Veeky Forums Book Club

What you reading Veeky Forums?

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I'm reading a couple things right now. Usually I have a couple books going both for work and pleasure. I'm reading some books on Linux and VOIP for work right now.

I just got The Rose That Grew From Concrete which is a book of poetry by Tupac, very excited to start reading this one. The other day I started The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. Amazing read so far. It's a little long but well written so I'm blowing through it.

Recently I finished Ireland by Frank Delaney, not bad for some light reading. Also the Face of Battle which was excellent if you like military history.

The title of that book sounds appealing.
What's it about, OP?

Honing your focus. Doing one thing to the best of your ability rather than several things adequately.

Sounds interesting, but is it good?

Yeah. It's made me think a lot. There's some good quotes from it here:

goodreads.com/work/quotes/22300682-the-one-thing-the-surprisingly-simple-truth-behind-extraordinary-result

I just watched a video summarizing the book, and apparently it's basically "go full autism on one thing because no one can excel at more than one thing".
I'm basically a diehard programmer and started College knowing more than most of my colleagues. I focused so much on my personal projects that I ended up failing a shitload of courses. I made some decent money, but totally not worth it.
I still think it's a good read, but I think I should find a different book.

Ben Graham's book The Interpretation of Financial Statements,

and Stephen Penman's Accounting for Value

Th hard thing about hard things

It's fundamentally opposed to the Glengarry Glenross view of selling.
An important thing it says is that going for the close can fuck you over later, because in B2B it stresses your relationships with clients and they won't buy from you again.

It also advocates speaking more, well "human" and specifically with potential clients, not:
>I sell robust video equipment
but instead
>My customers include documentary filmmakers and extreme sports videographers who need equipment that can survive lots of different and harsh environmental conditions and need their equipment to always be ready for the unexpected.

It's called "same side" because they are saying you should look at everything from your customers perspective, rather than just seeing a potential transaction.

It was really good I started reading this after Fox Bro started that thread, because a lot of the stuff overlaps.

Great read.

Read through those quotes.

But those quotes make it look awful. Aside from the quote about breaking down a 5 year plan into one thing, the first year into one thing... until it becomes what is the one thing you can do right now to achieve your goal.
I like that.

But other than that it just seems like motivational fluff.
How do I know what the ONE thing you need to do NOW is?
Those quotes talk a lot about how you have the same time as successful people, but says nothing about how I should spend that time:
>“They allow purpose to be the guiding force in determining the priority that drives their actions."
It sounds impressive, but what the fuck does that actually mean? Sounds like someone has zeroed in to an essence of success...but it doesn't tell you where to find that essence.

>It's called "same side" because they are saying you should look at everything from your customers perspective, rather than just seeing a potential transaction.
If you liked this I would recommend The Challenger Sale. Really changed my outlook for the better and I've improved since reading it.

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

Learning it for trading reasons and actually understand what economics is.

Reading a summary now. Seems pretty interesting, it's really pushing the notion that you have to really understand your client's business.

Also making yourself stand out from all the other suppliers, being unique -- and hopefully the "go to".

But what I find interesting is it reminds me a lot of the marketing industry and "creating problems where people didn't think there were any".

Pierre Bourdieu, Sur l'Etat, Cours au Collège de France 1989- 1992, Raisons d'agir/Le Seuil, Paris 2015

Seems like it could be really relevant to management/leadership and marketing.

Any points you've gleaned that you can relate directly to business?

Yeah, he has some interesting stats that show customers rarely make decisions on low price alone- and if they do, those aren't the kind of customers you want. Basically customers will be in the palm of your hand if you can really show that you understand them and give honest, valuable advice. You can open doors to new avenues of sales by knowing their business better than they do. For instance, I work for an IT consulting company. My boss has a ton of experience and has proven to our customers time and time again that he can make their businesses run better and more efficiently. So when he comes out of the blue and suggests something, they trust him and usually go for it. It's usually very hard to get your customers to think progressively rather than reactively- solving problems before they even arise. But it makes a lot of difference if you can do that, generating extra business and reputation for us.

Yeah the first half of what you've said really matches what I've read so far in Same Side Selling.

>solving problems before they even arise
That's a insight and way of thinking that can make you a huge amount of money.

Yep. Right now we are pushing for our customers to switch their servers onto the cloud and selling a lot of VOIP systems. These are things the client hasn't even considered- probably doesn't even know they exist. But we can come in and say look, we can save you xxx amount of money in the long term, we can make your company more flexible, we can enable you to grow and adapt way better than your competitors. Could they run a business with a server in the closet and traditional phone lines? Yeah, of course. But we make them see the extra value there, and then we charge them for the migration ;)

I'm reading Ben Graham's reprinted 1937 edition of The Interpretation of Financial Statements.

The 1964 edition is rare and expensive on amazon, if any burgers want to sell me a copy pls do

For this week:

"Think and Grow Rich" - Napoleon Hill
"Economics for Dummies"
"Mastering Bitcoin" - Andreas M. Antonopoulos
"The Intelligent Investor"

Last week I read:

"George Soros, Staying ahead of the Curve"
"The Engineer" - Erk Nordeus
"Strongman" - Angus Roxburgh
"The Everything Store - Jeff Bezos"

>"The Everything Store - Jeff Bezos"
How was that?

Very motivational !

I didn't even know he wrote a book, will definitely check it out. Very smart guy.

he didn't write it lol, it's just about him.

...

How the hell do you read 3 books a week? I do 3 weeks a book.

NEET

alibris.com

The crying of lot 49.

CFA level 1

This.

You can even enroll on Courseca for the course starting October.

How was the Soros one? Was it more of his philosophical mutterings or is it a book about his trades?

>or practising your skills, you should prioritize your skills.
So it's basically saying don't get distracted by trivial things?

Doesn't tell me which skills to prioritize, which opportunities to grab with two hands, or which ones may seem like they'll get me closer to that goal but will distract. If professional ascendancy is more important than skill development.

ANYWAY.

Anyone know any good books on marketing?
Particularly
-Anything that gets into advanced copywriting, I don't need to learn how to write, I need to learn how to write persuasively while maintaining concision

-Identifying target markets and segmenting demographics etc. etc.

-Personal Branding for creatives.

Haha! Yup. My phone takes pics over 4mb. And edititng is a bitch. Work at a quarry so essentially a dust manufacturing plant. It plays hell with my shit. The whole top right corner of my phone is clickproof until i take it apart and clean it tonight. Sry for the spam?

Bump for interest. What i serch for? Google is no help

Thanks user.

This one in particular is no joke though. Loopholes of real estate. I read slow and he uses big words so i read it twice. Its a dull read but informitive as fuck.

Here ya go user

youtube.com/watch?v=0wZapF3aoQU

>replying to an obvious facetious post
top kek when will you guys stop taking the b8? He literally said "It's made me think a lot."

Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty - Academic
Capitalism and Freedom - Milton Friedman - Academic
Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser - Applied
Flaws And Ceilings - Rachel Coyne - Academic
Freakonomics - Steven Levitt - Entertainment
Immigration Economics - George Borjas - Academic
Kicking Away The Ladder - Ha Joon Chang - Academic
Labor Economics - George Borjas - Academic
Mastering 'metrics - Joshus Angrist
Myth and Measurement - David Card - Metrics
NHS plc: The Privatisation of Our Health Care -Allyson Pollock - Applied
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money - John Maynard Keynes - Academic
The Road to Serfdom - F.A Hayek - Academic
The School Report - Nick Davies - Applied
The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford - Entertainment
Wealth, Poverty and politics - Thomas Sowell - Academic
Why The Allies Won - Richard Overy - Applied
23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism - Ha Joon Chang - Entertainment

Pretty much everything non-fiction i've read that i'd recommend to other people.

I only included Capital because of its supposed significance. All the empirical research (both methods and results) are brilliant, but the theories and conclusions he draws are pretty much wrong.

Labor economics is a textbook. Still a very good read.

Just started reading The Global Oil & Gas Industry by Inkpen.

Very interesting and entertaining book. It's a very well written account of one of the craziest things to happen in financial history. Literally everyone was involved somehow in this fucking deal. I would recommend it to anyone on Veeky Forums looking for some good leisure reading.