Use What You Have. Get What You Want.
“Use What You Have To Get What You Want” is an excellent collection of 100 tips from the collected business wisdom of Jack Nadel.
As the author of my own collection of 100 tips (100-Whats Of Creativity: Questions To Spark Your Creativity, Unmuck Your Mind, And Break Through Your Mental Blocks) I’d like to think I have some personal insight into this type of book. I appreciate the fact that Nadel didn’t just stop at providing just a quick tip, but in the majority of entries included some personal insight and the specific experience that lead him to this earned wisdom.
From the author bio I gleaned the fact Jack Nadel is now in his 80s and that explains why many of the examples felt a bit dated to me, and after the first 30 or so as the reader, I was hoping for a few more recent stories — but that’s kind of the point.
These bits of wisdom are timeless.
They are as true now as they were during Nadel’s prime business years, and they’ll still be true another 80+ years from now.
One example is Nadel’s tip #35 “Ask not how many people your advertising reaches, ask how many it sells.” The author uses a personal example from 1953, but this continues to be true (perhaps even moreso) as the advertising world struggles to adapt to web-based marketing. The gross size of the audience doesn’t matter as much as the ability to reach a specific number of audience members who are expressly interested in the client’s message. Or, as my friends at RemergeMedia say — “The guy who sells toasters doesn’t care if he got a million impressions, he just wants to reach 50 people who need a new toaster.”
Besides the fact we have a 100-tip b0ok format in common, I found a few other places where the author and I appeared to have some commonalities. First, a lot of his examples come from his experience in the advertising specialty business and I’ve worked with promotional products for years during my time employed by printing companies (and even now I can’t quite separate myself from it.) Second, the author’s domain name is www.IdeasThatMeanBusiness.com and I’ve used a variation on that tagline ever since I became The Idea Guy (close to 20 years ago!) Even now I still use the phrase “Ideas that mean business… and MORE business.” I was a little bit jealous that he got that domain name and I missed it!
The book is available on Amazon as a paperback, but with content this short, sweet, pithy, and instantly referenceable, I am disappointed there isn’t an ebook, PDF, or Kindle version that I can carry around on my laptop, phone, etc. It would make for great reading while you’re waiting in the lobby for your next sales appointment — you could instantly put this valuable information into action.
The worst thing I can point out about this book would be the cover — that upside-down lightbulb with the upside-down dollar sign drives me nuts… and what’s with that alien-shaped head?? Get a better cover design and I’ll give it a 4th review star on Amazon!
If ever there was a time to NOT judge a book by its cover, this is it.
Buy a copy for yourself on Amazon today.
CORRECTION:
Apparently there ARE electronic editions of this book. Although I did not see them available as alternate versions listed in the primary Amazon listing, the author has links for the purchase of a Kindle and and iPad edition from the Store page on his website.
