Top Five Reads- Building a Reading List

As the colder weather descends – Thanksgiving is always the turning point in my neck of the woods (New England that is) when sweaters are necessary and thoughts of curling up with a good book, cup of tomato soup and a blanket occur randomly. Sometimes a fire in the fireplace is involved.

Anyway, I LOVE books, all kinds of books and wanted to share some of the best reads this year in the Business Genre, ones that I read and actually learned from. Maybe it is all the Turkey juice (L-Tryptophan) still flowing through my veins, but here it goes. Here are five to start you off. More to come in later posts.

Play to Win by Larry Wilson – This book is about the most important adventure you will ever have – your life. You can choose to live fenced in all your life with herd mentality or you can break through and go your own way. This book examines how to think clearly and deeply and avoid decisions that will not allow you to succeed. He defines the Play to Lose attitude which I see a lot in my classes. Because I recognize it now, I address it head on in class and it really helps. I read this book every couple of years.

Intelligent Selling by Ken Burke – This book was recommended by a web designer I use. He examines what makes websites that sell commodities like real estate really work. This includes other products that actually are sold at a brick and mortar site. Because it is NOT real estate specific you can compare your website to his ideas and see how you stack up. This one is full of sticky notes and highlighter marks. He focuses building customer relationships, personalizing the customer experience and understanding personalization techniques. Great Read!

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The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell – called a “facile piece of pop sociology”, I found this book to be business altering. His concept that little events can have amazing effects really made me reexamine how I do business and make sure I was taking advantage of tipping points in my life. In my TOP TEN books of all time. There is even a definition of a tipping point in Wikipedia. Here it is: “Tipping points are the levels at which the momentum for change become unstoppable.” Gladwell speaks about the three agents of change in his book:

• The law of the few – the success of any social epidemic is dependent on a group of people called connectors with a rare set of social skills
• The stickiness factor – a message that is memorable and makes impact
• The power of context – human nature is sensitive to and strongly affected by its environment. You will have to read the book for this one . . . fascinating.

The Great Connection – Arne Warren. Told as a story, it is a narrative of personality styles. Because you read about the interaction of the main character with others you get a keen insight on how different people and personalities get along and how you can benefit from knowing this. Whether you have a difficult associate or employee or you want to read your clients better, this is an easy and fun read.

Good to Great by Jim Collins. This book uses tough benchmarks and examines companies that were “good” and made the leap to “great” and sustained it for 15 years. The book can relate to any size company and makes you think. Here is a chart of some of the good and some of the great. One surprise here is his rating of Bank of America, but this was before the banking debacle.

So please, I need more books to read, for business growth. What would you recommend? I have gift cards waiting to be used. Please help.

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