Book Review: The Build Framework: A Heart-Based System for Personal and Professional Growth by John Peitzman ISBN: 978-0-6483453-0-5

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Common sense isn’t so common anymore. That is the reason that books like The One Minute Manager and In Search of Excellence are still relevant today. Sometimes we all need a little reminder about what we should be doing in our organizations.

Back in the 80s, we saw a bunch of McManagement programs where someone came in and put up some posters with a slogan on it.  We called this Management Du Jour.

The next thing you knew, you were issued a binder with the new McManagement slogan on it.  If you were lucky, you got a t-shirt with the slogan on it and everyone got a tote bag, coffee mug, and some balloons, each with the new slogan on it.

The corporate suits would gather all the front line people together.  They would all sing Kumbaya and recite the new slogan and then it was back to the same old same old.

The Build Framework isn’t Management Du Jour or McManagement.  It is a common sense approach to how to improve your organization.

This short book has just five simple steps to help leaders remind themselves of what is important and actually get to lead. A fast reader can read this book in about a half hour to an hour, assuming no pesky interruptions like the boss or work.

The book is well written.  There are a few funny stories that are pertinent to the subject being discussed that help keep the reader engaged.

Will The Build Framework solve all your management problems? No.  Will it provide a different perspective for you? Yes, probably.  

Grab your copy of this and take it with you.  By the time you flush, you should have some new tools for your professional toolbox.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Manian Debil Productions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Buy Now From Amazon: https://amzn.to/2IfwGFf

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Book Review: Broken Business: Seven Steps to Reform Good Companies Gone Bad by José R. Hernandez ISBN: 978-1-119-54750-1

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Lou Holtz, Doctor Football, used to admonish his players to do what’s right and avoid what’s wrong.  This seems like we need to clarify what is right or what is wrong, but humans are endowed with an instinct that tells us what is right and what is wrong.  This works well, until it doesn’t.

It seems that greed will cause a person’s moral compass to fail.  I have seen it before. All the front line employees could see a crisis coming, but the powers that be simply would not listen to those who could actually see that the emperor had no clothes.

In the book Broken Business: Seven Steps to Reform Good Companies Gone Bad by José R. Hernandez, the author presents a case study of a fictitious company that is based on a composite of several companies he has worked with.

Hernandez tells his readers about how there are many myths regarding corporate scandal and how it is important to deal with them properly when they occur.

He points out that most companies don’t just all of a sudden have a crisis. Typically, it is a series of things that could have been nipped in the bud had the C-Suite been paying better attention to the details.

The author tells his readers about how a company responds initially to a crisis.  He points out how on top of it Johnson and Johnson was during the Tylenol scare.

It is also important that the company admits to wrongdoing as soon as they are made aware of it.

Nixon might have remained president until the end of his term if he had just admitted to his part in Watergate instead of lying to Congress and the American people.  Clinton’s scandal would have gone away much sooner had he just admitted it.

Reagan appeared before the nation and admitted that wrongdoing happened on his watch.  Most of us forgot all about the whole Iran Contra thing soon after that. No, we didn’t completely forget, but it was no longer a major deal.

In Broken Business, we learn about the necessary steps to get a business back on track after a major, self-inflicted crisis.

If your business is going through a crisis, Broken Business just may offer you some helpful tools.  If your business isn’t going through a crisis, it is best you go ahead and read it now. Sooner or later, one or several of your employees will, as our kids say, “Do the stupid”.  This book might help you be ready when they do.

Broken Business is well-written and very readable.  There aren’t any complicated charts, graphs, or theories, just good, common sense advice to help you keep your company moving forward.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Manian Debil Productions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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Book Review: Career ReCharge: Five Strategies to Boost Resilience and Beat Burnout by Beth Benatti Kennedy ISBN: 978-1-945252-53-2

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We are sure that by now you have read multiple books along this same line.  If you have not read anything about helping you cope in your career, then Career ReCharge: Five Strategies to Boost Resilience and Beat Burnout by Beth Benatti Kennedy might be just the thing for you.

If you have read other books on dealing with the corporate world or overcoming burnout, then you will see that this book takes you on a journey to the same place most of the others did, just along a slightly different path.

For the most part, this book is very helpful in finding new tools to help one deal with the stresses of everyday life in the corporate world.

However, the one negative in this book is that the author finds it necessary to take every opportunity to tell us that this way is unique because it is the Benatti Resiliency Model.  This is repeated so often that you begin to think the idea is to make you resilient by repeating this as a mantra of sorts.

If you have never read a book about dealing with toxic people, burnout, fatigue, loss of motivation, or related issues, then Career ReCharge: Five Strategies to Boost Resilience and Beat Burnout would be a good choice to be your first book on the subject.

If, however, you have read multiple other books on this same subject, you won’t find very much new here.  It is just told a little bit differently. This would make it an excellent text for anyone who has tried reading other books of this sort and did not find a permanent solution to their problem.  This one might just be the one that sticks.

Like stated before in this review, if you haven’t read other books on this subject, this will probably be the only one you need to read.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Manian Debil Productions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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Book Review: Giving It All Away…and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously by David Green and Bill High ISBN: 978-0-310-34794-1

 

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By now you have heard countless times that, “You can’t outgive God.”  This is the story of how David Green and Hobby Lobby tried to out give God and failed.  Maybe you should try it sometime.

Giving It All Away…and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously by David Green and Bill High takes readers through Green’s early years as a child all the way up to where he is now.

One great thing about Giving it All Away is that it fits on almost all of the blogs and YouTube Channels we have.  It is a book about business, so it fits on Redneck MBA. It is a book about religion and especially tithing, so it fits all kind of ways on How to Manage Your Monkey.  It is a book so, of course, it fits on Book Reviews by Bird. And everything fits on Random Thoughts and Observations so, it fits there.

This book is a wonderful story of how Hobby Lobby took on the “guvment”, as we rednecks say, and won. But it is mostly a story about giving back.  It shares how a large Pentecostal Holiness family gave much more than their due and inspired their children to do the same.

Hobby Lobby makes such a great juxtaposition to Walmart it is uncanny.  A comparison and contrast between the two companies would make a great case study, thesis, or dissertation.  

Walmart is all about the mighty dollar.  They squeeze every vendor to get a better deal and leave the vendor with less. Hobby Lobby make sure everyone gets a fair deal.

Walmart runs all over their employees. Walmart employees have to work Thanksgiving or be fired.  Hobby Lobby is closed on Sunday. Walmart is open 24/7/364. Hobby Lobby closes at 8 PM so their employees can spend time with their families.

Hobby Lobby is so supportive of a person’s right to life that they took on the U. S. Government, and WON. Walmart sells the “morning after pill” on their sales floor.  The Walton family is/was allegedly Christian, but the stores Sam left behind don’t reflect it in any way.

What would the world look like if EVERY company displayed true Christian values like Hobby Lobby?

Giving it All Away would make a great small group Bible study for your church.  It would make a great book for your chamber of commerce to distribute to all its members so that members could read it and see that it works to put God in control of your business, large or small.

We really cannot say enough about Giving it All Away.

We purchased Giving it All Away for our personal library.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Manian Debil Productions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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Book Review: Activators: A CEO's Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done by Mark E Green ISBN: 978-1-949639-09-4

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George S. Patton once said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week”.  This could be a very good tip to many CEOs today.

The book Activators: A CEO's Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done by Mark E Green seeks to help CEOs, and others in leadership, overcome their fears and execute their plans.

This book is well-written and full of exercises to help leaders realize that the most important thing they can do is to formulate a plan, any plan, and get started.  

Too often, businesses fail because the leaders won’t make decisions and stick with them.  

Activators also tells leaders about making those hard decisions to fire high achieving employees who have become toxic to the company or jettison projects that just aren’t working.

The only real problem I saw in this book is that some of the graphics, especially those written in yellow, are hard to read.

If you know someone in a leadership role in any business, large or small, you will want to give them their very own copy of Activators.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Manian Debil Productions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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Book Review: Birth of a Cemetery: Forest Lawn Memorial-Park by John F. Llewellyn ISBN: 9780966580174

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I, David, once worked for a perpetual care cemetery.  I found then that it was much more complicated than most would believe.  Even to someone who has worked in the industry, Birth of a Cemetery: Forest Lawn Memorial-Park by John F. Llewellyn makes for some very enlightening reading.

The business student in me was entertained by the convoluted ways they structured three different companies to reach one goal.  

It was an eye-opening experience to read about what went into the purchase of a crematory.  Readers are told how some of the people involved in Forest Lawn took their duties to the families super seriously, while others squabbled like kids on a school ground.

This was a very interesting book and would make great reading for anyone studying business, business law, history, or Funeral Industry science.  

This book is well-written and amazingly researched.  It is very entertaining and informative. We give it all five stars.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Manian Debil Productions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.  
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Book Review: Creating Sales Stars: A Guide to Managing the Millennials on Your Team by Stephan Schiffman with Gary Krebs ISBN: 978-0-8144-3938-8

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Many of we baby boomers see the Millennial Generation as a bunch of work-brittle, entitled, lazy, people who expect to be paid for not working. Many of us have experienced this first hand.

In the book Creating Sales Stars: A Guide to Managing the Millennials on Your Team by Stephan Schiffman with Gary Krebs, we are told that nothing could be further from the truth.

So, the question here is, do you trust what you see and experience or what an author tells you is the truth?

Readers are also told why we should adapt our way of looking at this generation.  The tone of the book appears to be, “Just deal with it”. We are given a lot of WHY we should just deal with it and only a little of HOW to deal with it.

There may be a little truth to what the author teaches. The fact remains that we are in a job seekers’ market because this generation switches jobs often and expects to be paid well while being trained. This book could well make the case that we have developed a new career, “Trainee”. Meanwhile, more and more jobs go overseas to places where people WILL work.

The book is well written and does provide some excellent advice.  However, reading this book won’t solve your problem. What it will do is make you feel a lot less empowered and, if you are the owner of a company, will probably make you want to close up shop or move to another country.

In the book, the author speaks of how ethical this generation is.  There may be some validity to that but, readers should trust what they see in the real world and not what they read in a book.  This is the same generation that often cheated on tests in college and also expected good college grades for very subpar work.

We can only give this book a mediocre rating and very little in the way of recommendation.  This isn’t so much because the writing is flawed; it isn’t. We give it an average rating because the premise is flawed.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Manian Debil Productions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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Book Review: Home Buying In 30 Minutes: Build your team, get your mortgage, and close the deal. The quick guide to doing real estate right. by Jim Morrison ISBN: 9781641880237

  Roll Out November 14, 2018

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No two real estate transactions are exactly alike.  There is no one right way to buy a home. Home Buying In 30 Minutes: Build your team, get your mortgage, and close the deal. The quick guide to doing real estate right. by Jim Morrison helps you learn how to assemble the proper team to help you make the right choices.

This book is not going to teach you how to avoid all the mistakes that you could make when buying property.  What it will do is teach you who you can ask and what questions to ask, and when, so that you can avoid the most common mistakes.

The author is an expert in the field.  This book really only takes about 30 minutes to read.  However, it is packed with information that will educate the potential home buyer.

We give Home Buying In 30 Minutes all five stars.  We think it is well written and probably one of the best small investments one could make before attempting to make one of the largest investments most people will every make.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Manian Debil Productions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Buy From Amazon: https://amzn.to/2OeY8kc


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