Merchant Account Blog - Straight Pass Through » Books

Some Quotes to Do Business By

Robb Lejuwaan — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:05:45 +0000

It is Saturday morning and I’ve made a commitment to myself to write a blog post every day except Sundays. So I am sitting here wondering what I should write about. I mean how many things can I write about merchant accounts! The truth is there is plenty top write on that subject but today I just don’t want to! So I have decided to share some of my favorite quotes from a few books I have laying around my office. I use highlighters profusely so I am quoting my highlighted passages.

Book: It’s Not How God You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden

“When it can’t be done, do it. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t exist.”

“Don’t covet your ideas. Give away everything you know and more will come back to you.”

“Fail, fail again, fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

“If everything is under control your not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti

“Success is going from failure to failure with no lose of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

Book: Love is the Killer App – By Tim Sanders

“Such people, who say they care for others but who share no real business value, don’t sustain themselves for long. No one believes them. Their professions of love waste everyone’s time. They are toxic to the work place.”

Book: Authenticity – What Consumers Really Want by Joseph Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II

“Axiom 1. If you are authentic, then you don’t have to say you’re authentic.”

“Axiom 2. If you say you are authentic, then you’d better be authentic.”

“Axiom 3. It’s easier to be authentic if you don’t say you are authentic.”

“Business in particular must accept greater responsibility and transparency in all activities…”

“Any company that encourages its people to genuinely care about customers and respond to their individual needs…appeals to exceptional athenticity.”

Book: The Master Key System by Charles Haanel

“It is evident therefore that we are to hate nothing, not even the “bad”, because hatred is destructive, and we shall soon find that by entertaining destructive thought we are sowing the “wind” and in turn shall reap the “whirlwind.”

“You must first have the knowledge of your power; second, the courage to dare; third, the faith to do”

This concludes my random quotes from books in my office. I hope you enjoyed them.

The Superman Syndrome

Robb Lejuwaan — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:46:03 +0000

I was just reminded of a very provocative book I read a few years back, The Superman Syndrome, by Gene N. Landrum, PH.D . On the book’s back cover the "superman syndrome" is defined as "a series of common behaviors that permit an otherwise average person to rise above the norm."

When I read a book I am not big on high lighting key points. This book, however, was an exception, the whole book is marked up with high lights and notes.
Here are a few quotes to peak your interest:

"People hate their jobs precisely because they are working for the money…" (Page 36)

"We can’t achieve until we stop trying to achieve. Cut off your head and your system will function quite well whether it is in romance, money or sports."(Page 36)

"You don’t have to change anything, just stop thinking about it." (Page 200)

Here are some bullet points, again from the back cover:

Chasing money is entropic and the path to the poorhouse
Happiness is a by-product of being – never trying
Romance only comes to those not trying to find romance
Anxiety is a result of unrealistic expectations
Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs

So if you are looking to read a unique business book that will speak to you no matter what situation you are in or if you just like to have your thoughts challenged this is the book for you. Just by reviewing my highlights from two years ago I am energized and rethinking some of thoughts that have been driving my actions lately. I hope you enjoy what Dr. Landrum writes as much as I have.

By the way, Amazon.com only has four copies of this book left, so act quickly if you are going to purchase this book!

Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends

Robb Lejuwaan — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:01:30 +0000

Normally I wait until I finish a book before recommending it to others. In this case I have to make an exception. I bought this book written by Tim Sanders , Yahoo!’s Leadership Coach, several years ago and it set on my bookshelf until a few days ago. The title of the book is Love is the Killer App, How to Win Business and Influence Friends .

Fast Company summarized the message of the book – "If you want to fix your future, start by fixing yourself. In the face of war and recession, what the business world needs is less greed — and more love. So says Yahoo senior executive Tim Sanders, who argues that now more than ever, the road to prosperity is paved with a commitment to generosity. . "

In the book Sanders tells his own story about how he came to realize that love is what makes the business world go around. He defines what he means by saying that this "biz love" is made of of three key ingredients:

Sharing our knowledge
Sharing our network
Showing compassion

I don’t have time to write any more I just want to let you know that if you have not read this book already go out and get it today!

Wait a minute, I want to qualify who should read this book. If you…

want feel good about how you do business
always knew deep down there must be a better way
if you want do business with friends

Then go out and get this book .

When Pete Carroll Speaks I Listen and So Should You

Robb Lejuwaan — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:16:55 +0000

Ah yes, college football season is upon us. The team I was raised (brainwashed) to love, the USC Trojans, play the weak and feeble, University of Idaho Vandals this Saturday. I will be there, at the L.A. Colosseum, rooting my team on and hoping for a complete slaughter.

The first USC game I went to was in 1974 when USC was down to Notre Dame 24-0 one minute before half time. USC came back, opening the second half with 102 yard, Anthony Davis kick off return for a touchdown, eventually beating the Irish 55-24. Needless to say, I was hooked.

Since then I have seen the Trojans have good seasons, horrible seasons and over the last five years, excellent seasons. The excellent seasons have occurred under the leadership of Pete Carrol l. Here is what he has accomplished in first five years at USC:

Two BCS Championship Game appearances (win over Oklahoma , loss to Texas)
Five Associated Press Top-4 finishes, including the split 2003 national championship and the undisputed 2004 national championship .
A record five consecutive BCS bowl appearances
A record five consecutive years as PAC-10 Champions or Co-Champions
A national-record 33 consecutive weeks as AP’s No. 1-ranked team
A winning record of 65-12 (84.4%), including 10-2 against traditional rivals Notre Dame and UCLA
A NCAA-record of 63 straight 20-point games
Nineteen All-American first teamers
Three Heisman Trophy winners (Carson Palmer , 2002; Matt Leinart , 2004; Reggie Bush , 2005)
Four Top-5 recruiting classes
Still-active win streaks for home games (32) and Pac-10 home games (21).

Here is a list of his personal awards:

2003

2003 American Football Coaches Association Division I-A Coach of the Year
Home Depot National Coach of the Year
Maxwell Club College Coach of the Year
ESPN.com National Coach of the Year
Pigskin Club of Washington D.C. Coach of the Year
All-American Football Foundation Frank Leahy Co-Coach of the Year
Pac-10 Co-Coach of the Year

2004

2004 National Quarterback Club College Coach of the Year
2004 ESPN.com Pac-10 Coach of the Year

2005

Pac-10 Co-Coach of the Year

2006

Pac-10 Coach of the Year

So you can see when I find out what Pete’s secret is, in his own words, my ears perk up. This past Sunday the L.A. Times printed a small, out of the way, article entitled, “Carroll goes by the book to teach football at USC ,” written by Kurt Streeter , I felt like I had found a buried treasure.

It turns out “the book” that Pete Carroll goes by is “The Inner Game of Tennis .” Carroll says it is full of teaching that inspires his life and that he uses to help his players perform — even if they don’t know it.

So why this post? Well, I wanted to brag on USC football and point out an article that it no one seems to have seen.

Bottom line: read the article and buy the book . Who knows maybe you can become the Pete Carroll of your business field.

Counter Intuitive Monday

Robb Lejuwaan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:07:00 +0000

I was able to do a little Sunday morning reading from one of my favorite easy reads, “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be” written by Paul Arden. As I read the pages realizing how counter intuitive and unreasonable the ideas are in the book I thought to myself that I should share some of the thought provoking quotes from the book. So here goes:

“Don’t seek praise, seek criticism”

“Don’t covet your ideas. Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you.”

“Don’t look for the next opportunity. The one you have in hand is the opportunity.”

“If it can’t be done, do it. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t exist.”

“If you can’t solve a problem it’s because you are playing by the rules.”

“FAIL, FAIL AGAIN, FAIL BETTER” -Samuel Beckett

“If everything seems under control your not going fast enough.”
- Mario Andretti

Of course there is much more in the book but these should do to get your week started right. Have an incredible week.!

Local Max and Big Max

Robb Lejuwaan — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:12:00 +0000

Today was a very rough day. When I went out to lunch (chicken bake at Costco) I took several books along to read, primarily to freshen up my mind with some new thoughts. The book I ended up reading was Seth Godin’s Small is the New Big. I randomly turned to page 124 and started reading a section entitled “How to Avoid the Local Max.” It tuned out to be just what I needed to here. The key sentence for me was…

“The Problem is that to get to the Big Max, you need to get past point C, which is horrible and scary place to be.”

My only problem with this is that I am not even near Point C, I am at Point A!

You must be wondering, ” what the heck is this guy writing about!” Well read it for yourself from Seth’s Blog entry back in November 2005. I guarantee it will at least get you thinking:

Understanding Local Max

My guess is that you’ve been wrestling with your Local Max.

If your organization or even your career is stuck, it may just be because of this chart.

Everyone starts at that dot at the bottom left corner. You’re not succeeding because you haven’t started yet.

Then you try something. If it works, you end up at point A.

A is where you see results as the direct output of a strategy and hard work. A is the job you got after investing in an MBA. A is the sales you got after running an ad.

Of course, being a success-oriented capitalist, that’s not enough. So you do more. You push and hone and optimize until you end up at the Local Max. The Local Max is where your efforts really pay off.

So you try harder. And you end up at point B. Point B is a bummer. Point B is backwards. Point B is where the outcome of more effort against your strategy doesn’t return better results. So you retreat. You go back to our Local Max.

And that is where most people stay. Most people get stuck at the Local Max because changing strategy in any direction (this is really a 3D chart, but I’ve smushed it to make it easier) leads to poorer results.

You’ve got a very good job as an art director. To do better, you’d either have to move to another firm, move to another town, switch careers or go back to school. And all of them have costs and very uncertain returns, so you stay.

You have 100 competitors in an industry that is self-described as a commodity. You use the same tactics your competition does, because if you change your pricing or fundamentally alter your marketing outreach, you get punished in terms of sales or profits.

You’ve got summer camp with 80 kids in it. If you want to grow, you’ve learned the hard way that hiring one or two more senior staff people won’t work, because you can’t afford them. So you stick with what you’ve got.

The lie of Local Max is this: the chart is incomplete. It really looks like this:

Local Max isn’t actually that great when you realize that Big Max is not particularly far away.

The problem is that to get to Big Max, you need to go through step C, which is a horrible and scary place to be.

There were 10,000 single-location hamburger restaurants in the world when Ray Kroc decided to build a giant chain of franchised McDonald’s. Anyone could have done it. No one did. Because everyone who tried had to go through point C to get there. It took Colonel Sanders more than a decade of pain to get through point C.

Of course, it’s not just about growing sales or revenues. The Big Max/Local Max paradox affects everything from education to non-profits to politicians. If you have a “Max”, whatever you’re measuring, the odds are you’re actually dealing with a Local Max, not the Big one.

If your market is changing, this idea is even more important to understand. That’s because changing markets are always surfacing new Big Max points, and the only way to get to them is to go through the pain (yes, it’s painful) of point C.

You can’t reinvent yourself and your organization until you deal with the fear of point C, and that’s hard to do without talking about it. I think the benefit of the Local Max curve is that it makes it easy for you and your team to have the conversation.

So where are you at on the chart? Are you even interested in getting to the Big Max knowing the price you will have to pay?

Making Mountains Out of Mole Hills

Robb Lejuwaan — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 01:05:06 +0000

So here I sit killing time, surfing around various business blogs on my day off. See, I have two large projects that I have to complete by the end of the day and they have become mountains, giant snow covered, wind blown, Himalayan type mountains that scream that they overwhelm me if I start working on them. So here I sit surfing various business blogs.

Somehow, I end up on the Lifehaker Blog reading about Parkinson’s Law and after I am done with this post I am off to climb those hills I thought were mountains. Here is the post written by Gine Tampani on Lifehaker:

PARKINSON’S LAW AND THE 4-HOUR WORK WEEK

Entrepreneur Tim Ferriss’ new book, The 4 Hour Workweek, offers some extreme methods for doing more in less time.

While some of his strategies are more applicable than others, one of my favorite points of the book was applying Parkinson’s Law to your work life.

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline. If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials.

If I give you a week to complete the same task, it’s six days of making a mountain out of a molehill. If I give you two months, God forbid, it becomes a mental monster. The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of one another:

1.) Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time. (80/20)
2.) Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important. (Parkinson’s Law).

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

This reminds me of 37Signals’ mantra (“embrace constraints!”) and also comes into play with timed dashes – forcing yourself to work against the clock. —Gina Trapani

May all your mountains become mole hills.

Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable

Robb Lejuwaan — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 03:31:18 +0000

I stole the title for this post from Seth Godin’s book “The Big Moo” which was a follow up to his previous title, “Purple Cow.” I just looked at some reviews for this book on amazon.com; here is some of what Publisher’s Weekly had to say,

“This means you have to toss out everything you know and do something “remarkable” (the way a purple cow in a field of Guernseys would be remarkable)…his wide-ranging advice-be outrageous, tell the truth, test the limits and never settle for just “very good”-is solid and timely.

Hmmm… being remarkable, doesn’t that sound like fun?

Telling the truth, is that the norm in business today? Doesn’t everyone just assume they are being lied too?

Well I am not that cynical yet and I hope I never will be. My thinking is that if you are going to work at a job or run a business or what ever you are doing with your life, you might as well shoot for remarkable and honest. Heck, just being honest is remarkable these days!

If you want to see more on this book at Amazon click the link below:

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Merchant Account Blog - Straight Pass Through » Books

Some Quotes to Do Business By

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