Inspiring field advice for entrepreneurs that underscores the importance of authenticity and communication.
The co-founder of BodeTree, a financial dashboard tool, shares his insights on starting and sustaining a business in this debut how-to guide.
In 2010, Myers, 24 and with a pregnant wife, left a well-paying finance job to launch BodeTree, an online platform that helps businesses organize and assess their finances. He acknowledges that initially he “had no idea” what he was doing other than he “wanted to build something that helped people and created value—and that I wanted to do so without selling my soul.” Myers shares the business philosophy and strategies that he then developed from his “iterative process of making mistakes and moving forward,” which “taught me more than any MBA class ever could.” Of primary importance, he asserts, is pinpointing a business’s “God particle,” or the “single belief that forms the foundation of everything it does.” This core principle, to be reinforced in ongoing communications, will serve as the touchstone in selling the product, choosing partners, etc., with “authenticity…the most important virtue any business (or individual, for that matter) can demonstrate.” Myers organizes the book into three parts—starting a business (featuring the dictum to “beware the 5 percent problem” of building too many product features that clients don’t actually use); scaling the business (including the warning that “Sometimes, Raising Too Much Money Can Cost You”); and “staying sane” (various musings on entrepreneurial challenges, including the need to foster emotional intelligence and a positive work culture). The author ably puts into practice his own advice to become an effective communicator, offering a host of helpful, from-the-trenches tips in easy-to-read fashion and format. He makes a convincing case for his “enlightened” approach, pointing out that his company’s unusual spiritual name helped to differentiate and sell his product in the marketplace. He is also refreshingly honest about missteps, including his pivot from an initially intended target base. While his text is at times repetitive (negotiation advice crops up in several sections), Myers ultimately delivers a wealth of valuable, road-tested viewpoints, which are skillfully as well as succinctly conveyed.
Inspiring field advice for entrepreneurs that underscores the importance of authenticity and communication.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-75001-8
Page Count: 262
Publisher: BodeTree Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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