🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

This book consists of 19 different marketing channels. Each traction channel is backed by a case study with companies that succeeds. Very helpful for startup founders that haven't found their bullseye traction channel.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Anyone looking to find their traction channel.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Scale up when your bucket is not leaky.

In the leaky bucket metaphor, phase I is when your bucket (product) has the most leaks. It really doesn't hold water. There is no reason to scale up your efforts now, but it is still important to send a small amount of water through the bucket so you can see where the holes are and plug them.

We want to get sales in and fast. But when we got a leaky bucket (product), all the customers coming in might be churned away pretty fast. We will waste a lot of money to drive the leads through our funnel. But it is still important to get some customer through it so we know what is the problem that causes customer leaves us. As we fix the bucket, with a good enough conversion rate, we will be able to scale up and really put every marketing money to good use.

Find the traction channel that moves the needle.

Instead, you are simply trying to determine if it's a channel that could move the needle for your startup. Your main consideration at this point is speed - to get data and prove your assumptions.

There are plenty of ways to market your product, but not all of them move the needle. You first need to know what is the goal you want to achieve, and how much customers are meaningful to you. Then you go out and test all the traction channels. Focus on the one that will have a significant impact on your goal. Different stages of the company might require different traction channels to move the needle.

Record results for each channel

The operative question then is, "Does this channel have enough customers to be meaningful?" A simple spreadsheet calculation can go a long way!

Calculate and record everything. You will never know how you do unless you put it into a spreadsheet.

💭 Afterthought

This is the best book I read for marketing advice. Although the takeaway is not really showing any real strategy. But the remaining chapters go through all 19 traction channels. At first, I thought it is impossible to do some of the channels, but after reading it, I think it's possible to test all of them. If you're finding a way to market your product, I highly recommend this book to you.  

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this Kindle e-book.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

The best business book I’ve read. Filled with practical wisdom. No agenda to upsell, pure sharing.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Everyone in business should read this.

🔑 My 5 Key Takeaways

Know your number. Focus on survival.

Let me just return to the point I made earlier about the importance of tracking things other than sales, especially cashflow. I mean, sales are nice, and profits are nicer, but businesses live or die on cash flow.

A lot of times we think that with just higher sales and higher profit we can solve the problem. But the business is live or die on cash flow. Sometimes you might get high sales, but your cash flow cannot cover the expenses, you're stuck.

Don’t rush for high sales. Sales cost money.

You have to figure out how you're going to get the cash required to increase your sales at whatever rate you have in mind.

We always aim for higher sales for the next month, next quarter, and next year. But have you thought about the amount of investment you need to bring in that sales, in terms of the product cost, advertising, support etc? You need to know how much money you got to have in order to achieve those levels of sales. If not, you will run out of cash before you got the sales in.

Many small accounts are better than one big account.

You get better gross margins with small customers. Small customers bring stability to a business. Broad base of small customers makes your business less vulnerable to the loss of any single customer.

Have a lot of small accounts is a great sign of a good business. If you're stuck with 1-2 big customers that take up above 50% of your business, you are not in a good position to bargain the price with them. With more small accounts, you get a better margin and better security.

Don't pay commission to salespeople. Don't hire hotshot salesperson.

Sales commissions cause divisions in a company and get in the way of building a team. Don't pay on commission unless you have to, and switch to salary plus bonus as soon as you can.

This is quite controversial. There's a whole chapter talking about the reason why not to hire hotshot/entrepreneurial type salesperson, and don't do a commission for salesperson. He got the reason and I think it's quite reasonable. By giving commission you're treating the salesperson different compare with other employees in the company. You're forcing them to become a one-person business. They are destined to fight for their own and not a team player for the company.  In the end, they are more likely to leave and take your customer with them.

Life plan before the business plan.

Urge to grow often leads people to make those kinds of mistakes - which is why the life plan has to come before the business plan.

Sometimes we grow because we want to have a big business. But do you think about why you want that business? Do you think about how your business plan will serve your life plan? Sometimes you do not need to go that big to get the life you want.

💭 Afterthought

This is the best book on business I've read so far. The takeaway is far more than 5. I recommend everyone who wants to start their own business to read this.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this Kindle e-book on Amazon for RM17.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

This book teaches you how to manage your company sales team. It shows you how sales activities link to the result of your company. It also defines the sales process and metrics you need to look at for each selling role.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Anyone who is doing sales or building a sales team.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Link sales activities with company results.

Activities can be managed - outcomes can't.

Throughout the book, we can see many examples of conversations between the sales manager and sales reps. It is easy to set a target for your team to hit, but it is hard to manage your team to hit the target. Many try by just asking sales reps to do more, and put in more hours. But what you actually need to do is to figure out what kind of sales activities will lead to the results you want to achieve. As an example, you cannot ask for the sales revenue to increase, you can achieve it by either increasing the number of sales calls per sales rep, or you can increase existing customer follow-up to upsell them depending on your company strategy.

Understanding different selling roles need different sales processes and metrics.

How could they ever design a single sales process that would be relevant for every salesperson in this sales force - let alone the entire company? They couldn't.

There are a lot of different selling roles in a company. Some of them are serving the existing customer. Some of them is trying to get new customer. Some of them are chasing the big customer. Each kind of selling role required a different kind of sales process to maximize its success. Each of them also required different metrics to understand their efficiency. As an example, for an outbound salesperson, the main metrics might be sales calls per week, but for upselling salesperson might be follow-up per week. If we try to manage them similarly, one of them will suffer.

Streamline sales process.

Our point is that it's necessary to find the right level of effort between inadequate change management and process overkill.

Having a process is important but too much process might burden the sales team. We need to find the balance between too little and too much control over the sales team. If we have too few processes we might lose control of the sales team, but if we put in too many processes it might make your sales team just a data entry machine. Always discuss and adjust with your sales team to achieve the right balance.

💭 Afterthought

This is a great book to read. Right now I'm building different kinds of channels to improve the sales of my company. I'm handling different roles such as handling inbound, outbound, renewal, and customer referrals. Each of them required a different process and different metrics to measure its success. After I read this book, it gives me a better mental model to handle each one of them. In the future, when I build my own sales team, I can handle them with better structure too.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this Kindle e-book on Amazon for RM73.74.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

This book tells the story of Long Term Capital Management. How they got started and how they end. Through this story, you will learn about the market, risk, and trades.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Someone who is interested in history and the market.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Leverage.

If you aren't in debt, you can't go broke and can't be made to sell, in which case "liquidity" is irrelevant. But a leveraged firm may forced to sell, lest fast-accumulating losses put it out of business.

Throughout the story of Long Term Capital Management, they are very confident with their trades. Thus, they leveraged too much. Their leverage is sometimes 10 times the size of big banks. Their strategy is to earn off the small spread of bonds, therefore they need big leverage to magnify the gain. But when the market turns against them, they are forced to sell because the debt is chasing after them. Heard a lot of stories of people building up their debt during a good economy, thinking the bull will go on forever. When the bear strikes, they lost all their money. Don't leverage.

Risk.

He humbly warned, however, "It's a wrong perception to believe that you can eliminate risk just because you can measure it.

A lot of times we thought we can eliminate risk. In all the things we do, there will be risk associated with it. We shouldn't think that we can eliminate it because we know how much the risk is. In the Long Term Capital Management case, they can calculate what is the probability of the market going against them. They thought the risk is once in a thousand years, but it strike them when they are their fourth year in the business. With one single blow, they lost all their fortune in just a few months. Nothing is risk-free.

Greed and fear.

They had forgotten that traders are not random molecules, or even mechanical logicians such as Hilibrand, but people moved by greed and fear, capable of the extreme behavior and swings of mood so often observed in crowds.

We think the market is rational. Good news moves the market up, and bad news moves the market down. In the Long Term Capital Management case, they thought their mathematical model can predict the market movement. They thought the spread is too big to be logical. But the market is composed of humans with fear and greed, thus, you can never predict it through a mathematical model. To survive in the market, you got to learn about greed and fear, and how to control them.

💭 Afterthought

This is the story of LTCM happening in the 1990s. Through the story, you witness the rise and fall of it. But the obvious theme of this story is that humans are the ones making all the rise and fall of the economy. You can see all the bankers and feds manipulating the market. It makes you feel like you can't do anything against the big bankers on Wall Street. They are the ones that control the world economy.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this Kindle e-book on Amazon for RM37.26.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

This book tells a lot of interesting stories. Through a different kind of perspective, it makes you think about who you are, and what you going to achieve in life. Helps you reflect and realize what's important for you.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Thinker.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Be Givers, not Takers.

Givers are found at the very top and very bottom.

The author tells a very interesting story to explain why you need to be a Giver, not Taker. There's a popular economic theory called Prisoner's Dilemma. A competition is held for computer algorithms to play Prisoner's Dilemma against each other, and see which strategy can produce the best outcome. And the winner is the algorithm that always does good, and only does the opposite when the opposition takes advantage of it. With this strategy, it will attract the other Givers or Matchers (someone who only does good to you when you do good to them) to come to you; while punishing Takers (someone who takes advantage of others).

Learn to forgive.

Remember the thing that made tit for tat even better? Occasionally forgiving. It prevented death spirals.

The improvement for the algorithm mentioned above is occasional forgive. We might think that we only do good to Givers and Matchers; while always defending against the Takers is a good strategy. But the result shows that occasional forgive is a better strategy because it will prevent the death spiral. Other than that, forgiving is an important trait to learn not just to forgive others, but also to forgive yourself. Someone who always holds tight on the past cannot move forward.

Self-starters are rare.

If you're doing awesome work, people more successful than you will notice and want to help you. Talented, resourceful self-starters are rare.

Getting a mentor is very important, but what makes a busy mentor take their time off to invest in you? You need to start yourself, do everything you can before you find them. A mentor is not a babysitter. When they see the grit and hard work you put in, they are more likely to help you, because they see their old self in you.

💭 Afterthought

I like the writing of this author. He brings different stories to strengthen his point. Everything got 2 sides, and you need to think it through rationally to get a clear picture of it. This book discusses a lot of topics like "Does nice guys finish last?", "Do quitter never wins?", "Work-life balance?" and a few more. After reading through the whole book, it helps you to make your decision on those topics.

If you're interested, you can subscribe to Eric Barker's blog for more articles from him.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this Kindle e-book on Amazon for RM8.46.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

This book shows you the early days of Google. How they grow from a small tech startup to the giant we know today. All these through the perspective of an early employee of Google.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Anyone interested in the starting of Google. Or anyone running a tech startup.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Focus on the product.

If we can't win on quality, we shouldn't win at all.

This is one of the quotes that struck me in this book. Google is having fierce competition with other search companies, but they don't like to do advertisements to get people to use them. The founders think winning by marketing will be deceitful because this means people are tricked into using an inferior service against their best interest. So in the early days, the founders won't spend a dime in marketing and spend all their money in hiring the brightest mind in engineering, in order to create the best search engine in the world. And they did it. Focus on your product, and you will win in the long run.

The right and wrong.

When I first arrived at Google, I felt strongly about things and was often wrong. Fortunately, Larry and Sergey ignored my ideas.

The author is a 41 years old guy coming from a big company when he first joins Google. There's a lot of decision that he thinks it's absurd. But it's all those bold decisions that make Google successful today. In the last year of his career at Google, they are experimenting with a social network idea called Orkut. But they are too afraid of making mistakes and dragging on the development of it. In the end, Facebook becomes the social network that everyone knows today, not Orkut. If they remained the spirit of the early day Google, they might get a seat in the social network market.

Work vs Life.

I had started at a small startup as a big-company guy. Now I was leaving a big company as a small-startup guy.

The author work for 5 years in Google. When he joined, the company got 50+ employees. When he leaves, the company already exceeds 1000 employees. The early Google teaches him to be bold in taking on big challenges, that everything is possible. They work for long hours for a long time in the early days. But in the last year of his career in Google, the company grow so big that he becomes one of the cogs in the system. In the end, the company told him his position is not needed by the company anymore.

💭 Afterthought

This book gives me a lot of thinking for my own startup. When they are small, they do what they can to make things happen. There's a lot of competition in the market, and they stay focused on their technology. When everyone is chasing the money, they chase for the quality. In the end, they build the best search engine in the market. So don't lose focus, stay on your course to build the best team, and best product.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this book on Shopee's BigBadWolf for RM11. It worth a read.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

A book wrote by a father and his son. Help us to see the world from the perspective of different generations. Shows you what kind of changes needed to be made by the older generations to welcome Gen Z to join the workforce.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Bosses that are starting to recruit Gen Z. Or anyone that's starting to leading or teaching Gen Z.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Different generations see the world differently.

Too often when two generations bump up against each other; they try to figure out who is right or wrong, better or worse. Those conversations lead nowhere because the truth of the matter is that the generations are just different. Each generation has its own point of view that is valid. Rather than work hard at figuring out who is right or wrong, better or worse, the generations need to try to understand where the others are coming from and why they think the way they do.

Recently, I watched a documentary on Netflix about 911. It happens in 2001 when I'm 6 years old. It's an event that changes the course of the US for the next 20 years. In the documentary, you can feel the pain, the panic, and the anger of the people. An event like this changes the whole generation that has been through it. Different generations can't agree on the same thing not because one of them is right and the other is wrong. It's because they were born in different generations. All the things that happen around them are different. So learn to see from their perspective, that's how different generation can work together.

Side hustle.

A side hustle is the idea of having your own side business while still being gainfully employed. As we've noted, there are so many resources to help you launch and run your own business, that you can even do it while working somewhere else.

From my own experience, when I'm working as a programmer, I also have side projects. It's not so much as a side income for me (although I hope it is), but it's a way for me to learn new skills. Now, I recruit programmers to join my team, I like to see if they got any side projects they are working on, and that's the best way for you to know more about this person. For this new generation, you can't limit your employee to only work for you and discard all the side projects of his. In contrast, you should help them to grow, and encourage them to learn new skills that are beneficial to their personal and professional life.

Privacy.

In our business, we have been hiring a lot of Gen Zers. One of the biggest differences we see with our Gen Z employees is that they are fine with the occasional team meeting, but when it comes time to rolling up their sleeves, they want their own private space. Many ask if they can work remotely. At first we thought that they didn't like us, but we just had to adapt to the fact that they want to work in new ways.

In recent years, we see the rise of open-concept offices. A lot of company starting to tear down their cubicle and turn their office into big open spaces, and allow their employees to work at any desk they want. But for myself, I prefer to work in a private space. In my company, we all work at our home office. We can schedule our work according to our productive hours of the days. Have time for our friends and family. Skip the commute. Get full focus when we do our deep work without the interruption of colleagues.

💭 Afterthought

This book gives a lot of insight into the new generation. Gen Z is the generation that was born between 1995-2012. The book discusses mostly the people in the US, so it might have some differences between their culture and ours. But it discussed a lot of attributes of Gen Z that are quite accurate. It certainly helps me to see the upcoming workforce with a new perspective.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this book on Shopee's BigBadWolf for RM16.50. But it's sold out now. You can find it on other seller on Shopee.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

A macro perspective on current workforces and workplaces. Thru data, show us the insight of globalization, workspace, management, pay, and the aging workforce. Give us a glimpse into the future of workforces and the challenges we're going to face.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Anyone who is interested in topics regarding workforces, such as globalization, workspace, management, pay, and the aging workforce.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

The health of workforces.

If a has done much he is more contented after his labours than if he had done nothing whatever; for by work he has set his powers in motion.

The health of the workforce is essential for business productivity. When your employee always takes leaves or is sick at work, it will directly impact the productivity level of the company. When we talk about the health of workforces, what we think about is subsidized gym membership, stress-management programs, and healthy eating initiatives. But research shows that these incentives hardly improve the health level of the employees. The company that experiences low levels of sickness absence, high retention, and high morale tend to be those companies with good culture. So what makes a company healthy is not the health-related perks, but a job that makes the employee feel secure, fair, and grow.

Good job.

Spend increasing sums of money to motivate people to do unappealing and/or boring work or save money by instead making work more appealing and rewarding, thereby raising more powerful levels of intrinsic motivation. If you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do.

Labor cost is the biggest expense for most companies. Research shows that the labor cost is rising consistently, but productivity is not growing as fast. There are more and more people employed to work in the economy, but the overall productivity of the economy is not improving according to the addition. As the owner of the business, the design of the job is very important in order to increase the productivity of your company. Bosses should not increase the productivity of your company by just increase the headcount, but also spend time designing the job so that you can do more with fewer people.

Aging workforce.

One of the bigger underlying demographic changes that will shape the future of work is that the workforce is getting older and people over 50 are now much more likely to be in a job than in the mid-1990s.

Since young, we've been told to get a job and work until we're 55 years old, then we can retire with our pension. But now, we can see there's a lot of people at old age who still can't manage to retire. It's very important to plan financially, so you can be financially free early. You might be in your 20s or 30s, but 50 is not far away. If you don't plan early, you will be stuck in the rat race for the rest of your life. You have to keep learning to be competitive in the labor market. I've known two programmers in 30, one is leading a team of programmers and building incredible software, but another one is still waiting for his senior to teach him at work. Time doesn't wait, keep learning.

💭 Afterthought

Reading this book is like reading an academic essay. A lot of references and data to prove his point. Don't really like this kind of book. Prefer book with less reference (easier to read) and more case study (easier to relate). But overall, it does expand my view on the labor market.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this book on Shopee's BigBadWolf for RM13.50. You can buy it with this link.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

A journey through the history of media from printing, radio, TV to the internet. The author explains what is a "Long Tail" and teaches us how to catch it. A great insight into how the internet changes the world from a few big hits to thousands of niches.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Anyone who is interested to start an online platform.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

The old media is dying.

MSNBC's The Abrams Report, with a multimillion-dollar budget and a crew of dozens, was at the time of this writing watched by an average of 215,000 homes per day. Rocketboom, a Jon Stewart-like comedy news program created online by exactly two people for the cost of some videotapes, two lights and a cardboard map, was watched by 200,000 homes per day over the same period.

Who can remember sitting in front of a TV watching program that aired exactly at 7 pm for news? With the internet, we can get all kinds of content everywhere and on-demand. Last time everyone got to watch the same news at the same time, listen to the same music on the radio at the same time, read the same newspaper on the same day, but now, everyone got to pick what they want to watch, listen and read. The Internet changed all of that. It's the end of an old era and the start of a new era.

"Make everything available" and "help me to find it".

In bricks-and-mortar store, products sit on the shelf where they have been placed. If a consumer doesn't know what he or she wants, the only guide is whatever marketing material may be printed on the package, and the rough assumption that the product offered in the greatest volume is probably the most popular.

Online however, the conumser has a lot more help. There are nearly infinite number of techniques to tap the latent information in a marketplace such as sorting and recommendation.

Research shows that when a group of people is given few choices of jam, they are 30% of the people buy the jam. When a group of people is given many choices of jam, only 3% make the purchase. But why did supermarkets keep on increasing the selection of the same product? It's because consumers actually wanted more choices, but they need you to help them find the right product. For example on Shopee, there's an infinite amount of products sold on it, but it has technology such as search bar, recommendation, highlight, reviews, and rating to help you make the choice. So consumers aren't afraid of variety, they want a lot of choices but also a lot of guidance.

Zero inventory.

One of the problems with carrying books is that a lot of them sell only one or two copies a year. In that case, even orders of 10 copies – instead of 100 or 1,000 – might not be viable. Even if it costs a retailer just a dollar to store a book until it sells (which could be holding on to it for a whole year), the retailer is going to ask itself whether carrying that book is ultimately worth it if it is going to sell in such low numbers. What retailers need is an efficient, economically sustainable way to sell a book that sells just one copy per year. And that means near-zero inventory costs.

Amazon starts its business by selling books. All the other physical bookstores can only hold at most 100,000 books at a time, but Amazon wants to hold 1 million book titles on its website. At first, they directly buy from the publisher and sell it to consumers who order from their website. Then later they introduce a consignment program for publisher to store their books in their warehouse (no need to pay for the book). Later on, they also tried "Marketplace", where third-party can sell thru their website (don't even need to hold the inventory in their warehouse). At last, they introduce on-demand printing, they only print it when an order comes in to further reduce the risk of holding an inventory without a buyer. That's how Amazon reduces its inventory risk.

💭 Afterthought

This book gives me a new perspective on the economics of scale. Cinema only got 12 months schedule to put up new movies, but Netflix can put up endless movies from the past to present to serve all the niches. Radio can only play so little music, but Spotify can play infinite songs and find more that fits your preferred genre. A bookstore can sell 100,000 latest books, but Amazon can sell you all books at ever published. Have you found your long tail?

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this book on Shopee for RM12.50 (a pre-loved book), but it only left 1. But I found another pre-loved book at this link for RM8 (not include shipping fee).

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

The story of Snapchat. How it started as a side project, and later grow into a social platform that's on par with Facebook. How they manage to pull it off with so much tech giant in the arena.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Anyone who is interested in Snapchat's founding story.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Don't compete in an established market.

Future Freshman is battling mindshare and dollars with well-established companies that had deep pockets and large sales team. Evan realised in order to avoid getting destroyed by better-funded competition, his next idea had to be more original.

Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat doesn't succeed on his first try. His first startup is called Future Freshman, a website that has all the information you need for applying for University. He ends up competing with big companies with a deep pocket, that solves the same problem as his startup. It's an uphill battle for him, in the end, he decided to pull the plug early, and that leads to his next startup, Snapchat.

Focus on your users.

Evan was willing to try anything to get users. When he was home in Pacific Palisades, he would go to the shopping mall and hand out flyers advertising Snapchat.

It's hard to imagine Snapchat start off with the founders asking their friends to use it, give out flyers, and ask strangers to download it. But actually, it's how most of the products started. No one can ever imagine a company with their main feature as sending a disappearing picture (that's the main function of Snapchat at that time), can be successful. You will never know, you just have to try, and see if the users stick.

Be attractive to mentors.

Evan's two superpowers are (1) his ability to get inside his users' heads and think like a teenage girl and (2) his knack for attracting brilliant, powerful mentors.

In one of the chapters, you can see his email reply to Lasky, his investor. Lasky asked a lot of thorny questions about his company's future, but his reply show how prepared and confident he is. From my experience working in companies, it's very important for you to be prepared and confident. That's how you can attract mentorship from your boss or seniors. As I grow older, I also like to mentor young people that are well-prepared.

💭 Afterthought

Actually, it's hard to share takeaways from this book, because it is more like a story of Snapchat. If you're interested in the founding of Snapchat, it's definitely a good read. I like to read personal/company biography because you can find out what causes them to be successful. It also gives some assurance because you can see how they all are started small, just like you.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this book on Shopee for RM16.50. You can click here to buy this book.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

A good take on the past, present, and future. It talks about how great businesses like Facebook, Google, Apple made it. Great perspective on competition and monopoly.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Anyone who wants to challenge their mind with a radical perspective of business and economy.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Competition vs monopoly.

In 2012, the average airfare each way was $178, the airlines made only 37 cents per passenger trip. Compare them to Google, which create less value but captures far more. Google brought in $50 billion in 2012 (versus $160 billion for the airlines), but it kept 21% of those revenues as profits – more than 100 times the airline industry's profit margin that year. Google makes so much money that it's now worth three times more than every U.S. airline combined.

In a perfect competition market, all the competitors want to have a share of the market, dropping their price in order to chase after the last bit of the market share. In the end, there's no profit remained. That's the perfect example of why an airlines ticket is so cheap, it's almost the same as bus fare. When you build a business, you should aim to achieve a monopoly in your market. In that way, you can capture the profits and build a better business. Differentiate, don't compete.

Last mover advantage.

It's much better to be the last mover – that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits.

Many people heard about the "first-mover advantage": when you're the first entrant to a market and capture the significant market share from the start. But what's good if someone comes along and unseats you. So it's better for you to be the last mover, who come in last but achieve the last great development in that market, and make sure no one will be able to surpass you. It's best to start small and make sure you take up a big portion of your niche market. Then scale to adjacent markets as you go. Build your moat.

Nerds vs salesmen.

The U.S. advertising industry collects annual revenues of $150 billion and employs more than 600,000 people. At $450 billion annually, the U.S. sales industry is even bigger. When they hear that 3.2 million Americans work in sales, seasoned executives will suspect the number is low, but engineers may sigh in bewilderment. What could that many salespeople possibly be doing?

I started as a nerd. Writing code in a dark room, day and night, and believes that my product will sell itself. But when I started my own company and starting to talk to potential customers, I come to a realization that sales and marketing are equally important. Without a good product, your customer never sticks. But without good sales and marketing, your product doesn't even have the chance to reach the hand of your customer.

💭 Afterthought

Peter Thiel and his founding team at Paypal are really extraordinary. The founder of Linkedin, Reid Hoffman is one of them. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is also one of them. YouTube, Yelp, Palantir are all the products and companies created or founded after they sell Paypal to eBay. Their thought process is cool, and this book gives us a peek into their brilliant mind.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this book on Shopee for RM19.99. You can click here to buy this book.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

A wise man tells you what it takes to build 3 Fortune 500 companies in one lifetime. First to love your job, no matter what it is. Then focus on every single task, aim for perfection, and improve day by day.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Every young people who are starting to work.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Instead of finding a dream job, turn your current job into a dream job.

与其寻找自己喜欢的工作，不如先喜欢上已有的工作；与其追求幻想，还不如爱上眼前的工作。

Many people are chasing their dream job, and dislike their current job. When the author is young, he too hates his job, wants to have a job that's easy but pays well. But one day, he decides to not waste his time, chasing his dream job. Instead, he tried to enjoy his current job. He realizes the more he loved his job, he can produce better results in his work. With the better result, he loves his job more. By forming this positive cycle, he escaped the "job-hatter" mindset and starts his journey to create one of the best companies in Japan.

Run the marathon with 100m sprint speed.

我们起跑已迟，又没有比赛的经验，若想取胜，非这么做不可。如果做不到这一点，我们一开始就不应该参加这场比赛。

I'm very touched by the speech he told his employees. He said they are late to the semiconductor space. If they want to join this race, they have to make sure they run at 100m sprint speed in order to be relevant in this competitive environment. It must be tiring if you run a marathon at this speed, but this is the only way to have a chance to take the lead in this race. If you don't have the determination to do it, you don't do it. They made it, and now they are among the top semiconductor manufacturer in Japan.

The muddy road.

我行走在田间泥泞的小道，那不能称之为路。脚底一滑就会跌入水田，蛇或青蛙突然出现吓我一跳，但我仍然一步一步向前走。无意间向旁边一瞥，那里铺装平整的大道上车水马龙。如果踏上那条路自然既舒服又方便，但我却凭着自己的意志，反而仍走那无人通行的泥泞小路，而且坚忍不拔地走到今天。

This is one of the passages in the book, where the author describes what he felt throughout the journey of his professional life. During the journey, there are many unexpected events that forced him to change his plan, forced him to adapt. But with immense willpower, he managed to walk his path until today. It's very hard to do something new, it's challenging and the probability of failure is high. But isn't why it's attractive to us? The unlimited possibility of the future.

💭 Afterthought

This is one of the books that change my perspective in life and really recommends everyone to read it. It's like listening to an old man talked about his past, giving you all the tips he gathered throughout his life. There are so many details he shared in the book that I can't manage to fit them all in one blog post. I'll definitely revisit this book in the future.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought it on Shopee for RM22.99. You can click here to buy this book

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

It tells you what it takes for a company to go from good to great. It tells you what kind of company won't achieve greatness. Many simple yet useful concepts to follow to achieve success in the long term.

‍🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?

Anyone who doesn't want to just be good at something but to be great at it.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Confront the brutal facts, yet never lose faith.

Retain faith that you will prevail in the end regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

The Stockdale Paradox, the name refers to United States Admiral James Stockdale, a prisoner-of-war during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973. During the process, he didn't know when will he be released, and no certainty that he will survive to see his family again. During the interview, the author asked him who didn't make it out from the imprisonment, he replied: "The optimist." They say they're going to be out by Christmas, and the Christmas comes, and the Christmas would go. And they say they're going out by Easter, and the Easter comes, and the Easter go. And they died of a broken heart. We need to learn this lesson, we must be patient and believe we will be successful in the end, but we must confront the brutal facts of the current reality. Don't be over-optimistic and lost the battle because of discouragement.

The Hedgehog Concept.

Are you hedgehog or a fox? Fox is fast, sleek, beautiful, fleet of foot, and crafty, come up with complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. But the hedgehog only do one thing, rolling up into a spiky ball.

Good-to-great company is consistent with its strategy, just like a hedgehog. They know their circle of competence. They know what they are deeply passionate about, what they can be the best in the world at, and what drives their economic engine. By knowing their strength, they just need to execute according to their advantage. Whereas a company that doesn't understand their circle of competence acts like the fox. They tried different strategies and never persistent at any. In long term, the hedgehog always wins.

The flywheel and the doom loop.

Picture a huge, heavy flywheel – a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Pushing with great effort, you got the flywheel to inch forward. But after hours of persistent effort, its own heavy weight create a momentum that working for you.

I first read about this concept in the book "The Everything Store" by Brad Stone. Jeff Bezos asks every employee in his company to read this book to learn about the flywheel effect. The concept is simple: find out what is the flywheel for your business, then make sure everything you do, is adding momentum to this flywheel. In the Amazon example, their flywheel is: lower price > more customer > higher purchase volume > lower price. With the knowledge of their flywheel, they are very clear about what they want to achieve. They can either find ways to lower the price, get more customers, or increase purchase volume. Each of these improvements will increase the momentum of their flywheel, and the growth of their business.

💭 Afterthought

The writing of this book is very academic. Jim Collins and his team gathered a lot of information to come out with these concepts. Other than the three that I mentioned in the key takeaways, there are many other concepts that might resonate with you. This book outline a path of how to create a great company.

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought this book a long time ago, forget the price. 😅. You can click here to buy this book on Shopee for RM17.99+.

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I watched a video last week, the speaker, Fan Deng shares the idea of tenure-based recruitment, an idea from "The Alliance" by Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of Linkedin. In this article, I'll share the key takeaways I got from the video.

️🧑🏻‍💼 Tenure-based recruitment

How long you want to work for my company? What you want to achieve in this duration?

During an interview, you should start by asking: "How long you want to work for my company? And what you want to achieve in this duration?". The median tenure for workers age 25 to 34 is 3.2 years. We shouldn't expect a worker to stay at your company forever. Let's say the answer is 4 years and he/she wants to be the manager of this branch.

I'll help you to achieve it. But I'll need you to do this for me.

At this point, you got to tell them what it takes to become the manager of this branch. They might need to take OT. They might miss the public holidays. Are they okay with it? Then, sign a document with 4 years tenure, I will grow you to reach your goal, and you will do this for me. The document is not for legal purposes, just a record to remember this day.

When the tenure is up, what's next?

After 3.5 years, it's time to renew the tenure. Time to meet again and ask what's his next plan. You might get 3 kinds of answers:

1. "I want to continue to work for you". Repeat the process by asking them how long they plan to work for you this time? What do they want to achieve during this tenure?
2. "I found another company". Write a recommendation letter for them. Ask them to train someone to take their job. Ask them to join the ex-employee club.
3. "I want to start my own business". Give them advice. Invest in it if you think it's a good idea.

📝 Few notes on management

1. Be strict with your employee. Your employee is giving their time (life) to you. You must be responsible to help them grow, otherwise, you're wasting their time.
2. Manager = do work thru other people. If you find yourself spending time doing what should've been done by your subordinates, you're a bad manager. It stops your subordinates to learn and stops you to teach.
3. 5x rules to give proper instruction. 1) Tell them what to do. 2) Let them tell you what you want them to do. 3) Why you do this? 4) Any emergency, which one should report which one you can decide yourself? 5) If you plan it, how will you do it?

🎥 Watch the Video

In this video, he talks about the new type of relationship between employer and employee. You should watch it if you're having trouble with managing your team.

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🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences

How to be a Christian that firm in your faith, loves your family, and excellent in your work. It's tough to maintain a balance between them, and you got to keep on learning how to do it for your whole life. Prioritize God, your family, and then work, when you fail in your work, you know it's not the end of the world.

🧑🏻‍💼 Who Should Read It?

Anyone (especially Christian) who wants to balance your life between your faith, family, and work. And learn how to achieve long-term success in your life.

🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways

Prioritize family before work.

1st God, 2nd Family, 3rd Work. When you lose in your work, you know you still have God and family to back you up.

Many men put their work as their first priority in life. It's never wrong to work hard at your work, but it is not worth it if you have to exchange your success in your career with your faith and family. In Pat Gelsinger's book, he talked about an experience he had when he got to choose between an important launch event for Intel and his family trip. In the end, he chose his family trip.  He believes his family is more important because it provides the strength for him to constantly achieve high performance at his work.

Love your wife.

Is our kids more important than me?

One day, Pat asked his wife if is the kids are more important than him. He asked this because he realizes their conversation is always around their kids but not about each other. After the discussion, they decide to put their relationship before their kids because they believe a healthy relationship between husband and wife is the foundation of a healthy family. They decide to be more intimate in front of their kids and they will let their kids know they can't interrupt them when they are talking (sometimes kids think their needs are more important). After these adjustments, they are more close to each other, thus, a more healthy family.

Do offering.

Don't just aim at 10%, aim for more.

For me, I think it's hard to do tithe when you have a high income. But Pat Gelsinger, with a very high salary (he is the CTO and now CEO of Intel), does tithe and aims to do more. He said many families might have a tight budget. But he encourages us to start at 1%, then increases as we go. It's not just about the money, it's about training yourself to give back.

💭 Afterthought

Before I read this book, I think it's almost impossible to balance church, family, and work. You got to focus on one and sacrifice the other. After this book, I realize it's possible. He is an elder at his church, CTO of Intel, a husband, and a father of 4. If Pat Gelsinger, can do it, why can't I?

🛍 How to Buy?

I bought it on Shopee @ RM29. You can try this link (Chinese version), it's currently out of stock. You can contact the seller about the availability.

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Subscribe to my newsletter so you won't miss any content I posted here!

💌 Love to hear from you,

If you have any comments or feedback, feel free to drop an email at barnabas@ebteq.com. Cheers✌️