Savvy founders hoping to avoid the pitfalls on the road to success may benefit from this book’s engaging tips.
A book for entrepreneurs and marketing specialists that encourages company founders to maximize their brand by telling their own stories.
Gerhardt wants readers to understand the power of their brand when marketing their company, arguing that “people buy from people.” When consumers feel a connection to a person, he asserts, rather than a company, they’re more likely to become customers. The author’s first step in building a founder’s brand is to help make them into a storyteller, and to that end, he provides a series of questions to lead founders through the process of identifying and articulating the narrative of their lives and businesses. He encourages them to be personal and vulnerable, sharing details of their lives that will help others connect with their struggles and triumphs. He continues by asking founders to identify exactly who their customers are and to show what problem the company is fixing for them. These steps culminate in an “explainer,” which briefly and succinctly tells prospective customers the who, what, and why of one’s company. Gerhardt also wants founders to figure out who their role models, mentors, and “anti-role models” are so they can follow the successes and avoid the challenges of those who’ve come before. The second part of the book effectively focuses on how to get a founder’s brand and story out to potential customers, using detailed examples of how to use social media podcasts and speaking opportunities to stand out from the crowd. Overall, this is a well-structured and encouraging book made specifically for those who are just starting down the path of building a business. Gerhardt generously shares what he’s learned from years of experience and expresses hope for others’ success in a genuine manner. He does tend to lean heavily on instances from his own career, but he also incorporates examples from the experiences of well-known figures such as Spanx founder Sara Blakely and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Savvy founders hoping to avoid the pitfalls on the road to success may benefit from this book’s engaging tips.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2341-5
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.
One of history’s most prolific inventors receives his due from one of the world’s greatest biographers.
Pulitzer and National Book Award winner Morris (This Living Hand and Other Essays, 2012, etc.), who died this year, agrees that Thomas Edison (1847-1931) almost certainly said, “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” and few readers of this outstanding biography will doubt that he was the quintessential workaholic. Raised in a middle-class Michigan family, Edison displayed an obsessive entrepreneurial spirit from childhood. As an adolescent, he ran a thriving business selling food and newspapers on a local railroad. Learning Morse code, he spent the Civil War as a telegrapher, impressing colleagues with his speed and superiors with his ability to improve the equipment. In 1870, he opened his own shop to produce inventions to order. By 1876, he had money to build a large laboratory in New Jersey, possibly the world’s first industrial research facility. Never a loner, Edison hired talented people to assist him. The dazzling results included the first commercially successful light bulb for which, Morris reminds readers, he invented the entire system: dynamo, wires, transformers, connections, and switches. Critics proclaim that Edison’s innovations (motion pictures, fluoroscope, rechargeable batteries, mimeograph, etc.) were merely improvements on others’ work, but this is mostly a matter of sour grapes. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was a clunky, short-range device until it added Edison’s carbon microphone. And his phonograph flabbergasted everyone. Humans had been making images long before Daguerre, but no one had ever reproduced sound. Morris rivetingly describes the personalities, business details, and practical uses of Edison’s inventions as well as the massive technical details of years of research and trial and error for both his triumphs and his failures. For no obvious reason, the author writes in reverse chronological order, beginning in 1920, with each of the seven following chapters backtracking a decade. It may not satisfy all readers, but it works.
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9311-0
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
For Gorman, creating customers is an act of cultivating delight–-a motto that most businesses would do well to follow.
Gorman, who runs a boutique creative-brand agency, offers a refreshing return to business basics, when competition was a novel concept and businesses actually put the customer first.
Not that Gorman is trotting out old business saws in a fuddy-duddy way; his style is energetic, and his delivery is keen and clean. He is not about to forsake branding, but he will tell you to forget the fancy dancing, the retro music and the airy cleverness. His emphasis is on delivering satisfaction to the customers—consistently–-with the ultimate goal of making them friends for the long term. Granted, it's not a revolutionary concept, but in the Age of Hype, it's certainly salubrious. Profits cannot be a guiding principle; business owners must understand the values, tastes and preferences of their audience, and then create a brand that becomes "the story that people will tell when asked to recommend your product or service to someone else"–-and one that exceeds expectations. In other words, create an identity and be all you say you are. Tag lines, logos, websites–-these are all brand articulations, and though Gorman acknowledges their importance, they are not value articulations and they can't carry the product if the consumer's experience isn't pleasurable and enthusiastic. Gorman even goes a step further: The product must be a delight. (He includes many amusing anecdotes, but the best involves him tipping a saxophone-playing spaceman in the subway.) Gorman also offers intelligent advice about making oneself attractive to prospects, about clarity of message, about elegance and about the importance of word-of-mouth for verifying quality (with a nod to George Silverman)–-though it would have been helpful to get a few examples of controlling and sequencing word-of-mouth marketing.
For Gorman, creating customers is an act of cultivating delight–-a motto that most businesses would do well to follow.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9749169-0-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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