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
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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