By Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen’s Network

A new book titled Outwitting the Devil is the long-awaited sequel to bestselling phenomenon Think and Grow Rich.

Written by Napoleon Hill in the 1930s, the book was too controversial to release in its time. Bestselling author Sharon Lechter has recently had the daunting task of annotating the book (given to her exactly as the author had left the manuscript 80+years ago) and working to make the important messages relevant to today.

And, she’s done a stellar job. The book is timely, easy to follow and contains poignant messages.

I read Outwitting the Devil in preparation for an interview with Sharon for the Australian Businesswomen’s Networks podcast series, herBusiness.

The interview, and the book, examine the greatest obstacles we face in reaching potential goals: fear, procrastination, anger and jealousy, as tools of the Devil (which is the way the author described them).

herBusiness podcast interview

Over 30 minutes, you can listen to Sharon tell us first hand:

• How fear, worry, doubt and indecision work against us
• Why victory goes to the people who know what they want and are determined to have it
• What the author discovered in his darkest moments that he turned around to achieve great success

I really enjoyed interviewing Sharon for this podcast. Take a listen in one of two ways:

Listen to this episode on our website.

Listen to this on your MP3 player, by downloading it from iTunes.

Purchase the Book

If you’d like to get a copy of the book, you can order it from Booktopia.

I’m a bit of a podcast addict. I love to listen to them while I drive or while I’m doing things around the house. It’s a great way to learn on the go.

Here’s a look at the library of podcasts we’ve created for you over the last year. Topics include small business, marketing, social media, interviews with authors. It’s all here on our website.

By Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen’s Network

I’ve done a lot of reading this year. I’m a bit of a business bookworm. When others are deep in novels, I’m scouring the (virtual) bookshelves for what’s new in business books.

This year, in preparation for the BOOKED for Lunch webinar series where I interview top business book authors, I had the divine pleasure of reading and enjoying what I deem some of this year’s BEST books for business.

Here are the 10 books we featured this year.  They’re not in order of preference. I recommend you add them all to your library.

You can access the recordings of the interviews in the Australian Businesswomen’s Network’s online store.

Launch: How to quickly propel your business beyond the competition – Michael Stelzner

“Any business can defy gravity, especially in this uncertain economy,” says Michael Stelzner about his new book, Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition. Launch contains a proven roadmap for any business, large or small, seeking to launch an effective growth strategy with content marketing. You can instantly download the first chapter (no registration required) at www.elevationprinciple.com.

— The ABN’s advisory board is reading this over the holidays so that we can use the great information strategically in the new year

Enchantment: Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions – Guy Kawasaki

Enchantment is Guy’s tenth book. In it, he explains how to influence what people will do while maintaining the highest standards of ethics. The book explains when and why enchantment is necessary and then the pillars of enchantment: likability, trustworthiness and a great cause. The topics are launching, overcoming resistance, making enchantment endure and using technology. There are even special chapters dedicated to enchanting your employees and your boss.

– Guy was such a charm to work with. Funny and easy going. He presented a second webinar with us ‘How to enchant with social media” which you’ll also find in our store.

Content Rules – Ann Handley and CC Chapman

Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other publishing platforms are giving everyone a “voice,” including organisations and their customers. So how do you create the bold stories, videos and blog posts that cultivate fans, arouse passion for your products or services and ignite your business? How do you attract the right audience? How do you create content that converts? What is the best way the most popular tools to get the greatest results?

– If you publish tweets, Facebook updates, a blog, a newsletter – anything, really then content can be your friend or enemy. No business today can get away with shoddy content and this book walks you through what you need to know.

Suzi Dafnis and Ann Handley

The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and more Social — Jay Baer and Amber Naslund

This book isn’t about how to “do” social media. Instead, The NOW Revolution outlines how you must retool your organisation to make real-time business work for you rather than against you. Read about seven shifts that will help you make your company faster, smarter, and more social:

• Engineer a New Bedrock
• Find Talent You Can Trust
• Organise your Armies
• Answer the New Telephone
• Emphasise Response-Ability
• Build a Fire Extinguisher
• Make a Calculator

The NOW Revolution is pushing you to adapt the way you do business, from the inside out. It impacts your organisation culturally, operationally and functionally. This book is your guide to making the changes you need and to harnessing the potential of this new communication era.

— Amber was so generous with her information and provided easy to implement tips. It’s so seldom we get women business authors that we were thrilled when she agreed to be interviewed.

Niche – James Harkin

Our cultural consumption is no longer controlled by the giants of the mainstream market. Many giants have become weak and defensive – hovering around the middle of the market and striking out wildly in search of new audiences. In Niche, James Harkin explains that no size fits all and that anyone who tries to be all things to everyone ends up as nothing to anyone.

James argues that innovation and profitability are quietly moving from the middle of the market to a series of tightly defined but globally scattered niches, bound together by the reach of the net.

— James joined us from the UK (it was about 6am local time) and we had a lot of fun on this interview.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies — Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li

Corporate executives struggle to harness the power of social technologies. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube are where customers discuss products and companies, write their own news and find their own deals, but how do you integrate these activities into your broader marketing efforts? It’s an unstoppable groundswell that affects every industry yet it’s still utterly foreign to most companies running things now.

— Josh knows this area SO well. We were delighted to have him tell us how the book was more relevant now than when the original edition was published a couple of years ago.

Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything

In Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything, Chris Brogan guides you through using Google+ for promotion, customer service, community building, referrals, collaboration and a whole lot more. You won’t just master innovative new tools like Circles and Hangouts; You’ll use them to generate more customers and more cash!

— We held this event just before the book was due to launch. Google+ hadn’t yet launched pages for businesses. Chris gave us a your of the new social network and we taught him a little about Australian music.

Predictable Success — Les McKeown

If you own, manage or work for any kind of organisation, you have one goal above all else – success. And not just occasional, elusive or temporary success.

You’re looking for:

• Success that you understand and can control
• Success you can maintain indefinitely
• Success you can replicate
• Success you can scale
• Success that isn’t dependent on you alone

In short, you’re looking for Predictable Success.

— Les’ Scottish humour went down a treat with the Australian audience. The book was recommended to us by member Alycia Edgar. It really made me think about the stage of business we are in and what to do to stay at the peak part of Les’s Predictable Success model.

We First : How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World – Simon Mainwaring

Is technology teaching us to be more human? Could the future of profit actually be purpose? A social media expert with global experience with many of the world’s biggest brands, including Nike, Toyota and Motorola, Simon Mainwaring offers a visionary new practice in which brands leverage social media to earn consumer goodwill, loyalty and profit, while creating a third pillar of sustainable social change through conscious contributions from customer purchases.

— I met Simon in the US earlier this year. A fellow Aussie living in the US he’s nailed the fact that those that will win in the future of business are those that make a contribution to more than their customers and shareholders. We can all learn from the messages in this book.

A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crowdsourcing — Aliza Sherman

If two heads are better than one, then imagine how great 200 or 2,000 or 20,000 could be for helping you get something done. That’s the potential power of crowdsourcing – tapping into the global talent pool and using an “open source” approach to bringing in more people to participate together to reach a common goal. the book looks at all the tools you’ll need to begin crowdsourcing, how to define your goals and target different crowds, how to design the best project or campaign to share, how to organise and analyse the input you receive from the crowd to get results and how to apply the crowd’s output directly to your business

— Aliza is known as a web pioneer and social media innovator. We’ve caught up in the US the last two years and she’s very committed to supporting women to understand and make use of technology. I applaud her efforts.

Aliza Sherman (left) and Suzi Dafnis

If I’m honest, more times than not I crammed the reading into the days before the interview reading or rereading to prepare sensible questions.

The winner in the equation was me.  I’ve been the recipient of the best business education money can buy.

I trust those that listened in to the webinars also felt like they’d received a gift of education from these talented and generous authors. And, that the authors themselves derived a sense of satisfaction from having their book featured to our national community of inspiring businesswomen.

I hope you’ll take my recommendation and get a hold of these books. I also recommend you take a listen to the webinar recordings.

9,200+ people registered for the BOOKED for Lunch series during 2011. We’ll kick off the 2012 season of BOOKED for Lunch webinars in February, so join our eMail list to be notified of the next great business book we’ll be profiling.

What books rocked your year?

MORE GREAT BLOG POSTS BY SUZI DAFNIS

• How to Use Social Media for Business Research
• How to get Everything Done Before Christmas
• How Guy Kawasaki Enchanted Me

By Yvette Vignando, www.happychild.com.au

About 11 years ago, I changed careers from lawyer to executive coach and now also publisher of a parenting site. I still have a deep interest in the law and social justice issues, but one of the benefits of the career change was that my reading became more diverse and interesting. Much of the reading material for lawyers is fairly dry and prescriptive – but when I moved into the area of personal and professional development, I found there were thousands of fascinating books to read – and of course, not enough time to read them all. To help me sift through the many books available, I’m always looking for other people’s recommendations for business development books that have helped their business or changed their point of view.

When I go to conferences and presentations, one of my favourite questions to ask successful business people is – what are your favourite business books? Then, I go online to find the best prices, order a few and stack them up beside the bed in the book avalanche to read in between novels and magazines.

I’m going to give you a one sentence description of five books that I have found useful or inspiring – I hope one of them does something special for you. They are not my top five books, but rather a diverse selection of interesting references. Importantly, I am asking you to please also share a book of your own with ABN blog readers, along with a one or two sentence description.

1. Small Business, Big Brand by Carolyn Stafford

   A small book packed with big practical ideas that anyone can implement straight away to build their brand presence without a large financial investment.

2. YouTube for Business; Online Video Marketing for Any Business by Michael Miller

   Ideal for anyone needing a comprehensive overview of the features of YouTube for marketing, including helpful screenshots and links and how to make YouTube work with your website.

   Available from Booktopia, 40% off the retail price.

3. The Profit Principle by Peter Fritz and Jeanne-Vida Douglas

   Reviewed before on this blog, this is an inspirational and mentoring-style read that gives entrepreneurs plenty of food for thought about how they are approaching their business development.

   Available from Booktopia, 19% off the retail price.

4. I Want What She’s Having by Naomi Simson

   Business biography by the highly successful founder of Red Balloon Days, recounting the inevitable ups and downs of starting an online business with a small investment and from a home office; a story of determination and never giving up.

5. The Other 90%; How to Unlock Your Vast Potential for Leadership & Life by Robert Cooper

   A book to go back to over and over again, totally inspirational stories and explanations about increasing our emotional energy, creativity and performance by tapping into our ‘hidden capacity’ – turning a vision into a reality.

   Available from Booktopia, 40% off the retail price.

Please share one of your recommendations with readers, and with me.

By the way, you may also like to read Suzi Dafnis’ post “My Top Five Books from 2009” for more recommendations.

MORE GREAT BLOG POSTS BY YVETTE VIGNANDO

• Starting a Business – What Do You Want to Know?
• Overwhelmed by Your Own Deadlines? Think Again.
• Blogging for Startups – Do You Blog?

In preparation for my interview with Guy Kawasaki, author of numerous book, his latest being Enchantment – The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, I’ve been reviewing the book and writing my questions.

In reviewing the key areas of the book I’m thrilled to be able to ask Guy first hand:

• How do we become more enchanting (likable, trustworthy, engaging and ethically influential)?
• How do we enchant while maintaining our integrity and a good sense of self (smarmy influences irk me as I’m sure they irk you!)
• What technology tools can we use to make this job easier. (I know that now, more than ever we have access to free communication tools – so how do we use them to enchant and not repel our audience?

There’s a whole lot more that we’ll talk about – including how he ended up having Richard Branson shining his shoes!

And, we’ll have a LIVE Q&A so that you can ask Guy your questions too!

Join us today, 30 June, at 12.00pm AEST.

You can register here. It’s free.

Today’s interview is part of the BOOKED for Lunch series. BOOKED for Lunch are free lunch time webinars with the world’s leading business book authors and thinkers – brought to you by Citrix GoToWebinar and the Australian Businesswomen’s Network.

Today’s webinar is also supported by Dynamic Business Magazine, Australia’s leading magazine for small business.

By Suzi Dafnis

Amber Naslund is the coauthor of The NOW Revolution – 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social. Amber gave a presentation at the Day Stage at South By South West in Austin.

This audio is that an excerpt of that session. Turn up the sound after my introduction for best listening.

In this audio she talks about the fact that there are many books about how to use social media, so what she and her coauthor Jay Baer wanted to create with The NOW Revolution was an operational manual for companies to figure out how to adapt the inside of their business to what social media is doing.

Amber and Jay are our guests on BOOKED for Lunch on 12 April. Learn more about this free webinar here. I hope you’ll join us.

Suzi

By Suzi Dafnis

David Meerman Scott (coauthor of numerous marketing bestsellers including “New Rules for Marketing & PR“) was at South By South West Interactive giving a talk about his book, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.

In this brief clip he shares his message and a message from his coauthor, Brian Halligan (Hubspot) about the power of doing what you love.

FREE WEBINAR WITH DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT AND BRIAN HALLIGAN
David and Brian were our guests in 2010 on the BOOKED for Lunch webinar series.

You can watch the one-hour webinar NOW free at our website.

ABOUT “MARKETING LESSONS FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD”
What can internet marketers learn from cultural icon and American jam band, the Grateful Dead? The Grateful Dead is a great case study in contrarian marketing. Their marketing innovations spurred from doing the opposite of what other bands (and record labels) were doing at that time. Starting in the internet-free 1960s, the Grateful Dead pioneered social media and inbound marketing concepts that businesses of all industries still use today.

Ahead of their time, they believed in “freemium” content and created a huge network of people who recorded and traded tapes. They focused on cultivating a dedicated and vocal community that drove millions of fans to the band’s live shows for over thirty years, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Today’s companies using social media can still learn from their success.

ORDER YOUR COPY OF “MARKETING LESSONS FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD”
Order your copy of Marketing Lesson from the Grateful Dead from Booktopia and save.

REFERENCES:

BOOKED for Lunch are free webinars with the world’s leading business book authors and thinkers, presented by the Australian Businesswomen’s Network and Citrix GoToWebinar. Check out which author is being featured next.

By Julie Wise, The Silver Owl

I have a list of books that I aim to re-read every year.  One of these is Napoleon Hill’s best-selling all time classic - Think and Grow Rich.

Napoleon Hill, poised this question in this book.  The concept is simple and powerful – to be successful you need to have your own group of advisors or people in your immediate circle that play an integral role in your development and success.

Companies have Boards of Directors, whose primary role is to ensure the company is moving in the right direction and is well governed, fill this role and they hold the CEO and Executive Management accountable.

What about you the small business owner?  Who do you turn to when you want advice or need help with a business problem? In other words, who sits at your table?

Working as a solo or with a small team,  we become isolated and we often fall prey to that great enemy of success -  the line of thinking that what worked in the past or is working now will continue to work in the future.

We all need people to bounce ideas off of, who can hold us accountable when we set our goals and who will speak the truth when its needed.    The tricky part is who should receive an invitation to sit at your table?

Who you select is critical as you are not looking for fans but rather those who will not be afraid of telling you what you may not want to hear.  Your personal group of advisors should be divided into two categories; “Invisible and Visible Advisors”.

Invisible Advisors are those who you don’t have a personal relationship with but are fed by them in other ways. Examples of these would be authors, speakers, business leaders, etc.

Visible Advisors are those who can actually sit at your table with you. Some examples of these would be mentors, friends, co-workers, people referred to you etc.

If you already have your table of advisors organised and you trust and can rely on then you are on the path to success.   If not, according to Napoleon Hill it may have to do with whether you’re ready for it or not. ”Psychologists have correctly said that ‘when one is truly ready for a thing, it puts in its appearance.’”

Are you ready to write those invitations?

MORE GREAT POSTS BY JULIE WISE

• A Picture is Worth 1000 Words
• Tis the Season To…
• Are You a Good Conductor For Your Business?

By Yvette Vignando

When Jeanne-Vida Douglas told me she had just about finished writing a business book with her co-author Peter Fritz, I confess I wondered what new angle could possibly be taken on the well-covered subject of running your own business. I’m careful about which business books I buy, wary of those writers who use the book-writing gig only to raise their own profile without sharing anything new.

However, I knew Jeanne to be a superb journalist, and I knew that working at BRW would have given her exposure to a richness of business stories to draw on. What I found out when I read The Profit Principle, is that her co-author Peter Fritz, in whose voice the book is written, also carries with him a richness of experience and so much sound guidance for entrepreneurs.

The Profit Principle is written in a straightforward tone with each chapter focused on principles that underpin the success of a business. If you like bullet-pointed lists of what to do and organisational charts then this book would not be for you. But if you like the idea of sitting down with an experienced mentor who can pass on knowledge about the foundations of a successful business, then that’s the feeling and value you’ll get from this book.

Anecdotes about entrepreneurs and various business deals illustrate each of the chapters’ themes and every now and again the book treats the reader to a personal letter “from Peter Fritz to Peter Fritz”. These letters are written by the older Peter to his younger self at various stages of his business life.  At first I found the letters a bit of an artificial device but then I started to look forward to reading them through the book, as if I was being given a privileged insight into Peter’s life and thoughts that would usually be reserved for his children.

Chapters in The Profit Principle include: ‘The First Product is You’, ‘Perfection is the Enemy of Progress’ and ‘How to Be Big Without Being Big’. The chapter that really spoke to me right now was ‘Don’t Fall Into the Investment Trap’ which is full of realistic guidance and starts with this idea: “You’ve got customer, partner, corporate memory, business plans and low-risk approaches to business all covered. I can almost hear that little voice inside your head saying ‘It’s all well and good to talk about mitigating risk and looking for partners, but if only I had a big chunk of cash I could get my business idea off the ground’. Most people think like this and wait for years to get the investment they think they need to start the business of their dreams. This is all wrong.”

The book was so digestible that I read it within a couple of days (I am a fast reader) but also so useful that I intend to re-read the book this month. The second time I read it I will have my highlighter and PC available to note down some pieces of wisdom that I’d like to remind myself to be aware of as I continue to develop my online business.

As I read through The Profit Principle, I felt as if the authors were subtly directing their advice to me in particular! So many of the chapters in the book address themes in business development that I am currently confronting; themes such as negotiation, the value of partnerships and not investing too much before you are assured of customers and some income.

I would recommend this book to every start-up entrepreneur and to any business person who’s looking for a wise, experienced and personal reminder of the fundamental principles behind growing a successful business. Apparently the book was written largely through meetings between Jeanne and Peter at cafés.  By the end of the book I found myself wishing I could sit down at a café with Peter and download even more information. I suspect both Jeanne and Peter have much more to share.

Buy The Profit Principle at Booktopia and Save

MORE GREAT BLOG POSTS BY YVETTE VIGNANDO

• Delegation for Small Business – A Necessary Investment
• Business Continuity Plan for Home Based Business
• Can a Mumpreneur Really Crush It? 5 Tips to Myself.

How do you apply the time-proven strategies of guerrilla marketing to the new media landscape? How do you measure your social media results? Why should you social media be part of an integrated plan, and just how DO you put together a social media plan that is true guerilla-style, and produces results.

Today at 12.00pm AEST Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of Guerrilla Marketing and his co author Shane Gibson are my guests on BOOKED for Lunch. BOOKED for Lunch are free lunch-time webinars with the world’s leading business book authors and thinkers.

During the webinar we’ll look at how to apply social media in an innovative, guerrilla fashion, to target and listen to what the author calls “nano-tribes” and communities.

We’ll also look at the often-asked question – of how do you measure the ROI of your Social Media.

“Guerrilla Marketing is about achieving conventional goals using unconventional methods. Today, more than any other time in history we have an almost limitless arsenal of free to nearly free marketing tools at our fingertips. These tools are the new media marketing tools called social media.” - Jay Conrad Levinson

I’m very excited about this webinar. The subjects (guerrilla marketing and social media) are personal favourites, passions, in fact.

Plus I’ve been a big fan Jay Conrad Levinson’s work for many, many years.

Join me today at 12.00pm AEST for BOOKED for Lunch. You can register on our website.

BOOKED for Lunch is brought to you by Citrix GotoWebinar and the Australian Businesswomen’s Neteotk.

In his new book,Why People Fail, Siimon Reynolds addresses 16 obstacles to success and how to overcome them.

I’d like to look at the 5th obstacle to success that Siimon has identified in Why People Fail.

That obstacle is Weak Energy.

More often than not, success takes lots of energy and hard work. I haven’t met a successful person yet who hasn’t put in the hours.

Energy is really important to success. And, while some of say that we are all about high performance, we don’t give ourselves a real chance to succeed because we don’t do what it takes to support our body and mind to perform at their optimum.

In chapter 5 Siimon looks at the role of your environment, sleep, diet and exercise. What has all this got to do with success? Well, as many of us know unless you take care of some of these elements, you can have all the intentions in the world, but no energy to make things happen.

In this chapter we look at the elements that have an impact on your mood, your well being and your energy.

On the 18th of May, Siimon is my guest on BOOKED for Lunch.

BOOKED for Lunch webinars are free and brought to you by the Australian Businesswomen’s Network and GotoWebinar – Webinars made easy.

Register for BOOKED for Lunch with Siimon Reynolds on our website, or call us on 1300 720 120.

I hope you’ll join me.

Suzi

Related Posts

• Why People Fail: Obstacle 1 — Unclear Purpose
• Why People Fail: Obstacle 2 — Destructive Thinking
• Why People Fail: Obstacle 3 — Low Productivity
• Why People Fail: Obstacle 4 — Fixed Mindset