Self development book reviews

I’ve been reading a couple of self development books that I was given for Christmas, so I thought I would review a couple here.

The 4-hour work week – Tim Ferris

What it’s about: The 4 hour work week opens up a new perspective on life and work. Tim Ferris recommends streamlining your life, eliminating unnecessary tasks, outsourcing necessary tasks and then travelling the world.

What I got out of this book: The chapter on his business model was the most intriguing to me.
In it he explains his criteria for a business that can run itself (or a musing, as he calls it). He then goes on to explain how to create a product, structure it, advertise it, and make it successfull.

I also really liked the part about virtual assistants, and streamlining tasks such as phone calls, meetings and emails.

What made me wary: Tim makes a lot of assumptions in this book, and every now and then he strikes me as a smart guy who followed his whim who happened to stumble onto a profitable business. I have friends who I would describe the same way that Tim describes himself, and it makes me think that for every guy like Tim who becomes successful by following his whim, there are probably 20 others who think the same way but just couldn’t catch a break.

Web design business kit – Brendon Sinclair

Having forked out the almost $400 AUD and set aside the time to read this book, I can safely say that this is without a doubt the best $400 my business has ever spent. The experience Brendon has that he imparts through this book is absolutely invaluable. Most of it relates to something very simple – how to better serve the customer. Because in the end, that’s what business needs to do!

What I got out of this book: Since reading this book I have setup and documented systems for all the major processes in my business, basing them on the templates in the kit, and editing them to suit my business. That alone is easily worth the money.

This book got me to asking myself questions about the way I do things, and can I do them better. 

What made me wary: Whilst the kit has been updated since it was made in 2004, and although a lot of the information is timeless, parts of the book (especially those directly related to actual website development) is a bit dated and not relevant.

This kit is available from sitepoint, and cost $247 USD. People may also find Brendon’s website, Tailored, interesting.

Bag the elephant! How to win and keep big customers – Steve Kaplan

The title is pretty self explanatory here. The book demonstrated how big customers (elephants) can produce sustained growth for a business.

What I got out of the book: It’s always great to get a perspective from someone who has been very successful. Whilst my business is still too small to directly relate to this book, I did gain a lot of insight as to how big businesses operate and how they can be navigated.

What made me wary: The book was a bit on the dry side, however apart from that I don’t really know enough about the subject to give any meaningful criticisms.

Summary

Those are my book reviews for now, I’ve been reading other books as well, and have still got more books to go through (since uninstalling my computer games I’ve been on a massive read-a-thon), so there’s a pretty good chance I’ll do another of these posts in the future.

Related posts:

• Recent reading: Thoughts on “Rework” and “Click”
• How to never miss a lead and always get paid on time
• The two to-dos system for organizing tasks and being productive
• Review: The Web Design Business Kit
• 9 Web Design tips that make websites sell