Readings of 2014, February Edition, Part 3

This edition will wrap up my reading list in February, and these 3 were quite the intellectual and motivational doozies.

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicolas Taleb:

Unfathomable events happen year after year on a macro scale, and day after day on a micro scale : dawn of the internet, popping of the dot com bubble, September 11th, and children being diagnosed with cancer. These are all instances of Black Swans.

Nassim Nicolas Taleb is very familiar with Black Swans, he cut his teeth as a young New York trader and made his(and seen many others lose their), as he calls it,  "F*ck you" money from the large scale Black Swans that occur on Wall Street. Unfortunately, he is also familiar with the smaller scale Black Swans: he was diagnosed with throat cancer as a young man... and didn't smoke.

Most of the book is spent on showing distinctions between "Mediocristan", where Black Swans are non-factors(height, weight), and "Extremistan", where the Black Swans exist(income). Additionally, he reinforces the need to guard against the negative Black Swans and to put yourself into a position where you are will be in the best position to come across the positive ones.

I would definitely recommend this book, it is far from an easy read, but I definitely feel like it was worth the effort.

Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie:

The (former) serial entrepreneur, Blake Mycoskie, finally started something that matters when he started TOMS. He realized that there are many, many kids walking around without shoes, and that was a major cause of spreading of disease in that population. Instead of starting a non-profit to tackle that problem, he decided to go with his area of expertise, for-profit companies. However this for-profit had a twist: you buy a pair of shoes, we give away a pair to a child in need.

In stark contrast to The Black Swan, this book was a very easy read, and, while not very mentally taxing, definitely had a call-to-action to, as could be guessed, start something that matters. It is a pseudo-biography of the Blake and the company, documenting his process of going from knowing nothing about shoes to being the "Chief Shoe Giver" of one of the highest-impact shoe companies in the world. Along the way, Blake interjects with some of his take home lessons from various stages of the life of TOMS.

As I said, it is definitely an easy read, so if you are intrigued, you could probably finish it over a cup of coffee at the local bookstore. However, in the TOMS spirit, this book does have a one-for-one policy; for each copy sold, a book will be sent to a child in need.

Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk:

Disclaimer, this is the first biz-dev book that I have ever read, so my virgin mind has no frame of reference with which to compare it. However, with that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Gary's family immigrated to New York when he was a really young boy and, in typical immigrant lifestyle, his parents engrained an intense desire to win by out-hustling. His father started a liquor store when they came to the states, and Gary began hauling around ice there as a young boy(after being forced to step away from his very respectable baseball card-selling business). He despised his initial position, but eventually came to love it when he noticed that he could easily sell people wine(by becoming knowledgable through reading, he still couldn't drink the stuff), but the same thing couldn't be said about beer and liquor drinkers.

That is the take home message, find your niche, which was wine in Gary's case.

The meat of the book centers around Gary eventually taking over the family business, and growing it from respectable to gargantuan through a wicked concoction of hustling and effective use of social-networking.

Even though social networking came out when I was in early high school, I still feel relatively naive with respect to how to most effectively use them to build personal branding. After reading this, I feel less naive; if you are in a similar position, I would definitely recommend taking a few hours out of your life and reading it.