Book Review

I read this book some time ago, over the Christmas break, and I've found myself returning to its ideas and principles in my mind over the months since as the hectic pace of work has picked up for the year.

Think Less Be More is a book written by one of my clients, Dr Christine Maingard. It's about handling stress through the practice of what she calls 'mindfulness'.

Naomi Simson is one of Australia's lauded young business entrepeneurs and I Want What She's Having is her book describing the building of her successful corporate gift business, RedBallon Days.

In my mind there's two basic types of business books: instructional and inspirational. This offering falls mainly into the second category.

I Want What She's Having is an entertaining look into the struggles and joys of business as RedBallon Days goes from a small startup to the thriving trans-Tasman business it currently is.

Negotiating is an important beginning to many projects or agreements, and no matter what sort of business you're in you will need to negotiate in one way or another with both your customers and your suppliers.

Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury is a practical, informative guidebook to help you negotiate effectively.

It's the subtitle that really caught my eye with this book. It reads: How to Make a Fortune from Starting Online Communities. An interesting topic to a web designer who has had a hand in a few online startup community-based websites.

"Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" is the apt subtitle for Michael E. Gerber's 2nd edition of the classic E-Myth.

This book looks at several common reasons that small and micro businesses fail to make profit or longevity.

Gerber's main premise is that many small businesses are started by technicians who work in a normal job, have the skills to perform a task and in a flash of entrepeneruship think that they'd be better off being their own boss. So they start a business doing what they know best - but discover that although they know their technical work very well (hairdressing, pie-baking, web designing etc) they have no skills or experience with the many other jobs required to run a business (for example accounting, marketing, advertising, management, staff training etc).

I've just finished reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, a book in which the author discusses how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing and online media to help your busines by reaching buyers directly.

There are a couple of different things that this book tries to do. Firstly, it introduces the 'new' web 2.0 technologies - things like blogs, podcasts, videos etc - in a way that will give a beginner an understanding of what they are and how they work. It then talks about how business can use these tools to reach buyers in a new way.

One of the most important things that Scott recognises about online media is the difference between the way the user interacts with your website and your offline forms of advertising.