The author Mireille Guiliano started with her story how she gained so much weight during her college years in USA and managed to overcome the craving for pastry and lose and maintain her ideal weight.

Of course, one of first thing to do is to write on a log or diary on all foods eaten (inventory taking) throughout the days and weeks. This allows you to find your key offenders. She suggested the leak soup as the crash course. Sounds interesting.

My take-aways are:
1. Eat with moderation: after the 6th bites, your taste buds have been satisfied already. Why go any further? Enjoy your first few bites.

2. Cook with seasonally fresh food/fruits. This, in essence, is become a gourmet or a snobbish eater. Don’t eat frozen food if you can help it. Cooking the dishes with fresh foods will sharpen your taste bud, allowing your differentiate good food from the bad. The author also offered a method to make your own yogurt.

3. Enjoy/savor every bite: By enjoying/savoring every bite and articulating in your own words, you end up with an good overall eating experience and slowing down your food consumption. By slowing down your consumption, you end up eating less.

4. Drink lots of water before meal and throughout the day. It’s important to have sufficient water to keep your body in good balance and less hungary, thus healthier.

The book offers a good list of recipes (included in Amazon) that is hard to capture by listening to the audio book . Will need to check out the book some day.

Among all the business starting books I have read, this one is by far the best and most practical one. The author, Michael Masterson, has had lots of experience doing this. And the best part is that he’s not a natural salesman by training. He had to learn it by doing. This gives me hope …

Masteron goes through roughly the various stages of business and presented the strategies for each stage:
Stage 1 (0~ $1M revenue): Sales job is #1. Sell your first product first. Don’t worry about company name, logo, or legal identity. Get the 1st sales and then find and fine-tune your unique selling proposition (USP). Imitate your competitor including where to place ads. Produce me-too product. Give your customer better or perceived-better product (Fedex vs. 7-up). Stage 1 entrepreneur must acquire Critical Mass of Qualified Customers (CMQC) as the primary task. Use of the “train” analogy – it takes energy and time to move a stationary train toward the city of gold. Once it’s moving, the momentum may carry itself.

Stage 2 ($1M ~ $10M): Add more product lines. Front end vs. back end: Front end to acquire customers, Back end to make profits. The key to profit is evolution not revolution – 80% old and 20% new is a good mix. Back-end sale represent goodwill that people are willing to buy continuously
Ordinary vs. tipping point products (1:9 ratio): ordinary products brings the profits. Creating tipping point products takes collaboration and good timing. The author borrowed a lot of the ideas from “Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell and applied it to real-life situations.

Stage 3 ($10M~50M):
Innovation and speed are the two critical methods to take the company to the next level. For innovation, adopt “accelerated failures” and “ready, fire and aim.” To carry out the action, find a champion, who can get the idea realized, must believe in the idea, have the authority to execute, have the experience to make wise decisions along the way. It’s better to postpone if a champion cannot be found.

About getting mentored: 1) Ask for mentor around you (up, down, around), 2) Show appreciation – reciprocate, 3) Take responsibility for your own actions.

The objective of business is to serve your customers – not making you or your employee rich. If you can serve your customers, the money will follow.

On brainstorming: create marketing copy within 24 hrs and set a limit on time, set a goal and high standard, code of equality (everyone pitches in), set rules, no specific criticism of idea (how to make it better not what’s wrong with it), record the meeting. Have a culture of creativity.

A “ready, fire, aim” business proposal (must be finished within 24 hrs to keep momentum going) consists of 1-4 pages, ballpark financial projection including costs, identification of critical tasks, project champion and support people, timeline for the major tasks to be completed, and a plan ‘B’ (like CNN).

Project improvement: “If the product is not selling well, don’t fix it” It’s much smarter to drop it and come up with a significantly different product. If the product sell well, improve it.

Why people buy? To feel good and to solve a problem. Why Binge spending? 1) Feel good that they have more money to spend, 2) to feel good about buying, 3) sold by the specific marketing program.

The 20 marketing lessons are impressive. They should be in the MBA marketing textbook. The 7 myths are good, one of them being that employees must own a part of company.

Hire Intrapreneurs (vs. Entrepreneur) to take your company to the next level. Intrapreneurs may not want to start his/her own business but is innovative enough to keep the company crank out tipping point new products.

Ready, Fire, and Aim way of leading your life. Get started on your dream and don’t worry about failure or trying to perfect it. Author’s short film career is an example.

I utterly enjoyed this book. I listened to the audio book three times. And each time I got something more. I suppose I will read it soon. The wonderful effect of this book that it makes starting a business sound easy enough that you’d want to go out and start a company right away. Maybe I will …

This book consists of many wise quotes from Warren Buffet, the sage of Omaha. He practiced these principles that turned him into one of the richest (2nd) person in the world.

Warren practice buy and hold strategy. He would pick a stock and assume the stock market is going to be closed for 5 to 10 years. If it can pass this simple test, in other words, the business model is simple and predictable for the next 5 to 10 years, and the business is fairly priced like Disney, Coca Cola, Wrigley, and others, he would buy them at a fair price and hold them for ever (almost). “The business should be so simple that even a fool can run it because soon or later a fool will.” “Wall Street makes its money on activity. You make money on inactivity.”

You need to understand the business model of the company before you buy. Of course, by this standard, many of the technology companies, especially the Web 2.0 companies, would not cut it. The technology companies rely too much on the IP and knowledge of the workers and the business models are easily duplicatable if you can manage grabbing the talents from the market leaders.

Pick the right manager/CEO/owner with good integrity, and leave him/her alone to run the business. This may sound like a leap of faith, but it’s true that a few of the big companies (e.g. Enron, Tyco, and etc.) of the 90’s did not have the integrity and ended up driving the companies to the ground. Integrity is ingrained and not learned. “You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.” “In looking for someone to hire, you look for three things: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don’t have that the other qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.” “It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and 5 minutes to lose it. If you think about that, you will do things differently.”

The advise to the young people to work for companies with good business fundamental instead of the most up-and-coming is a sound advise. There are some technology companies that no longer hold the the competitive advantages, thus the good business fundamental to warrant consideration by the young employment seeker. A lot of times, I wonder if Sun Microsystems, Inc. has fallen into the same categories; its Sparc-system and Solaris no longer hold the monopoly in the internet age as it used to. Linux and x86 architecture have changed all that.

Warren makes a lot of decisions himself. Contrary to common belief, he doesn’t consult others. Of course, he has lots of practices and he keeps things simple enough that it’s hard to make the wrong decision. But I wonder if Warren Buffet’s investment method can continue to thrive like before. Currently, Yorkshire Hathaway is sitting on many billions of cash waiting to be deployed/invested. Many of the businesses these days have so many dimensions to them with the introduction of Internet. Newspaper, once a profitable and “simple” business, is on a rapid decline thanks to Internet. Things used to be simple is now more complicated. By his standard, no one should invest in technology companies like Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google and they would forgo a huge amount of profit. Will his investment method stand the test of time or his method is simply a set of trading rules good for just 50 years or so. Time will tell.

I re-listened to this audio book last month. The last time I read it, I didn’t review it so I didn’t quite remember what’s all about. It’s the problem if you don’t review it after reading a book.

In the beginning, the author talked about how good we are at thin slicing. Thin slicing what most of us do naturally and sometimes less input is better than more input as we often end up confusing noise with real data. From the statistician’s perspective, too many variables can confound/confuse a person in making a decision. Cutting down the variables can help clarify things better due to correlation among the variables (independent vs. dependent). I was especially impressed with a person in the story that can call if a tennis player is about to double fault before it happens. The “lightning dating” example, in which a couple is given 6 mins to “interview” one another before being moved to the next table was also interesting; I guess this is how “table for six” comes about. The author cited the subconscious mind – gut feel or rapid cognition is very powerful. Indeed, I think some people can pick up some of the clues not known to others. Is it experience, gut feeling or six sense or telepathy? Probably all of the above.

Thin slicing can work the opposite way to hurt us, for example, Pepsi challenge. I never knew that the fault of the Pepsi challenge lies in asking if a person selects a cola based on a sip test or a gulp (whole can) test. My MBA marketing class did not drill down to this detail (or I failed to learn it). Being a sweeter formula, Pepsi would fail a gulp test but win a sip test against Coke due to its sweeter formula. There is a “duration” dimension to enjoying too much of a good thing.

Someone can also take advantage of our thin slicing and manipulate to their benefit. The use of “priming” by politicians to win our votes are a classic example – coined as the Warren Harding Effect, referring to President Warren Harding’s being elected to the Senate and the President, because he “looks like one.” President Harding ended to be one the worst presidents according to the historians.

Can an intelligent person be oblivion to this kind of “blink” skill. The author made a case that an autistic person somehow miss a part of his brain function to read the body language, thus cannot pick up the subtle cue from people. So, picking up the body language including all the tiny muscles on our face or little gesture we made allow us to make blink decision. How we translate the body language in millisecond range is probably make a difference of life and death – like Ronald Reagan’s assassination and how a few cops in a urban city can mistake pulling a wallet to be pulling a gun and shot a young immigrant to death with ten’s of bullets – all within a minute, as told by the author.

The author went to great details about what each of the facial muscles do to tell us our mood and truths. There was a lot of technical details that were hard to digest. A good cartoon animator or a good poker player can probably pick it up really fast. It’s definitely a good skill to have so you can tell if a person is lying or telling a truth.

Overall, Gladwell tells good stories. There are lots of good stories that kept the readers interested throughout the book. But the abrupt ending makes the reader wanting for more or for a grand unified theory. There is none. Like many of the reviewer in Amazon said, some people are good at thin slicing and some people are not.

This book depicts a story of a woman, Lady Lu, in the 17th century of China who rose from a farm girl to a respected, proud and perhaps feared woman in the village and her strong relationship with her Laotong (old saint) – Snow Flower.

Some of the Chinese traditions in this era and in this geographic was not familiar to me, such as not moving into the husband’s household until the wife has given birth, the Laotong kind of sworn sisterhood from the young tender age, butcher’s being a the bottom of the social standing, having a different language among women, and etc.

The novel went to tremendous details of foot binding for women. This is rude awakening for me. I didn’t know how much pain and suffering the old Chinese tradition, dominated by men, inflicted on the women. It’s definitely a bum deal to be born in that era. The details of the foot binding reminds me of my grandmother who had gone through the same ordeal. I always wondered how the feet came about. Now I know.

As in many young women’s mind, the “bed business” is both a curious and anxious subject before they get married. In the traditional Chinese culture, the “bed business” is a tool to make boys; girls were the “worthless” branches. Women’s body is nothing but a vehicle to procreate and prolong the family name for man. Very little did we know that there is we inherit as much genes from our mother’s as our father’s. It’s too bad that Chinese culture emphasize men more than women. I believe someday they’ll wake up and find that having an unbalanced society is not healthy. What’s going to happen to those horny Chinese men who can not find their mates. Crimes and other unhealthy habits come to mind.

As a father of a 6-year daughter, I feel tremendous relieved that my daughter was born in this era and this country. It’s insane and outrageous to consider women less than men. I will raise my daughter to be as capable and independent as men with a strong pride.

The main character, Lady Lu, is very proud, perhaps through her own circumstance and luck, and at time time very controlling. Sometimes, we seem to think we know more about how best to behave and give our friends the same advises, when in fact our friends just need some empathy from us, as in the case of Snow Flower. The best way to resolve the issues is to give our best friends the unconditional love and be a good listener. Try not to change them. And ultimately, we need to seek forgiveness and make amends as Lady Lu finally did for Snow Flower.

The relationship between Lady Lu and Snow Flowers is an unusual one even by today’s standard. Having a soul mate, matched at 6 years old, and grow up together until death is quite unbelievable. How many of us, even excluding men, actually have such kind of friends nowadays? Perhaps, it’s only possible in that era.

Overall, the story is mesmerizing from the beginning to the end. The narrator of the audio version of the book was especially lively, mimicking all the voices from the kid voice to that of old women. It’s like having the individual characters telling their own stories. Excellent book.

Confronting the reality of new business model is the essence of this book.
A business model consists of 3 components:
1. External Realities: 1) Financial history of your industry, 2) Overall business environment, 3) Customer Base, 4) Root-cause analysis.
2. Financial Targets: 1) Operating margins, 2) Cash flow, 3) Capital Intensity, 4) Revenue Growth, 5) Return on investment.
3. Internal Activities: 1) Strategy, 2) Operations, 3) People, 4) Organization.
Harmonizing the three components by repeatedly reviewing them as you add new information, and analyzing the subsequent changes in relationships among them.

The author uses 3 technology companies as examples: EMC, Sun and Cisco. Of course, you can probably predict what the bad apple is among the 3. Sun, of course. The author cited Scott McNealy’s slow response to the structural change of the business model.

The authors also credited Nardelli for doing a banged up job at Home Depot in remaking Home Depot’s business model due to the rapidly dwindling cash position. He was able to centralizing purchasing to cut costs, improve the management quality, install the information systems needed to manage inventory more efficiently. Of course, this book came out before Nardelli was removed from Home Depot as the CEO. The stock price of Home Depot did not go up that much during his tenure but he seems to have kept up Home Depot’s competitive position against Lowe’s.

In looking around corners chapter, they go over the tools for staying ahead. Some ideas are interesting:
– Look for the customer chain: all the way to the end users.
– Converse with people from different parts of the business, at a trade show, or at lunch with a supplier.
– GE’s strategy sessions – look for external changes and issues that seem relevant for the future then discuss the strategy.

How to condition your culture for reality:
– Pick a initiative to mobilize the organization and lead an initiative by learning the guts of the initiative yourself and then invest your time and energy in the initiative.
– Pick the right people to implement the initiative.
– Be courageous.
– Changes in rewards can add muscle.

What stands out from this book is how easy it is to tell people to confront reality and respond to them. Sometimes, the consequence is so dire that one may need to go through the normal grief process just to achieve the transformation. Having worked at Sun during the last 13 years, I saw how Sun went through the transformation of the roller coaster ride. The elephant was in the living room, everyone saw it but nobody wanted to do anything about it because it takes courage from the top to make the change. Sun is changing the business model to embrace the open source strategy. Whether this change will save Sun or not, it remains to be seen.

Einstein, well known for Theory of Relativity, has a rather adventurous life. The following stand out for me:

– Not particular good at math but eventually warmed up to math because he needed to solve his physics problems. Very pragmatic.

– It helps to have a good sounding board like Michele Besso, his best friend, and his Olympiad group that allow all the great minds to debate and challenge one another. This may have contributed a great deal to his accomplishment.

– His relationship with his first wife, a fellow physics classmate, was all about his passion for the same subject. It’s like have a soul mate. She might have contributed to it by being his sounding board. He eventually divorced his first wife and gave all his Nobel prize winning to her and their two Children. His second child came down with mental illness. And his eventually married his cousin, who was more of his opposite, protector and business manager and left him pretty alone. Strange that a mature relationship tend to be a symbiosis-type.

– A general rebellious attitude toward establishment, Newtonian theory, prompted him to question and came up with the Theory of Relativity. Sometimes, it takes a rebel to make the paradigm shift.

– His appreciation for simplicity was out of his own belief that God would not make nature too complicated for man kind. This allowed him to put two and two together, combining EM wave theory with Newtonian Law. The example about the man in the train and the synchronicity of time and space is very brilliant. Of course, it helps to work in a patent office next to train station with a clock tower. It’s amazing how our environment plays a huge role in how we perceive the world.

– Of course, his rigid idea about how a grand unified theory should be able to explain the entire universe include quantum mechanics also pushed him to doubt the quantum mechanics as being incomplete and forced him to purse the unified theory until his death. Sometimes a certain way of thinking – like a business model – can help you to reach fame and can sink you at the end because you’re not able to adapt to a new model.

– Einstein, being born into Germany at its most turbulent time, has a great international perspective about the good and evil of mankind. His fear for the use of mass-destruction weapons prompted him to advocate mutual arm reduction among the superpower nations. His famous letter to Franklin Roosevelt resulted in the creation of the Manhattan project, the Atomic Bomb. Though he was wrong that German scientists were pursuing the same bomb, the end result is that it ended the world war in Asia and brought about the nuclear era.

– Einstein enjoyed his celebrity statute and yet lived a very simple life. He used his fame to advance his course including the establishment of Israel, after seeing first hand how his people was treated by Germen. And yet he was prophetic in his urge to live peacefully with Arabs or suffer the dire consequence.

Overall, I enjoyed listening to this abridged audio book. It’s fascinating to see how he arrived at all the theories – the bending of light due to gravity, general theory of relativity, and etc. It’s also comforting to see a great man so down to earth with all the same problems we have – relationship with spouses, children, colleagues, and the academia world. Too bad, he didn’t live long enough to see the how quantum mechanic has transformed the world as we know today w.r.t. to the internet and computer. It would be great if he can come up with the grand unified theory. But we’ll need to wait for the next Einstein…