Category Archives: Money

“Print is Dead” How Creative Professionals will Survive the Internet Tidal Wave

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Author @thatjeffgomez
I just wanted a book about the Publishing Industry. Okay, what I really wanted was an eBook about the Publishing Industry, published in the last five years. What I found was much, much, more.

The more you try to understand what’s happening to the Publishing industry, the more you start thinking about what’s already happened to the Music and Film industry. It’s all part of the same story.

The Internet = Disintermediation. Taking out the middle man. Here we are, in 2011. Gone are Tower Records and Blockbuster Movie rentals. Many of their competitors have been sold off, and everything (legal and illegal) is going digital, and put up on the web, to be shot between our phones, tablets and connected TVs. This is the dream, right? But if it means Artists aren’t making any money (so they quit making art, and become bankers) then what’s it all for? We need to understand how creative professionals (no matter what form their creativity takes) are going to deal with the onslaught of the Internet. Continue reading →

“Steve Jobs”: Asshole. Impresario. Artist.

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Author @WalterIsaacson Recommended@gruber

Before I’d even got this book on my Kindle,I’d already written about 3000 words of ‘notes’ for this review. After all, I’d been using Apple products my whole life. Surely, I thought, there’s nothing in the book that’s going to change my opinions. Boy was I wrong. A word of warning: if you love Apple, or its co-founder, or its design aesthetic, or its amazing brand, be prepared to see everything in this book, including things you don’t wanna read. Finding out intimate details about Apple, is kind of like going backstage at a Led Zeppelin concert in the 70′s and seeing your heroes wasted, and babbling like babies, surrounded by bimbos. You might not be ready to meet your heroes, and find they’re human. Maybe that’s what’s so heartbreaking about Steve’s passing. He was human after all. And we wanted him so bad to live up to his image, as a perpetually young, dashing, charismatic genius, who seemingly waved his hands, and showed us the future. Continue reading →

“The Personal MBA”: Two Years and $100k in sleek portable book form

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Author @joshkaufman

“You dropped 150 grand on an education you could have gotten for $1.50 in late charges at the public library.” Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting

In The Personal MBA Josh Kaufman makes a very compelling case (as does Will Hunting) that for people considering an MBA, the economics aren’t that great. For many graduate students (not just Business majors), it feels like a Casino: everyone takes the tests, and gets primed, then takes out a huge loan from the bank (often a six-figure amount) hoping that when they come out the other side, there will be an awesome, high-paying job waiting for them. It’s a financial transaction, not really an educational one. In fact, much of the education gleaned from an Master in Business Administration is theoretical and marginally updated from the projects and Case Studies done in Bachelor of Business and Economics programs; after all, how can you possibly sit in a classroom and ‘learn’ how to be a Manager, or an Executive? Of course you can’t. But the schools are more than willing to let you try, as long as the cheques clear. Continue reading →

“The Lean Startup”: Take the Risk out of Entrepreneurialism

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Author @ericries

In David Fincher’s 1999 cult classic, Fight Club, there’s a scene where Tyler Durden and the Narrator are cruising down the highway talking about the future of their boxing club (first fight’s free, then you franchise out, etc). They’re arguing about who’s in charge, what’s the goal of the group, how to deal with growth: they’re entrepreneurs and they’ve both come up with something great, that seems to be catching on. And what does Tyler Durden do? He takes his hands off the wheel, and lets the car go where it wants. The car steers itself, and Tyler hits the gas.

This would be a great opening for my Lean Startup review, had Tyler and the Narrator not gone off the road. The car was destroyed, but the leaders survived, and got a little wiser. Was that a Pivot? This book is not just about small tech startups, though if you’ve heard anything about it (the buzz has been building around the interwebs for about 2 years now, mostly on tech sites), you’d be forgiven for the assumption. Frankly, if this book was just about starting tech companies in Silicon Valley, it’d be pretty boring, aimed at a very very niche audience. It’s neither. Continue reading →

“Your Brain At Work” The User Guide for that great big brain of yours.

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Author @davidrock101

I know what you’re thinking: a book on how to use your brain? It’s not so intuitive as you think. As it turns out, the brain has been one of the least understood ‘realms’ in science, and only very recently are some huge discoveries being made that totally change the way we view, and hopefully, use it. Continue reading →

“Outliers” The Story Behind Success

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Author @gladwell

“I’m a very lucky guy”
William H. Gates Jr., Philanthropist

Recently, I had drinks with a former colleague, who was bemoaning the pressure her parents were putting on her to get married. It was a common theme around Shanghai, young people under untold amounts of pressure to live up to some impossible standard; whether it was money, relationships, work, manners, education–parents just want what’s best for their kids, and believe that pressure is a good way to do it. They care about their retirement, and know that investing energy in their kids can, almost always, lead to a more financially stable and comfortable retirement (not to mention, more grandkids).

But if you examine the richest, most successful people in the world, they seemed to get there by doing something crazy, regardless of the financial upshots. Continue reading →