Decide to embrace your inner polymath? That’s okay.

Business Model Generation — Not a Marketing Book

With summer rapidly upon us, maybe it’s time to start talking about books that AREN’T about marketing. Or social media.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t check out some of the higher profile marketing books out there – but, to be honest, they are starting to all blend together. Unless you’ve got some unique spin to add to the marketing campaign of the future, at some point it’s time to broaden your horizons.

So, Dave, What DO You Recommend?

Funny – if there’s one thing this site has been known for, it’s a healthy dose of counter-intuitive thinking. Zig when other zag. Things like that. Alas, some tips for your summer reading:

1. Rediscover the Magazine

In the early part of the 90s, I was a subscriber to The Economist. I let my subscription expire…then felt something missing and re-upped. But, to be direct, to understand the workings of modern business AND get a healthy dose of counter-intuitive thinking, there’s no magazine right now that does the trick better than…Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

When Bloomberg bought the property in 2010 and rescued it from the precipice of bankruptcy, they refreshed the design (it’s slick) and the editorial went up a couple notches, IMHO. The writing is rock solid. You’ll learn something new every week.

Oh, and even though I’m a “flip through the pages” kinda guy – the website is great and there’s an iPad version of the magazine.

A tip from a wise person I worked with ages ago: score inexpensive trial subscriptions to something you’re sorta interested in – this will broaden your horizons. So if you KINDA think you want to be a Surfer someday, there’s a magazine for that. (It’s called…Surfer.)

2. Anything Michael Lewis

Moneyball? It was a book before it was a movie. I have a copy sitting here, and I’ve re-read it a couple times.

I’m a baseball guy – sorta, not one of those “Sabermetricians” that Lewis talks about in the book, but a fan from way back when. But this isn’t a baseball book – it’s about thinking differently about how you approach business, decision making, and life. Really. Even if you don’t care to watch the movie, read the book.

Or Boomerang – that’s a great read, too, and will put the whole Euro Mess into perspective.

Lewis is really cool because, well, he’s a polymath. And he has a great writing style.

3. Ask People Who Run Businesses What THEY Read

This is one of my favorite tricks – and I’m not talking about asking bloggers to recommend other bloggers’ blogs.

Smart people have suggested books to me such as Business Model Generation (photo above, worth checking out, thank me later) and Aftershock (which will scare the crap out of you). Neither are marketing books.

4. Pick Up an Almanac or an Atlas

I dig reference books. But, in this “look it up on Wikipedia” world we live in, the need for an Almanac isn’t there. Or is it?

Ditto the Atlas – why would you look through an actual book when you can just go to Google Maps?

Well, think what you want about these beauts – they’re dinosaurs and people don’t need them – they can spark creativity.

Maybe I’ll return to marketing books one of these days, but my plan is to read lots of other stuff this summer. What about you?

Today we’re talking about books that marketers should have on their shelf. Did you know we wrote one for the Kindle platform called SEO Samurai? Here’s a link – but, it’s a Kindle version, so it won’t fit on a shelf.

I’ll admit to being at this online-meets-traditional marketing thing for a few years now. 6 to be exact – back in 2006, I was part of the team that launched a web portal for higher education called U Sphere.

I often tell folks that I reached a point where I was either going to (a) build a business or (b) get an MBA. I chose (a) – but that didn’t mean I wasn’t committed to constant improvement. So I went down the path of seeking out books that could teach me things about how the other half worked.

Publishing has changed in a revolutionary fashion in the past 6 years – traditional book sales methods are out the window, and it seems like just everyone has an ebook of some sort.

Here, then, are three books that, IMHO, have stood the test of time: they are the three that I keep on my shelf, refer to almost constantly, and, likely, may stand the test of time.

1. The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss

4-Hour Workweek Book — Photo from Dave's Bookshelf

This is the book I recommend more than any other. And this is the one that gets the most eyerolls, too.

The takeaway from reading the cover is that you can design a lifestyle that enables you to spend no more than four hours a week working – and then you can spend the rest of your time lazing on a beach.

The reality is that Mr. Ferriss invested a lot of TIME – he was working 80 hours a week at his first startup – before figuring out that TIME = MONEY.

The Marketer can learn TONS from the book – even if it’s just to maximize efforts on the right sorts of things, and stop worrying about the wrong sorts of things.

Marketer’s Takeaway: This is actually a book about ROI. Might be Return on TIME Invested, but it is definitely worthwhile from that standpoint alone.

2. Business Model Generation, by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur

This book will change your thinking, and here’s how:

Business Model Generation Book — Photo from Dave's Bookshelf

Any business process, any department, any piece of an overall cog MUST understand how the other pieces fit. If this book does anything for you, it will help you raise your BS detector.

To be direct: I have quickly run many a startup through their methodology – the Business Model Canvas – and found them to be sorely lacking in a few key areas. This ALONE can save you, the marketer, a ton of headaches.

(Doing client work for the past six years has also meant that I have turned down opportunities to work with businesses; sometimes, I have used the methods in this book to figure out that a potential client doesn’t have a business model that will make it.)

Marketer’s Takeaway: This is a visually stunning book and walks you through the iterative process of creating and sustaining business models.

3. groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Groundswell Book — Guess where this photo's from?

This is the ultimate social media marketing book.

Seriously.

Written when Twitter had just been created – it’s that old – the upshot is that the technologies will continue to evolve – but people have certain tried-and-true behaviors online that marketers can leverage for maximum benefit.

We may have shared the acronym “POST” more often than any one piece in our years of doing this online stuff. People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology – in that order. The authors’ opinion: companies will put the “T” first, and chase a shiny object (Twitter, Pinterest, et al) before figuring out who they want to connect with in the first place.

Marketer’s Takeaway: Cookie-cutter strategies rarely work. Don’t sell a bill of goods based on the next new thing.

Great books are out there – and we read as many new ones as we can get our hands on. But these three, we have found, stand the test of time.

Business Model Generation