Hi Bill,

I read the rest of your book yesterday, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it to anyone starting up or in business already.  I read a lot of business books but this was the best one I’ve read in a long time.  Your recipe for stone stoup is a great summary, here are 10 things that stuck out for me in the book:

  1. Emotion – The importance of establishing an emotional relationship when you are going do to business with that person.  I’ll particularly watch out for this in a sales role.  The primary tool of a catalyst is emotion and it’s very important to have a catalyst in an organisation.
  2. Listening – This is something you have stressed before and I am already working on.  One thing I will do going forward is always switch off a phone during a meeting, sometimes I have it on silent but I realise now that it’s just a distraction that I don’t need and to listen to recreate you need to remove all distractions.  Also the importance of listening when you are the person talking to see if the other person is really getting what you are saying.
  3. Contribution – You said that a conversation is always better if you think that you enter the conversation wanting to make someone’s day.  After reading this chapter I went for a walk to the beach and I came across a man with a trowel putting sand into a bag.  I had a conversation with him after reading your book and thought what could I do to make his day.  I offered to go back to my house to pick up a shovel and bring it down to help him put sand in the bag.  Although he declined it put a great smile on his face and he thanked me for being so thoughtful.
  4. Charity work – I realise now it’s not about giving money to charity and it’s not about charity.  It’s supporting a project that will make a positive and lasting change to people’s lives and giving people hope.  At the moment I’m using my social media skills to help the Angels project.  This involved helping them setting up their social media strategy but even more important using my network to advance this project.  I introduced Nollaig who is heading up this project to the guys in the world peace festival.  They are very excited about the Angels coming to Berlin so Nollaig is going off to try and get funding for this project.  Through me giving up my time and contributing it is going to have a far bigger impact that me just writing a cheque.  Of course there are projects that need funds to get up and running and this is a very good reason to be a successful entrepreneur so I can use all my resources to support a project.
  5. Excecution – It makes perfect sense that sitting in a room for months on a solution to a problem ends up a complex solution with significant emotional attachment that it take a huge effort to revert, whereas, trying something, finding it out it’s the wrong thing and then going again is much easier and much more effective.
  6. Belief – A powerful source of motivation and focus.  I now have the belief that I will be successful.  
  7. Inspiration – If somebody is not inspired by what we do in RazorCoast they are not welcome.
  8. Women – The importance of having a good woman in an organisation.    Colette (my wife) is doing some work with me on RazorCoast and I find that I bounce a lot of things past Colette and get to see things from a different perspective which is very useful.  
  9. Replace the word ‘but’ with ‘and’
  10. Through keen judgement, networking and awareness you create more opportunities for serendipitious things to happen.  A friend who was made redundant from a  consultancy company was considering setting up a similar consultancy practice.  I advised him to pick off his top 50 customers and visit them all when you have nothing to sell.  Just ask their opinion.  Who knows what will happen but the chances are you’ll get an offer for some work and you’ll get many ideas regarding the type of consultancy company you should be starting.

I’ll put up a review on Amazon to-day.  

Thanks and congratulations on delivering a fantastic resource for entrepreneurs.

Ian Cleary
Web: www.razorcoast.com
Blog: www.razorcoast.com/blog
Skype: icleary
Twitter: ianmcleary
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/iancleary
Ph: 01-2401321 / 086 2252915