BOOK REVIEW: Captivate - The science of succeeding with people, by Vanessa Van Edwards 🏆📈 One of the well known statistics for career success is that up to 85% comes from well developed people skills, with only 15% coming from technical knowledge. 🤯 Yes you need the technical skill to reach the minimum entry requirements for your role, but once in the job, it is excellent people skills that will see you rise to the top! 💡 Within her book, Vanessa breaks down the levels of

🏆 One of the most important challenges in life is what goes on between your ears and fighting the constant battle. 🧐 This is something everyone struggles with, so learning tools and techniques around mindset can have a profound impact on your life, especially in business. 📈 Within the book Ryan goes into great detail, but in a very easy-to-read style and format, sharing examples from history and #Stoic principles, tools and techniques to help overcome adversity and strife.

Seth Godin's Purple Cow is one of the classic must read business titles. Although first released in 2003, the insights are true now more than ever. 🏆 The book is short and sweet, giving just enough to get the point across and nothing more (just like this review). 10/10! #marketing #sethgodin #purplecow #bookreview

After recently finishing Tim's first book Relentless (review link below) WINNING is Tim's follow up about the mindset of elite performers he dealt with during his impressive career. As with his first book this mostly revolves around basketball (in particular Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant) which is great for me as a basketball coach and player, but won't be to everyone's taste. The main crux of the 227 pages was the win-at-all-costs mentality to always be looking for the thin

Relentless is a book about mindset. Many of the examples in the book are taken from Tim’s experience of being a high level athletic and mindset trainer for the NBA, with notable clients being Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant - two of the highest skilled players the game has ever seen. Both were successful not only for their skill set but also their stop-at-nothing mindset. The book was broken down into 13 chapters, all numbered #1 as Tim believes they’re all equally important.

BOOK REVIEW: The book Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler promises big things over it's circa 200 pages. As the tagline says "Turn your business into a sales machine with the $100m best practises of Salesforce.com". 🤯 🤔 In practise the book falls down on several points: The main learning from the book is that short emails work best, with each containing no more than one question / required response. 👍🏻 The author describes a system (using Salesforce's auto

Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort details the 'Straight Line Sales System' made famous by Jordan during the film Wolf of Wall Street. 🐺🐺🐺 The film details the rise and later fall of Jordan as he developed one of the craziest sales teams on Wall Street. The Straight Line Sales System is how Jordan taught a team of novices to close investors over the phone. 📈 The book has some great content, but could fall into the category of the high-pressure-sale strategies of the 80's

BOOK REVIEW: It's rare that I give such high praise but 'Born a Crime' by Trevor Noah is one of the best books I have read in years. 🇿🇦 🥇 The book covers the early years of Trevor's life growing up in pre and post-apartheid South Africa, but also explores a range of difficult topics including race, identity, poverty and domestic abuse with incredible candour and sensitivity. Trevor's incredible wit translates into incredible writing and a strong narrative throughout is his

BOOK REVIEW: In wanting to learn more about leadership and different leadership styles from people you admire, the book Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson stood out. ⚽️🏆🤔 Although not a huge football fan, I still know that for anyone to be at the top of their game in any profession for so long they need to know what they're talking about, especially in something as competitive as professional sports I wanted to see if there was something I could learn. 📈 The first 343 pages cove

BOOK REVIEW: ‘This is Marketing’ by Seth Godin is one of the most universally celebrated books on business brand positioning in modern times. The biggest failure of marketing is, by its own admission, the failure to explain marketing. To many, marketing is flyers, trade stands, brochures and a bit of digital. To others, marketing is everything in relation to your business and where it sits in the world. What Seth Godin does brilliantly is explain this, but also provide tools

BOOK REVIEW: ALCHEMY by Rory Sutherland is a book about creating magic. It is creating value for the customer and using clever marketing and understanding of real human behaviour to give your product or service an advantage in the marketplace. 🔮🤯📈 The book's core competence relates to behavioral science and it is structured into around 100 short essays of 1-6 pages each. Due to this format it took much longer than expected to work through the 360 pages as I struggled to ga

[BOOK REVIEW] "Break Point" by Ollie Ollerton was a fascinating page turner from one of the Directing Staff (DS) from the hit UK TV show SAS: Who Dares Wins, but also brings with it some great messages I took inspiration and heart from, learning from his experience in the military and special forces. Ollie goes into his back story of growing up, getting into scrapes with the law and some traumatic events which (in hindsight) helped him find his eventual path of self fulfillme

[BOOK REVIEW] "Scaling up" by Verne Harnish is a really good book. So good in fact there are consultants who build their entire consulting business around it (via the franchise that sits behind it). When setting up on my own, credit where it's due, I did my homework and researched all of my competitors systems and the Gazelles system is one of the best. Over the course of 246 pages the book is actually set very similar to the Growth Strategy Roadmap™ with the mix of case stud

[BOOK REVIEW] "Obviously Awesome" by April Dunford is a book aimed at marketers who want to gain a better understanding on how you can pitch a product or service to maximise its potential. Good positioning dictates the price customers are happy to pay, what features they expect and who they see as your competition. 🤔 An example I've given before: Casio and Rolex are both watchmakers, but position themselves very differently. If you launch a new watch brand and position yours

"What it Takes" by Stephen A. Schwarzman is an autobiography littered with anecdotes and lessons learned from one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs which inspire and provokes, but which forms a fabulous story worth reading. For some reason it really resonated with me... "Born into a working class family, Steve worked hard and throughout his early career progressed well based on his talent for spotting and solving problems, his love of working with people and build

For most of my life I have found my mentors in books and film and music with people who I have never met, but whom I learn from their experience and put myself into their words in the hope to gain wisdom, experience or knowledge. Letter To My Daughter is a book by Dr Angelou to the daughter she never had, sharing stories from her life which impart wisdom in a way without judging or preaching, but with a humility and intelligence which is rare. Within the hour it took me to fi

"Behind the Mask" by Tyson Fury follows his incredible life story from early years in the Travelling community, experiencing abuse and discrimination based on his heritage, to walking through his first 31 years with incredible candour. The book is a 50/50 split between boxing and his life story, and the honesty in which he speaks about mental health and overcoming personal challenges is humbling. As a long time fan of boxing I thought I knew the man, however he really does co

[BOOK REVIEW] "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell follows the trend of his other books on being half general-interest and half history-lesson. The main takeaways: ❥ The main wealth creation in the past 200 years has come in distinct eras - e.g. US industrialisation; the age of the PC; Wall Street; and later Silicon Valley and the internet. When this happened it was the right people at the right time with the right skills, who made the big gains. ❥ Being smart alone and having a hi

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Put simply this is one of the most inspiring, educational and fascinating business books I have ever read. 10/10. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'The Ride of a Lifetime' by Robert Iger is a fascinating insight into one man's career from humble beginnings all the way through to running the most famous company in the world. It covers getting his first break, pressure and expectation, global disruption, Steve Jobs, LucasFilm, the streaming wars, corporate politics, success, failure, innovation and

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is a book based around why certain things 'tip' into going viral. Well written with a huge body of evidence behind it, Gladwell ticks all of the boxes in explaining strange phenomena and the real and sometimes surprising things which cause them - very similar to Freakonomics, if you have read that. 🤔 One takeaway is that you can make real and sustainable change within your business through enforcing the small things. They discuss how New