit this. He’s uncommunicative to colleagues and can be a complete asshole. But he’s a man you respect and by the end of the book, I really liked him. It reads more like a novel than a business book. One of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. Key takeaways from Shoe Dog Pursue something related to what you love Knight wanted to be a professional athlete. He …[Read More]
Keep On Learning
What you can learn from Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk – Your body language shapes who you are
This TED Talk by Amy Cuddy on how deeply your body language affects you is one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time. Summary Professor Cuddy demonstrates just how closely linked the physical is with the psychological. We heard of psychosomatic, where your mind can influence your body, eg when anxiety affects your bodily health. Cuddy explains how our body language affects our mental states, i.e. the reverse is also true. For example, if you’re hunched over, with your shoulders rolled forward, looking down at the ground, it’s likely that you’re in a nervous state of mind. Now exaggerate the opposite posture. Sit back, lean backwards, open up your chest, breathe deeply and you’re likely now feeling more relaxed, less anxious and more at ease. We can exaggerate this further. There’s a universal pose for victory and feeling victorious. Studies show that even those unable to see make …[Read More]
What I learnt from Simon Sinek’s TED Talk – ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’
This video by Simon Sinek will change how you see the world. In this TED talk, Sinek says most of the time we fail to start with the Why. Instead, he argues in general that, we start with the What, then the How, then the Why. To resonate with people, however, we need to start with the Why. This is the part that appeals to the ‘feeling’ part of the brain. Not the rational, logical part, but the emotional part. Sinek applies this to marketing, such as when explaining Apple appeals to consumers more than Dell. Both sell great computers (the What). Both sell the How. But only Apple truly sells the Why. Sinek argues that Apple found their raison d’etre and started from there. They sold the counterculture, the rebellion, the attack on the status quo and that’s what consumers bought into. They bought why Apple existed before they …[Read More]
What you can learn from I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
I read I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi before I read The Richest Man in Babylon (see previous post). However, I Will Teach You To Be Rich (IWT) can be taken as building on many of the principles in The Richest Man in Babylon (RMB). IWT is RMB for the 21st century. Summary IWT is split into 6 sections: Get out of debt Don’t save or invest until you’ve got out of debt. Interest rates on credit card debts far outweigh any possible gains from high-interest savings accounts or investments in equities or bonds. Sethi gives the reader scripts for negotiating lower credit card interest rates to help you pay off your debts faster. Set up no-fee, high-interest bank accounts This is harder to do now in the post-2008 low interest rate world. Still you can find no-fee accounts and accounts with more attractive rates. As …[Read More]
What I learned from The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason
I first heard of The Richest Man in Babylon from Fighting Mediocrity who made a fantastic animated video review of it. (Check it out here.) I bought it on Kindle for next to nothing: £1.99! It’s a short book and reads like an allegory similar in style to The Alchemist. Synopsis In ancient Babylon, an ordinary family man is struck one day that he is not rich and in all likelihood never will be rich. He and his friends decide to ask the richest man in Babylon for his secrets to becoming rich. Takeaways and analysis The overall objective recommended is the image of ‘fattening up your purse’. It’s a great image to have in your mind when you’re reading this book. Imagine your wallet slowly getting fuller and fuller. Rule 1 Pay yourself first. Save 10% of your income and spend the rest. Clason makes the point that most …[Read More]