Stuff I Learned from Books in 2019

I drastically changed my reading habits in 2019. Because I consumed so many books, I wanted to find a good way to run through what I liked and learned from these books. This year, I thought it would be good to present my thoughts in note form and provide the key takeaways I found in each book.

Hypergrowth: How the Customer-Driven Model is Revolutionizing the Way Businesses Build Products, Teams, & Brands – David Cancel 

• It’s mostly about building a product team, but there are takeaways that can be applied to any company that wants to be customer driven. 
• Everyone works support so they have a direct line to the customer 

Iconic Advantage: Don’t Chase the New, Innovate the Old – Soon You, David Birss

• Great book on branding
• Too often we try to create new messaging, branding. Companies should take what has worked in the past and improve on it
• It’s easier and it gets you to success faster
• Put the customer first

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. – Brené Brown

• Sympathize with people, don’t just go into problem-solving mode
• Empathy is infinite and renewable. The more you give, the more we all have
• I’ve watched Brené in person. I’ve seen her Netflix special. Read this book

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power: – Shoshana Auboff 

• Google created a completely new industry and regulation wasn’t ready for it
• Google (and Facebook, and many others) makes money by watching what you do and then selling that information and access
• Dense book that I didn’t finish, but it was eye opening

The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting up to Speed Faster and Smarter – Michael D. Watkins

• 5 questions to ask:
• what are the biggest challenges the organization is facing?
• why is the org facing these challenges?
• what are the most promising opportunities for growth?
• what would need to happen to exploit these opportunities?
• if you were me, what would you focus on? 
• I listened to this book when I was getting ready to switch jobs. Then bought the hardcover. Then re-read certain sections when things got rocky at my new job

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life – Mark Manson

• Life is about not knowing, and then doing something anyway
• This book was recommended to me when I was going through a lot of stress. I wish I had read it then. 
• It’s all about taking responsibility for what you can own and dropping the rest

Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company – And Revolutionized and Industry – Marc Benioff, Carlye Adler

• Tactics dictate strategy - execute tactics enough ways and it becomes a strategy
• The event is the message - act like it’s a success - the right mix people is more important than the number of people
• When a competitor enters your space, it initiates the market

The Hard Things about Hard Things: Building a Business When There are No Easy Answers – Ben Horowitz

• Netscape damaged Microsoft because people started writing for the Internet, not Microsoft’s platform
• The best thing about startups: you only experience two emotions: euphoria and terror
• Startup CEOs should not play the odds - there is an answer. You just have to find it regardless of the odds
• If you investigate companies that failed, you’ll find that employees knew about the deadly issues far ahead of time
• In good orgs, people can focus on their work, and it will help the company and themselves 
• Being too busy to train is the equivalent to being too hungry to eat
• Nearly every company goes through life-threatening events - WIFO - “We’re effed, it’s over” - every company goes through this
• Focus on the road, not the wall 
• In times of peace the company can focus on expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths, in wartime the company is fighting threats (competitions, market changes, macroeconomic change, etc)
• Holding people accountable - assume people have good intentions 
• Promises, results, effort 

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – Claire North

• I bought this novel because I heard it was an inspiration for Jonathan Hickman’s House of X story
• Harry August is reincarnated and lives his life over again with all of the memories from his previous lives
• The chronology of the book jumps all over the place, yet I was able to keep up
• It was a fascinating concept that was really well executed

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't – Jim Collins

• There’s a reason why this book is on everyone’s “must read” list
• Research findings on corporate greatness over a long time period
• You get evolutionary results by an evolutionary process 
• When you have disciplines people, you don’t need hierarchy 
• Manage the system, not the people 

Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins – Mark W Schaefer

• Loyalty is more elusive than ever 
• Huge disconnect between what a company thinks they’re doing and how it’s received by the consumers
• Today is the slowest day of technological change you’ll ever witness
• How to much to spend on marketing budget is determined by tweaking what was spent last year
• People want to feel loved. This is the evolution of loyalty
• Research shows only 13% of consumers are loyal to a brand
• The marketing departments of the future will be populated with extraordinary ideas that the customers will love

Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live – James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales

• The oral history of Saturday Night Live
• As a long-time fan, this was really interesting (and funny)

This Won’t Scale: 41 Plays from the Drift Marketing Team to Help Your Business Cut Through the Noise, … – Drift

• Successful companies need a combination of great product, brand, and service 
• Brand is how you build an audience and cut through the noise
• This book is a quick read, but full of great takeaways

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups – Daniel Coyle

• Feelings of trust and closeness can be transferred through shared experiences
• You can’t be empathic when you’re talking
• Trust comes down to context
• Vulnerability precedes trust even though most people are afraid to be vulnerable until there is established trust
• Vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness

Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need – Todd Henry

• I loved this book so much I bought multiple copies to share with people
• Too much control today robs the future of creative ideas
• Just because someone has the skills and experience to do a job doesn’t mean they should do that job
• Without clear direction, everyone down the chain is paralyzed because everything is a last-minute scramble 
• Expectation escalation can suffocate a team 
• If you treat your team like a machine, that's exactly what it will become. It will crank out predictable, uninspired work
• Create white space for your team - attention and time

Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes – Steve Gorman

• As a long-time Black Crowes fan, this book was great
• Learn how the band blew up a chance to write/record with Jimmy Page
• Like most bands, they broke up over money and ego
• It’s an entertaining, fun read that walks through years of frustration

The Burnout Generation – Anne Helen Petersen

• A book aimed at millennials to explain some of the stress they’re feeling

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert B. Cialdini

• Reciprocation
• Commitment and Consistency
• Social Proof
• Liking
• Authority
• Scarcity 

The Will to Die – Joe Pulizzi

• The first fiction novel I’ve read in years
• After reading a few of Pulizzi’s marketing books, I was curious how he’d handle fiction
• A thriller that keeps you engaged while providing info on multiple industries

The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues – Patrick M. Lencioni

• This book is interesting in that it’s told in a narrative style
• The ideal team player is a combination of Hunger, Humble, and Smart (Emotional Intelligence)
• Culture is what defines a company. Having people that sway too far in any of those three directions will impact everyone 
• This has led me to really focus on determining “hunger”

F#ck Content Marketing: Focus on Content Experiences do Drive Demand, Revenue & Relationships – Randy Frisch

• (This is the second book on this list with an f-bomb in the title)
• This book explains why the content experience is more important than just content marketing
• 70% of content created is never used
• Redefine the process that creates content to focus on the experience

Conversational Marketing: How the World’s Fastest-Growing Companies Use Chatbots to Generate Leads 24/7/365 – David Cancel, Dave Gerhardt

• I’m a huge fan of what Drift does
• I launched a Drift chatbot in early 2019 with great results
• Chatbots allow customers to interact with a company on the customer’s terms
• Search and content are crowded spaces - conversations are the next frontier because people want personalized experiences

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Jim MacLeod oversees digital experience and design within the marketing team at EBSCO Information Services. For 20 years, Jim has been using visual marketing to craft the perfect story to entice the customer to take the right action. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn. Why are bios like this written in the third person?