Newsletter 10/2 - American Robber Baron Revealed

Editor's Letter

This week we have new releases about robber barons from history, tools to better understand yourself and an important hot takeaway that’s immediately applicable. Best seller is less surprising, but still important. This week's marketing tip can be applied to Amazon sellers. Free book recommendation, a featured author, and a business show review we’re really excited about! We hope you enjoy and tell a friend to subscribe as well!

Editor in Chief Jack Thomas

New Releases

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American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune

You do not need to have a passion for history to enjoy this enthralling biography of one of Wall Street’s biggest rebels. In this book, you will meet some of Wall Street’s most notorious figures in a time characterized by outrageous lawlessness. Greg Steinmetz skillfully stitches the story of Jay Gould’s life with relevant context but without bogging the reader down with too many details.

Born into a working-class background, Gould instigated a meteoric rise to power via means that, while illegal now, was entirely lawful at the time. Through conscientious attention to detail, ruthless exploits, and single-minded pursuit of wealth, Gould became a railroad magnate and built a financial empire. Although it would be easy to vilify Gould, Steinmetz writes about both Gould’s strengths and weaknesses to illustrate his complex personality.

Serving as a cautionary tale, “American Rascal” is still relevant in today’s world. In learning about Wall Street before there were any restrictions, you will learn why they exist. By divorcing integrity from financial dealings, Gould illustrates why regulations are important.

The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team

From Patrick Lencioni, the author of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” comes a new book that will transform the way you see yourself, your teammates, and even your family. After completing a 10-minute assessment, you will discover the types of work you find fulfilling. You will also learn the types of work that are most likely to result in burnout.

Identifying your ideal working style is only the first step in this journey. As you read “The 6 Types of Working Genius,” you will begin to understand how each of the six types fits together to create a cohesive and productive team. Reading this book with your team, company, or family not only helps everyone understand where they fit but also learn to appreciate each member’s unique gifts.

To avoid the pitfalls of drier self-help books, “The 6 Types of Working Genius” is written in Lencioni’s trademark engaging narrative format. As the main character, Bull Brooks discovers the six types of working genius, you will too.

Hot Takeaway

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Parkinson's Law

Published in the 1950s, Parkinson's Law – “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion” remains as true today as it did when written. Anyone who faces mountains of work will be able to relate to this adage and learn how to conquer it. To free yourself from Parkinson's Law, however, you must first understand what makes it true.

In Parkinson’s original essay discussed in The Economist, mailing a postcard is used as an example. If you have all day to write and mail a postcard, it easily becomes an all-day chore consisting of a multitude of small decisions. A few of these might include which pen is used, which stamp is chosen, and whether or not to take an umbrella to the post office. However, if all the time you have for a task is a few minutes, that is when it will be completed.

One solution Parkinson offers is to hire assistants, although he shows how this can lead to more work as well as additional costs. Instead, try to identify the problem. In the postcard example, agonizing over small decisions eats up more time than necessary.

A concrete way to avoid this pitfall is to try giving yourself smaller time limits to complete each item on your to-do list. In fact, one of Parkinson’s later essays makes the argument that preventing stagnation can be done by setting challenging goals. Instead of allowing for four hours to complete a task, try getting it done in 30 minutes. Here is a list of the best goal setting tools and journals available.

Best Sellers

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Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

Does it feel like you keep setting goals, but not getting anywhere? In “Atomic Habits,” you will discover actionable strategies to help you build good habits that will, over the course of a lifetime, amount to incredible levels of success. In the book, James Clear teaches that goals focus on results while habits concentrate on your future identity.

Surprisingly, the key to success lies not in life-changing epiphanies or impeccably-worded goals, but, instead, in cultivating good habits. One of the first steps is to differentiate between your results, or what you have achieved, and who you want to become. Clear shows how developing the right systems for building good habits can truly change your life. To encourage effective habit building, he introduces four laws that are both easy to understand and memorable.

In order to fully unleash your potential, you will need to not only nurture your good habits but also banish your bad habits. Clear explains how this can be done via perseverance and by understanding that human behavior is a direct result of the environment. If you are ready to stop investing in short-term fixes and ready to begin a long-term remedy, “Atomic Habits” is a book you will want to read. By focusing on small changes every day for many years, you will reap vast benefits.

Marketing Tip

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Amazon Finally Allows Merchants To Send Marketing Emails To Customers

As announced by Amazon during the annual seller's conference, and reported on by Bloomberg, merchants from the United States can now send marketing emails to existing customers for free. That means not only high-spending customers but also recent or repeat customers will be receiving these emails. This new move gives merchants who have previously relied on Amazon's platform an opportunity to build a relationship with their customers. In effect, this makes it easier to convince them to keep on buying time and again. Something typically reserved for direct to consumer brands selling on their owned website.

Thus the introduction of this new way of direct messaging would enable the seller to avoid flying blind and get a better understanding of their clientele's needs. Sellers can now drive up their sales on amazon in a much more efficient manner. Email is the key to success for many digitally native products and typically represents 20-40% of top line revenue. That said, this is a big deal.

There is a fear, however, that this new system may lead to spam mail. We can only wait and see.

Free Books

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How to Market a Book: Overperform in a Crowded Market

From the co-founder of Reedsy, this book is a fantastic guide to all marketing options available in today’s technology-driven world. In this free download, you will learn how to implement time-saving marketing strategies that will give you more time to write. “How to Market a Book” acts as a map not only to marketing effectively but also to self-publishing success and financial security.

Written in an easy-to-understand conversational style, Ricardo Fayet’s data-driven explanations illustrate complex marketing topics. This book also explains why some marketing strategies are effective while some are not. Best of all, the approaches demonstrated in this free download show that marketing your book does not have to consume all your waking hours.

Beyond marketing strategies, this guide identifies all the major self-publishing platforms as well as explains their various benefits and disadvantages. From exploring Amazon’s inner workings to clarifying the most effective ways to run Facebook advertisements, you will learn the best practices to become a successful writer. For authors new to self-publishing in modern times, “How to Market a Book” even includes a guide to publishing on Kindle.

Although there is no secret recipe to achieving literary success, Fayet does share techniques supported by data that achieve commercial prosperity. Because every book is different, Fayet recommends implementing only the strategies that feel right for you.

Featured Author

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James P. Womack

Author and management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., is the founder and senior advisor of the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI). He is the author of The Lean Enterprise: How Today's Leading Companies Are Using Lean Principles to Create Radically Improved Value and a former partner at McKinsey & Company.
One of our most popular and most referenced reviews is Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. The ideas and stories told are very eya opening and actionable.

He is also the co-author of several international best-sellers, including The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production and his latest book, The Machine that Changed the World: Reengineering Work in America's Manufacturing Communities.

Business Show Review

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The Offer - It begins and ends with the mob.

When Albert S. Ruddy is approached by Paramount Studios chief Robert Evans to produce the 1972 adaptation of "The Godfather" book written by Mario Puzo and with Francis Ford Coppola directing, he didn't realize how many exciting and horrible changes it would make to his life.

Evans couldn't find anyone to agree to help with the film before Ruddy for good reason. The story of the making of the classic film about a New York Italian-American mob family's fight to retain power is nearly as shocking and thrilling as the one that eventually played out on the big screen.

Ruddy found himself desperately searching for a cast and navigating more than the complexity and drama associated with wheeling and dealing among circles of writers, actors and big Hollywood leaders. He also faced the daily terror of dealing with the real-life Colombo crime family that served as an inspiration for the book and who didn't want the movie made.

Series creator, Michael Tolkin, has developed a nail-biter mini-series and according to The Washington Post it began when Ruddy told him he felt like every day of work on the production was the "worse day in [his] life."

"The Offer," a 10-part mini series, tells the story of one of the greatest Hollywood movies that was almost never made. Numerous disruptions threatened the production, including continuous threats from the Colombo mafia whose members felt that it would portray Italian-Americans with hatred and prejudice.

This series is perfect for anyone who loves "The Godfather" in book or movie form or similar stories like "The Sopranos."

You can watch The Offer on Paramount+ Directly or through your Amazon Prime Account.

Magazine Article

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Harvard Business Review - Working Without a Deadline

Typically, a deadline is meant to show the importance and how urgent a task could be. It calls for priority toward a particular assignment. Unfortunately, most people mistake it (long deadlines) as an excuse to procrastination.
Working without a deadline appears an ineffective and unreliable way of approaching your tasks. Surprisingly, an article by Amy Meeker, a senior editor at Harvard Business Review, revealed how people finish their tasks soon enough when not given any deadline compared to when a deadline is issued.
The report further points at factors such as personal traits (present bias), individual interests, and gender and age to influence deadline significantly. Women are likely to work without a deadline and complete their tasks quickly compared to men. Additionally, the report shows, people between 36 and 65 need no deadlines to finish their assignments. On the contrary, youths may need a deadline to guide them through.

Present bias works differently in individuals. For some, it promotes the habit of procrastination, while for others, it cultivates a sense of urgency to a given task. Consequently, when a task serves our interests, we prioritize it. However, it becomes the least of our priorities when we feel it benefits someone else.
Generally, according to the article, omitting a deadline may be helpful compared to issuing a deadline. As long as an individual interest is met, working without a deadline works better. No deadlines create room for unknown consequences, creating fear, which naturally might make us finish our task soon enough.

Podcast

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The Story of How Airbnb Turned Hosts into Heroes

In this episode of Masters of Scale, Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, tells how his company turned hosts into heroes. He discusses some of the early challenges that they faced and how they were able to overcome them. He shares some valuable insights on scaling a company. Listeners will learn how to turn their customers into heroes when they listen to this episode.

He said it was difficult to find investors and get people to use their platform. They had to be creative to get people to try Airbnb. One of their earliest successes was when they offered free air mattresses to guests who used their service. This helped them to get more people to try their platform. They guarantee hosts will never be charged if a guest cancels their reservation. This has helped to build trust with their hosts.