One thing that stood out for me is how audacious his father was in setting an example of asking for help, specifically, the author got his first tricycle and bicycle because of his father’s forthright manner in asking for them, and author got his private school education because his father asked his company’s CEO for help. The rest is history. Now that’s courage!

Another that stood out for me is author’s advise in possessing the virtue of generosity and not keeping score. This counters most people’s understanding of reciprocity in networking. But I think this is really the truth. The most successful and connected people are generous and giving.

This book is a a gold mine, full of strategies, concrete steps and tips on networking. The author is a fanatic and a pretty good one at networking. Here is a summary of the book.

On Goal Setting:
1. Find your passion. “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” a. Look inside. b. Look outside. “Human ambition is like Japanese carp; they grow proportional to the size of their environment.”
2. Putting goals to paper. Relationship Action Plan: a. develop goals that will help you fulfill your mission. b. connecting those goals to the people, places things that will help you get the job done. c. find the best ways to reach out to the people who will help you accomplish your goals. Criteria for the goals: a. be specific, b. be believable, c. must be challenging and demanding.
3. Create a personal “Board of Advisers”

What you can do to be audacious: 1. Find a role model, 2. Learn to speak, 3. Get involved, 4. Get therapy, 5. Just do it.

How not to be a networking jerk: 1. Don’t schmooze: Make sure you have something to offer when you speak, and offer it with sincerity. 2. Don’t rely on the currency of gossip. 3. Don’t come to the party empty-handed. In connecting, as in blogging, you’re only as good as what you give away. 4. Don’t treat those under you poorly. In business, the food chain is transient. 5. Be transparent. People respond with trust when they know you’re dealing straight with them. 6. Don’t be efficient. Reaching to others is not a numbers game. Your goal is to make genuine connection with people you can count on.

Do your homework before meeting the persons. Do your research: on internet, public library, literature from company’s PR, and annual reports.

Take names: identify the people who can help you get to your mission.

Warming the cold calls: 1. Draft off a reference. Credibility is the first thing you want to establish in any interaction. 2. State your value. Selling is, reduced to its essence, solving another person’s problems. 3. Talk a little, say a lot. Make it quick, convenient, and definitive. 4. Offer a compromise.

Managing the gatekeeper – artfully: There are a couple of examples worth reading.

Never Eat Alone: clone the events – dine with a few people instead of one on one.

Share your passion: Your passions and the events you build around them will create deeper levels of intimacy. When your day is fueled by passion, filled with interesting people to share it with, reaching out will seem less like a challenge or a chore and more like an effortless consequence of the way you work.

Follow up or fail: Follow up the key to success in any field. Reminders to be included in your follow-ups: always express your gratitude, include an item of interest from your meeting/conversation, reaffirm whatever commitments you both made, be brief and to the point, always address the thank-you note to the person by name, use email or snail mail, timeliness is the key, follow up with those who have acted as the go-between.

Be a conference commando: 1. Help the organizer (better yet, be the organizer), 2. Listen (better yet, talk), 3. Guerrilla warfare: organize a conference within a conference. 4. Draft off a big kahuna, 5. Be an information hub, 6. Master the deep bump (quickly make contact, establish enough of connection to secure the next meeting, and move on). Get people to like you first. 7. Know your targets. 8. Breaks are no time to take a break. 9. Follow up. 10. It’s the people, to the speakers.

Connecting with connectors: 1. Restaurateurs , 2. Headhunters, 3. Lobbyists, 4. Fundraisers, 5. Public relations people. 6. Politicians, 7.Journalists.

Expanding your circle: 1. You and the person you’re sharing contacts with must be equal partners that give as much as they get. 2. You must be able to trust your partners. Not a free for all – exchanging contacts should take place around specific events, functions, or causes.

Art of Small talk: Don’t talk small. 1. Learn to power of nonverbal cues: a. hearty smile, b. good balance of eye contact. c. unfold your arms and relax, d. nod your head and lean in, e. learn to touch people. 2. Be sincere. 3. Develop conversational currency. 4. Adjust your Johari window (small window for introverted people). Envision yourself as a mirror. Tweak your style to ensure that windows remain wide open. 5. Make a graceful exit. 6. Until we meet again. 7. Learn to listen. 8. If all else fails, five words that never do. “You’re wonderful. Tell me more.”

What motivates people: 1. making money, 2. finding love, 3. changing the world. The most successful relationship builders are amalgam of financial guru, sex therapist, and all around do-gooder. Every person’s deepest life long desire is to be significant and to be recognized. Health, wealth and children gender deep emotional bonds.

Social arbitrage: a constant and open exchange of favors and intelligence. Don’t wait to be asked. Just do it. Real power comes from being indispensable. Indispensability comes from being a switchboard, parceling out as much information, contacts, and good will to as many people as possible.

Pinging – all the time. By email, phone call, and face-to-face encounter. 2 ~ 3 pings a year. Divide to 5 categories: personal, customers, prospects, important business associates, aspirational contacts.

Find anchor tenants and feed them. Anchor tenants are people who are in relation to one’s core group of friends, different, like Journalists, artists. Six to ten guests is the optimal number to invite to dinner. “Bonus guests” came before or after the dinner. Thursdays are good days for dinner. A few other rules: 1. create a theme. 2. Use invitations, 3. Don’t be a kitchen slave. 4. Create atmosphere, 5. Forget being formal, 6. Don’t seat couples together, 7. relax.

Being interesting: Be a person of content: have a unique point of view. 1. Get out in front and analyze the trends and opportunities on the cutting edge. 2. Ask seemingly stupid questions. 3. Know yourself and your talents. Not work obsessively on the skills and talents that you lack, but to focus and cultivate your strengths so that your weaknesses matter less. 4. Always learn. 5. Stay healthy. 6. Expose yourself to unusual experiences. 7. Don’t get discouraged. 8. Know the new technology. 9. Develop a niche. 10. Follow the money.

Build your brand: 1. Develop a personal branding message (PBM) 2. Package the brand. 3. Broadcast your brand. Look the part. Live the part. a. You’re your own PR representative. b. Know the media landscape, c. work the angles. d. Think small: go local first. e. Make reporter happy. f. Master the art of soundbite. g. Don’t be annoying, h. It’s all on the record, i. Trumpet the message, not the messenger, j. Treat journalist you would any other member of your network or community of friends, k. Be a name dropper. l. You’ve got to market the marketing. m. There is no limit to the ways you can go about enhancing your profile.

The author offers 9 personal power hours of focus and 9 business power hours of focus – adding up to 18 total hours. At one hour a week, this means 18 weeks of focus. It’s really doubtful that each of the power hour can be accomplished within an hour a week. But it’s an ideal goal. I like the questions included in the book to ask yourself. They are a gold mine. It’s like having a personal consultants interviewing you on each area of your personal life and business career. Going through the exercises will probably yield a better result for most readers. The highlights of the book:

7 steps to activating the power of an hour:
1. Clearly identify what you need to change.
2. Apply critical thinking to identify the structure of the change.
3. Apply creative thinking to identify other solutions
4. Identify next steps
5. Schedule your change and take the first action.
6. Evaluate your activity and measure your success.
7. Reward your successful completion

Creating Fearsome Focus:
1. Clearly define what you will focus your effort on.
2. Define the action steps necessary to accomplish the project.
3. Surround yourself with the necessary tools and stimuli related directly to what you’ll be focusing on.
4. Do not allow distractions to divert your attention.
5. Launch into the project.
6. Evaluate the process of your effort frequently by consulting your action steps and immediately reengaging.
7. If you are confronted with a physical or mental distraction, simply acknowledge the distraction, do what’s necessary to dismiss or remove it, and then instantly reengage.
8. Continue until all action steps are complete.
9. Acknowledge completion and relax.

How to think critically:
1. acknowledge that you are a critical thinker and apply the skills regularly.
2. understand the blocks to critical thinking and avoid them.
3. Listen for and understand arguments.
4. Evaluate the legitimacy of the evidence.
5. Evaluate the case.

Personal Hour 1: Set the stage. 3 steps: clearly define what you want, define what specifically you’ll do to create the change, determine how to measure success.

Personal Hour 2: Identify the blocks like procrastination, ambivalence (two opposing opinions), have to or should do, excuses and justifications, and giving up. Other areas include business, career, income and financial situation, business relationships, personal relationships, intimate relationships, health, education, self-worth, spirituality, and etc.

Personal Hour 3: Destroy the blocks. 4 steps: 1. clearly identify and describe the block you are face, 2. Define specifically the result you intend to achieve by removing the block, 3. Define your plan and timeline for removing the block. 4. Take action.

Personal Hour 4: relationships: categorized to family relationships, mutually beneficial and supportive relationships, long-term friends, one-sided relationships.

Personal Hour 5: Finances: Setting up your plan: make it automatic, manage the professionals instead of money, make it digital, be frugal when you can but don’t step over dollars to pick up dimes, review it regularly.

Personal Hour 6: Self-improvement: Ask yourself the following questions. 1. What area of my life am I currently not improving that would have the most significant impact on the rest of my life if improved? 2. What is the most important skill I could learn right now and why is it so important? 3. When I look at the skill sets of my mentors and peers, which could I develop that would have the most significant impact on my life? 4. What specifically would that impact on my life be and what would it do for me? 5. What have I always wanted to study or learn but have constantly put on the back burner? 6. What is the most important skill I could learn or improve right now that would expand my income, career, business, relationships?

Personal Hour 7: Mental vacation: simply focus your mind away from all of your current tasks onto something you enjoy. Find a place where you can focus on something that’s relaxing and unrelated to what you’ve been focused on. Get in a comfortable position and relax. Begin to imagine your perfect day, your perfect vacation, or your perfect retirement. Make it real by taking time to focus on the sounds and images in your mind.

Personal Hour 8: Envisioneering: creative a master life vision. Japanese proverb – “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” 4 requirements that must be fulfilled in order to fully unleash the power of manifestation: 1. You must specifically define what you want. “If you ask for something in rich detail, imbued with emotion and feeling, layered with experiences, and something you can see so clearly in your mind that it becomes tangible, then you’ll get that too and it will be rich and empowering.” 2. understanding how you want fits into your master vision of life. 3. Giving your Master Life Vision power. Hold in powerfully in your mind and create it in the physical realm. This chapter has lots of good questions to ask of yourself. They alone are worth the value of the book.

Personal Hour 9: Overcome your fear and reinvent yourself. To overcome fear: take educated action via education and emulation.

Business Hour 1: Find your business focus. Break out the operational units: sales, marketing, operations, financial operations, manufacturing or service delivery units, and human resources.

Business Hour 2: Time Management. The glass ball (broken if dropped) vs. rubber ball (bounced back if dropped) analogy.

Business Hour 3: Management. Creating and Articulating Your Vision, Creating your business culture (empower employees, motivation and recognition, delegate for success – 1. determine who’s best suited to accomplish the task, 2. explain the task and expectations in as much detail as necessary, 3. give authority and support, 4. give positive feedback of understanding and commitment, 5. get out of the way).

Business Hour 4: Sales and Marketing. Lots of good questions to ask of your sales and marketing on unique differentiators, advertising, public relations.

Business Hour 5: Customer experience. Find our exceptional experience.

Business Hour 6: Making connection. Three types of connections: mastermind partners, power partners, casual connections.

Business Hour 7: Mentoring.

Business Hour 8: Give something back. Of course, how else can you reap the reward and leave a legacy?

Business Hour 9: The final hour – creating systems. How to create systems: 1. Clearly identify the system or process, 2. Identify the outcome of performing the system or process, 3. Identify who should run the system or process. 4. Identify the exact steps involved in performing the process, 5. Identify the expected outcomes at the end of each step. 6. Identify the confirmation signal that the system is complete. Best uses of your system books: to train new employees, to interview potential employees, to manage existing employees, to improve company efficiency, to open new offices or divisions, to evaluate problem areas, to allow someone else to take over if necessary.

The wrap around mortgage concept advocated by the author increases the speed of money by assuming the loan from the seller, fixing it up, and then turn-around and sell on contract with very little money down, hence creating a positive cash flow machine. The concept is simple and elegant but I don’t think this is practical any longer with the the “due-on-sale” clause of most mortgage loans these days, thanks to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae agencies. On the other hand, with the two agencies near bankruptcy and a potential hyper-inflation with Fed’s money printing machine nowadays, the author’s method may come back in vogue.

Now suppose this method is doable. I wonder about its legal implication and whether there needs to be a legal entity handling the transaction. You never know what people are capable of doing through legal means when they don’t like the house they just bought or the arrangement of the house they just sold. Having lots of houses tied up in such a wrap-around mortgages could spell disasters for legal entanglement.

It’s a novel idea in the 80’s or 90’s but I doubt it’s even practical today.

I listened to the abridged audio version of the book. As one of the earliest work of Michael Lewis, I thought the book is pretty good. The style is not as published as his recent work but the story is interesting enough to overcome its shortcoming.

The story gives the readers a glimpse of what’s it is like to get a job in an bond trading form like Salomon Brothers and to work there day in and day. It’s really like a big legal casino based on author’s description. The trading form worked like a giant bookie firm taking bets from all over. The characters in the story was also interesting like the human piranha who cussed constant f*k words, his two mentors: Alexander, and Dash, the geeks in the training class, and the rich clients who made money and lose money based on their recommendation. Of course, the obscene amount of the money/bonus the sales person made on 12/19 of every year reflect the insanity of the Wall Street. But it was no different from the Internet companies that went belly up after the year 2000.

Overall, the story was riveting though long-winged at time. Most of all, it was entertaining.

I listened to the abridged audiobook first then read the book later. The audiobook was concise but lack continuity of the book. By far, I believe this is the best of Rich Dad’s books. Robert Kiyosaki offers excellent advises for the entrepreneur-want-to-be. What impressed me the most were: 1. importance of the mission and serving others, 2. difference between job and work, 3. success reveals failures and 4. pricing strategy. The checklist before you quit your job is already worth the price of the book. My summary below:

Entrepreneurs vs. employees (Promoters vs. Trustees)
Promoters are driven by perception of opportunities. Trustees by control of resources.
Promoters’ management structure is flat with multiple informal networks, trustees formalized hierarchy with multiple tiers. Promoters are value driven, performance-based, team-oriented, where trustees are security driven, resource-based, job promotion-oriented.

Lesson #1: A successful business is created before there is a business. Rich Dad’s quote: “Losers quit when they fail. Winner fail until they succeed.” BI triangle: Three sides: Mission, Team, Leadership. Stacked from bottom to top: cash flow, communications, systems, legal, product.

Lesson #2: Learn how to turn bad luck into good luck. Two reasons why entrepreneurs fail: afraid of failing, do not fail enough. “In today’s rapidly changing world the people who are NOT taking risks are the risk takers. People who are NOT taking risks are falling behind. Commit the process: 1. start the business, 2. fail and learn, 3. find a mentor, 4. fail and learn, 5. take some classes, 6. keep failing and learning, 7. stop when successful, 8. celebrate, 9. count your money, the wins and the losses, 10. repeat the process.

Lesson #3: Know the difference between your job and your work. You get paid for a job but not for doing your work. The more homework you do, the more money you earn on your job.

Lesson #4: Success reveals your failures. “The way to stop failing is to fail faster.” Your strengths will reveal your weaknesses. Team Smarts: A-thinker (analytical skills/critical thinker), C-thinker (creative thinker/flexible logic), T-thinker (technical skills/expertise), P-thinker (people skills/personal leadership). Be the best on one of them – develop yourself.

Lesson #5: The process is more important than the goal. The process determines who you become in attaining your goals.

Lesson #6: The best answers are found in your heart not your head. Stronger mission wins in business and in wars. 3 types of money: competitive, cooperative, spiritual money. A mission is about who you do your work for. It’s not about working for yourself. “Your mission starts at your core, in your soul, felt in your heart, and spoken through your actions – not just your words.”

Lesson #7: The scope of the mission determines the product. Focus on fulfilling a mission that solves a problem or fills a need, the money will come. “The more people you serve, the richer you will become.”

Lesson #8: Design a business that can do something that no other business can do. 1. clearly define the mission, goals, and vision of the company. 2. Find the best people and forge them into a team. 3. Strengthen the company on the inside. 4. Expand the company on the outside. 5. Improve the bottom line. 6. Invest in research and development. 7. Invest in tangible assets. 8. Be a good corporate citizen. How to expand a business: 1. replicating the entire B-I triangle. 2. Franchising. 3. Taking the company public through an IPO. 4. Licensing and joint ventures. Single tactic (what you do, Domino’s “pizza in 30 minutes or less”) – multiple strategies (the plan on how to get the tactic done). Always have a low-risk idea to fall back on.

Lesson #9: Don’t fight for the bargain basement. How to find good customers. Be choosy. Rich Dad’s 3 tips about dealing with people. 1. “Pain the ass factor, 2. “hire slow and fire last.” 3. Two kinds of communicators: when unhappy, one would come talk to you face to face, the second one would stab you on your back. Gross margin: 1. finance the rest of the B-I triangle. 2. determine the price of your product, 3. Product and price determine your customers. 5 P’s: product, person, price, place and position.

Lesson #10: Know when to quit. 1. Check your attitude. Need to love the business. 2. Get as much experience as possible on five levels of B-I triangle. 3. Always remember that sales = income. 4. Be optimistic as well as brutally honest with yourself. 5. How are you spending money? 6. Start a business to practice on. 7. Be willing to ask for help. 8. Find a mentor. 9. Join a entrepreneur network. 10. Be faithful to the process.

Mission => Process => Goal.

This is a very short story about author’s 8th-grade baseball coach, Coach Fitz, who taught them the lessons on the game of life. It’s not about winning the game only but more about persevere against adversity. The coach made the students do sliding drills all evening after losing a game. By forcing them to wear the same unwashed uniform until they finally won a game, the coach impressed upon them the lessons of life. But it’s getting harder for Coach Fritz to apply the same teaching and lessons to the kids nowadays as the rich parents demanded the private school coach to cut their kids breaks and privileges that work against the Coach’s teaching in responsibility, discipline, and lifting of the courage and strength to meet the life challenges. Coach Fritz found it to be his purpose in life to not give up on the kids but win for the kids. He carried it out through his emotion and tough punishments, bordering abusive. The turning point for the author was when a baseball broke his nose as he tried to catch a baseball after losing his concentration trying to listen to what Coach might have been scolding him of his skipped practice due to a family ski trip.

The story made me wonder how our kids’ future are being ruined or spoiled by the parents and how many teachers nowadays truly care enough to risk losing their careers to bring out the best of the students. I also remember a few of the teachers in my early life who were doing the same thing as Coach Fritz does and yet I felt they were simply abusing their power. It’s hard to appreciate the teachers when you’re young. Only when you grow up and accomplish something that set you above others that you begin to appreciate the gifts you have received from your teachers, if you haven’t already attributed 100% to your own doing.

Janet Lowe offers a 3rd-party, unbiased perspective on the life and accomplishment of Jack Welch, the previous CEO of GE. I listened to the abridged version of the book. Nothing really new about Jack Welch that I haven’t heard of. He’s a tough, truth-confronting, no-non-sense manager, who rose from a small yet up and coming division of GE plastic to take over the CEO position of the entire company. His advocacy of Six Sigma took the company to the next level of quality. He stressed the importance of being #1 or #2 of the market, in order to maintain high level of margin/value to the customers. His mistakes were numerous but the obsession with winning gives the investors lots of reasons to forgive him and yet at the same time allow him to win even more, like the baseball batting analogy. How many CEO’s in the Fortune 500 companies are afforded such leniency? I like the 3rd-party analysis of the Welch instead of the many autobiographies Jack published with his wife. Too bad the audiobook was too short to assess the value of the book.