April 15, 2007
It’s Okay to Be the Boss
I just finished Bruce Tulgan’s It’s Okay to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need.
I was attracted by the very direct title, and the book delivered. It is specific, detailed, and honest. I particularly appreciated Tulgan’s warning that becoming a better manager is like starting a fitness program. I’d rather it wasn’t hard, time consuming, and something that requires daily discipline, but I like that he’s up front about it. And that his book has so many specific things to do, answers to objections, and reasons it’s worth it.
Hiring and firing are hard, too, but they are specific events. In many ways I find them easier than the daily discipline of managing well. I found Tulgan’s book useful and encouraging; maybe I should carry copies to give away to managers in stores and restaurants around town….
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 7:07 PM | TrackBack
February 18, 2007
Fire Someone Today...in Korea!
For a while, I couldn't decide if the coolest thing about being a first-time author was walking into a bookstore in another city and finding your book on the shelf, or reading a glowing review from a stranger on the web. When a reader from across the country came to take me to lunch (Chapter 19: Buy Lunch) I thought that was it.
But then my copy of the completely unexpected Korean translation arrived.
(To top this I'll need a Korean reader to write a great review and then take me out for bulgogi and kimchi. Mmmm…)
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 7:34 PM | TrackBack
July 7, 2006
What would you learn if you wrote a book?
From a seminar by Ludwig von Mises, September 27, 1951: (Thanks, Marginal Revolution!)
Two reasons for writing a book:
- If you don't know anything about something, write a book and at the end you will know more.
- You see some light and try to discover it and write it down.
How true! Fire Someone Today is a book of business lessons I learned over many years. But I didn’t really understand them well myself until I tried to explain them to others in print. Writing the book deepened my understanding and taught me many new lessons.
What would you learn if you wrote a book? About your business, your products, or your customers?
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 9:35 AM | TrackBack
June 28, 2006
BusinessPundit reviews Fire Someone Today
Rob May reviewed Fire Someone Today at BusinessPundit (a daily must-read for me) and got right to the heart of what the book is about:
Fire Someone Today is not like most books. Usually when you read a book by a CEO, it is all about the things he or she did right and how you can learn to be just as brilliant. While Bob's book talks about his successes, it also focuses heavily on his mistakes. This book is valuable because it is a refreshing and honest look at the errors that many people make when running their own businesses. By learning from Bob's mistakes, you can minimize your own.
I couldn’t agree more; we don’t read enough about failure, especially in business.
Summer is here and most of you will be looking for a good book to take on vacation. I recommend you pick up a copy of Fire Someone Today.
And I am agreeing again!
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 8:38 AM | TrackBack
June 19, 2006
Jack Covert Selects Fire Someone Today
While I was in Japan, Jack Covert reviewed Fire Someone Today at the 800-CEO-READ Blog.
Fire Someone Today is a title that grabs your attention. It's not a book about poor employees or bell curve purging in corporate America. It's about small business. ... This is a strong book in the ever-crowded entrepreneurship, small business category. Pick it up and gain something new.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 5:08 AM | TrackBack
May 26, 2006
Authors love to hear from readers
Now that the book is out, I am craving feedback. (And feeling guilty about how I never give other authors feedback. I’ve started emailing them as I finish their books.)
One kind reader wrote to tell me that she and her husband put the book to use after reading just one chapter:
"We have a company with about a dozen employees. Well, it was a dozen until this week, when I bought your book for my husband. Now we are a better team at eleven."
There are more than twenty business lessons in Fire Someone Today, but it looks like the title chapter is stirring the most pots.
Did you fire someone today? Or was another chapter helpful? I would love to hear from you, too. Drop me a line at bob@firesomeonetoday.com.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 10:27 AM | TrackBack
May 6, 2006
Leading Blog reviews Fire Someone Today
Michael McKinney has posted a review of Fire Someone Today on the LeadershipNow Leading Blog.
Fire Someone Today sounds like a book of contrary advice for bosses. Surprisingly, it is a book full of down-to-earth, practical and tested advice for leaders seeking to better their company and the lives of those who work for them.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 6:56 PM | TrackBack
April 15, 2006
Ups and downs at Amazon.com
Thursday was the big mailing to my customer list, and the promotion pushed Fire Someone Today as high as #27 in overall sales rank at Amazon.com, and #8 in Business and Investing.
Today sales are still strong, with FST #14 on the Business and Investing Top Sellers, #86 overall.
Watching the sales rank hour-by-hour is fun, but it is the reviews and ratings I am even more interested in. I was happy when the first Amazon review gave FST five stars, but then disappointed (okay, upset) to see that the review was really a form of spam.
The spammer cleverly recycled part of the editorial description of FST to make the "review" look legitimate and appropriate, and then provided her own content to promote another book on outsourcing, a subject I don’t address. All of the "reviews" posted by this spammer promote this other book.
What’s worse is that 18 of 28 people found this spam review helpful.
I would love to see lots of five star reviews, but I would like to earn them.
To all of you who have purchased Fire Someone Today, thank you! I appreciate the support and hope you will find it useful. I am looking forward to your ratings and reviews.
To all of you who have not purchased it yet, what are you waiting for? It is a best seller with a five star review! :-)
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 10:19 PM | TrackBack
April 13, 2006
Fire Someone Today is now available!
You'll find Fire Someone Today in Borders, Barnes & Noble, and other retail stores, as well as at online retailers like Amazon.com, Powells, etc.
Writing Fire Someone Today was a great experience. It forced me to review the lessons I have learned about entrepreneurship and business over the years. It helped remind me of things I need to be doing regularly to continue to grow and improve my business. My hope is that you will find it useful in your business, too.
I look forward to hearing your feedback at bob@firesomeonetoday.com. Tell me what you like and don't like, and about the best lessons you have learned in your business.
And if you do like Fire Someone Today, please tell someone! I would really appreciate your taking a moment to rate or review it at Amazon.com or your favorite online retailer.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 5:00 AM | TrackBack
April 6, 2006
An expert on writing a book
I have never become an expert on anything as quickly as I have become an expert on writing a book.
There are lots of fields in which expertise is hard-earned over years of work and study. Everybody can see the long road to becoming an expert and they won’t call you one until you are far down that road.
Writing a book, and having it published by a "real publisher", is not one of those fields.
There is a curtain between "I have an idea for a book" and "my book is published." For the past year everybody I have met who hasn’t passed through the curtain, but wants to, has been treating me as an expert. But I’m not very far down the road to expertise on writing and publishing a book; I just passed through the curtain.
For example, if I were truly an expert, I would have anticipated Bookfat and avoided it.
True expertise is still further down the road.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 5:00 AM | TrackBack
March 4, 2006
'Crazy' Author reviews Fire Someone Today
Barry Moltz, author of You Need to Be a Little Crazy, was kind enough to review Fire Someone Today on his blog and to call it “a must read for every entrepreneur.”
Barry writes and speaks on entrepreneurship, and has one of the best author/speaker web sites I have seen. When I contacted him last year for some advice on launching and promoting FST, Barry took the time to talk with me, generously answering my questions and sharing his experiences. I would encourage you to check out his book and site.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 2:46 PM | TrackBack
February 23, 2006
Review of How to Run Your Business Like a Girl
Back in December I promised a review of How to Run Your Business Like a Girl, by Elizabeth Cogswell Baskin, which I bought because I do judge books by their cover. And web site. (I know, I know…)
How to Run Your Business Like a Girl is an easy read. Most of the content is delivered in the form of interleaved stories about three featured entrepreneurs, well-chosen to represent the many different types and sizes of businesses women start and run. The rest of the book consists of interviews with other female entrepreneurs.
I did not get any startling insights into female entrepreneurship. Women trust their intuition, are good at relationships, and value work-life balance. But I knew that. The book does a better job delivering on its subtitle: Successful Strategies from Entrepreneurial Women Who Made It Happen. Fortunately (for me, as a male reader) those stories and strategies are useful for everyone considering entrepreneurship.
How to Run Your Business Like a Girl does a great job of de-mystifying entrepreneurship. The many examples of women running the business and life they want, rather than following some classic plan for all-consuming-business-growth, are encouraging and inspiring. The emphasis on relationships and life balance may reflect feminine priorities, but they are topics every entrepreneur, male and female, should be thinking about.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 4:00 AM | TrackBack
February 22, 2006
You Need to Be a Little Crazy
You Need to Be a Little Crazy, Barry Moltz's book on "the truth about starting and growing your business," paints a picture of small business that is not the one I see in my mind.
Barry and I both started our full-time entrepreneurial adventures in 1991, but we have traveled very different roads. I am still building the business I started that year. Despite dramatic ups and downs, I see entrepreneurship as a process of learning and growing and refining. Barry has started and exited three businesses in that time, with a failure, a departure, and a sale. I get the feeling that he sees entrepreneurship as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
The value of Barry's book, however, is that picture it paints of small business. Because his picture is reality for many entrepreneurs: it can be a wild ride. You will be tossed around. You may be thrown past the safety bar and fall screaming through the air. And Barry tells it as it is, with a candor that is refreshing, at times unsettling, and always enlightening.
I am more than fourteen years into a business that is working. A small business, in my mind, is a going concern, and Fire Someone Today is for people who are in the game today. Barry has played the game several times and a few different ways. He focuses more on the costs, challenges, and emotions of starting up. You Need to Be a Little Crazy is a great book to read before deciding if entrepreneurship is a game you want to play, and it is full of encouragement and enthusiasm for those of us crazy enough to say yes.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 4:00 AM | TrackBack
February 20, 2006
Final cover art for Fire Someone Today
My publisher just emailed me the final cover art for Fire Someone Today. That is a lot of red ink! But it is great to see everything coming together and heading to the press.
I am thrilled with the generous quotes I got for the back cover, and the many others on the Reviews page.
Business and entrepreneurship bloggers, please let me know if you'd like to look at it for review, too. Just email me at bob@firesomeonetoday.com.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 4:00 AM | TrackBack
February 6, 2006
Why Fire Someone Today
So far, Fire Someone Today is proving to be a great title for a book. It catches attention and generates interest.
The downside is that without a closer look it appears to some people to be a one-subject book about management through intimidation. It is not.
Fire Someone Today is about clear thinking on practical business issues. Each of the 22 chapters is about a different subject; Fire Someone Today is just one of several chapters where the clear thinking is about making the right call when it is a tough call.
Of course, it is a lack of clear thinking that makes something a tough call in the first place. When we are thinking clearly the calls aren’t tough at all. More than 20 years ago Peter Drucker summed up the message of my first chapter more succinctly than I ever could:
“To keep misfits in jobs they cannot do is not being kind; it is being cruel.”*
Clear, isn't it?
*(Harvard Business Review, November 2005, p. 96, quoting HBR, July-August 1985)
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 4:00 AM | TrackBack
January 22, 2006
Naked Conversations book launch
Congratulations to Robert Scoble and Shel Israel on Naked Conversations, their new book on business blogging.
After a long day of cross-country travel (I got up at 3:30 am -- eastern!) I hung around Seattle until the launch party last night. Fortunately there were lots of interesting people to meet and I managed to stay awake, there and all the way back to Bellingham.
I just got my signed copy last night, and I am really looking forward to reading the book. My blogging, both here and for Logos, isn't really "naked". It tends to be planned and scheduled, and less conversational. As a company, we have been transparent in conversation with our customers, but mostly through our newsgroups, where there is plenty of interaction, but less discoverability and a smaller community.
Maybe I need to loosen up? I'll read the book and find out.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 7:24 AM | TrackBack
January 11, 2006
Kirkus Reports looks at Fire Someone Today
Kirkus Reports reviewed an advance copy of Fire Someone Today and says:
"Pritchett's witty and straight-shooting style make this feel less like a business manual and more like insider advice from a successful friend. ...this no-nonsense collection of real-life business experiences may even find you laughing out loud."
Fire Someone Today will be out in April, and is available for pre-order now at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 4:00 AM | TrackBack
December 23, 2005
Run your business like a girl
A female entrepreneur friend just sent me a link to How to Run Your Business Like a Girl. I can't help but judge books by their covers, and I am a sucker for great titles. They raise my hopes for great writing.
The web site is beautiful and to the point, as well, though it would appear that Dorothy got crushed by the book… None the less, my copy is ordered. Look for a male review here in the future.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 6:14 AM | TrackBack
December 14, 2005
Holding the book
Today I got two of the advance reader copies of Fire Someone Today (and some more endorsements). I have seen the art and reviewed the final pages. But it is still cool to hold it in book form. Being in the electronic publishing business has not yet killed that special feeling about physical books; that remains a marketing challenge for my day job.
The release is scheduled for April, 2006.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 6:11 PM | TrackBack
May 12, 2005
Lucky or Smart
Lucky or Smart, by Bo Peabody, is a wonderful little book that addresses the key issue at the heart of the entrepreneurial life: managing your ego.
“No one actually believes that he should take credit for finding $20 on the sidewalk. But when people get lucky in business … they believe instead that their business venture succeeded thanks to their own blinding brilliance.”
Peabody started Tripod, the Internet homepages company, and ran it though the dot.com boom, selling it for $58 million before the crash. Peabody got very lucky, and he was smart enough to know it. His very short book (around 60 pages) is a great reminder for everyone in business to know the difference between lucky and smart and to keep our egos in check. It is also full of succinct advice on being smart enough to increase your chances of being lucky as an entrepreneur, and when and how you should put your ego to use.
If you have any interest in entrepreneurship at all, you should read this book. It’s quick, it’s fun, and you’ll love it. (Inc. Magazine published an article adapted from the book, but you should still read the whole book.)
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 7:04 AM | TrackBack
April 19, 2005
Blink
Our family Law of Shopping states that dad must be out of the way during the selection phase but close enough to approve and pay for the selections once they have been made. That means I don’t have to wander the racks but I’m not allowed to camp out in the food court. So I’m that guy leaning against the wall outside each store in succession.
Fortunately, I had grabbed Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink on the way out the door. I read it all in one day, standing the whole time. (Except in Nordstrom’s, where they have the good sense to put chairs throughout the women’s and girls’ sections.) That I didn’t really mind, and that I stayed long enough to finish, tells you what an interesting and easy read Blink is.
The subtitle is “The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” but what Gladwell is describing is thinking – it is just the very fast thinking we do when we encounter something new. The book is full of interesting stories and anecdotes about making snap judgments, good and bad. He makes the case that experts in a subject make better snap judgments than amateurs and explores why that’s so. This doesn’t strike me as particularly profound, and it is not something you can specifically put to use (except by trusting your judgment if you are an expert), but the strength of the book is in the details and storytelling that keep you from minding.
I found the description of the triangle test fascinating. Gladwell explains that while many people can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in a blind taste test, the number who can identify the different one when three glasses (2 Coke, 1 Pepsi, or the reverse) are presented randomly is no more than would choose correctly by chance. The reason is that those of us who aren’t professional tasters lack a vocabulary for describing the difference between the two beverages. Without that vocabulary and scale in our head we can’t store and compare our impressions of the first two tastes against the third. Head-to-head we can call glass A sweeter than glass B, but when we get to glass C we can’t match it to A or B because we couldn’t record those tastes in a retrievable way in our minds.
This made me think about the difficulty I have in comparing things in which I am not an expert, and how I do store in my mind the things I do want to compare. Silly example: Every Thai restaurant has a different definition of four stars of heat. When I try to compare how hot four stars at this restaurant is to four stars at another, I have no way to do it without using some external scale. When I remember that four stars at restaurant A made me sweat and four at restaurant B caused me to wince, but four stars here at restaurant C isn’t even burning my lips, I am using a measure I can store in my head or on paper (an index on a continuum of symptoms) instead of trying to store an indistinct hotness value. And now that I understand this better, I can formalize my scales and always know how many stars to order.
The “lesson” of Blink is predictable: snap judgments can be spectacularly wrong and acting on them can be bad for you and others. Again, it is the detailed and specific examples that carry the book, illustrating how groups as diverse as police forces and symphony orchestras identified weaknesses in their decision making and put in place procedures to improve it.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 3:57 PM | TrackBack
April 17, 2005
Marketing Outrageously
I really enjoyed Jon Spoelstra’s Marketing Outrageously. Spoelstra’s emphasis on top-line revenue is refreshing in a marketing book, and I think his “does it make money?” approach to advertising is right on target.
Aside from the rubber-chicken-in-a-FedEx-package, the marketing examples he presents, mostly from the world of professional sports, didn’t strike me as that outrageous. They struck me as sensible. (I suppose that in the world of marketing, sensible often is outrageous.) They weren’t all obvious though, and that’s why I felt like I got something useful from almost every chapter.
The book looks like it was typeset by someone who had just won a disk full of fonts and royalty-free photos, and it could have used a stronger editorial hand. (Spoelstra also drags out the railroads-and-airlines business lesson that I love to hate.) That is just quibbling, though. The book was easy and fun to read. By the time I finished it I had specific action items in mind, knew that I wanted my team to read it, and that I would prefer my competitors didn’t. What better test is there of a business book?
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 5:19 PM | TrackBack
Never Eat Alone
I recently finished Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi. I had read an interesting article about Ferrazzi years ago and so when I saw the book on the shelf at the local Barnes & Noble I bought it on impulse.
Ferrazzi is a master networker; the kind of guy who has 10,000 people in his contacts list and has “touched” every one of them in the past year or so. I’m the kind of guy who…well, let’s just say I re-order business cards more often for address changes than because I ran out.
I love the title, Never Eat Alone, but I was expecting it to be one of those business books where the title is the whole message, and the other 300 pages are only there to justify the price tag. That’s why I was surprised by how much I got out of it.
Yes, the book is puffy, but I found it readable and thought-provoking. The message is simple: meet lots of people, be a giver, not a taker, in relationships, and stay in touch. I’d heard it all before from Mom. But Ferrazzi presents it well with lots of interesting anecdotes and practical tips. And it’s a message worth repeating.
Most importantly (for me) Ferrazzi grants permission to get out there and start building your network. He persuasively makes the case that networking is a positive way to help others, rather than a sleazy way to use people, and gets very specific about the things you can do to build your network. It is these specifics – like permission to host a dinner party on paper plates or to leave a quick greeting by midnight voicemail – that answer the objections and fears of the socially cautious. The stories of hubris and “network-abuse” are similarly helpful in illustrating the difference between good and bad networking.