Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast

About the book

Die with Zero by legendary energy trader, Bill Perkins, details a thought-provoking framework for maximizing net fulfillment, over net worth.

Die with Zero introduces the compelling principles he uses to think about personal finances, and more importantly, life.

Die with Zero is not something Perkins came up with after building his wealth. It's packed with stories from his first job on Wall Street making $16,000 annually, to getting fired and feeling lost in life. To his life today: a hedge fund manager, film producer, high stakes poker player, and resident "Indiana Jones" for several charities.

Called the "Last Cowboy" by the Wall Street Journal, Bill Perkins is reported to have earned more than $1 billion for his previous firm in five years.

Source: https://www.diewithzerobook.com/welcome

About the author

"The Last Cowboy" according to the Wall Street Journal, Bill Perkins is one of the world's most successful hedge fund managers and entrepreneurs. After studying electrical engineering at the University of Iowa, Bill trained on Wall Street and later moved to Houston, TX where he made a fortune as an energy trader. Perkins is currently the CEO of BrisaMax Holdings, a consulting services firm based in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Now at age 52, Bill views his career as an engine for personal growth and spends his time exploring the world, savoring his relationships, and taking in all that life has to offer.

DIE WITH ZERO is a labor of love project. Bill has been developing the principles outlined in the book since his first job making $16,000 a year in the 90's as a screen clerk for the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Source: https://www.diewithzerobook.com/welcome

Big idea #1 - The risk of missed experiences

Big idea #2 - Won't somebody think of the children?!

Big idea #3 - Timing is everything

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About the book

The performance evaluation at work; the parenting advice from your mother-in-law; the lecture by the cop who just pulled you over.

We get feedback every day of our lives, from friends and family, colleagues, customers, and bosses, teachers, doctors, and strangers. We’re assessed, coached, and criticized about our performance, personalities, and appearance.

We know that feedback is essential for professional development and healthy relationships—but we dread it and often dismiss it. That’s because receiving feedback sits at the junction of two conflicting human desires. We want to learn and grow, but we also want to be accepted and respected just as we are now. Thanks for the Feedback is the first book to address this tension head on. It explains why getting feedback is so crucial yet so challenging and offers a simple framework and powerful tools to help us take on life’s blizzard of offhand comments, annual evaluations, and unsolicited advice with curiosity and grace.

Source: https://www.stoneandheen.com/thanks-feedback

About the authors

Doug Stone is a Founder of Triad Consulting and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. He has also written screenplays, and is determined to play guitar better than his friends.

Sheila is a Founder of Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. Her husband teaches negotiation at MIT, and they are both schooled regularly in negotiation by their three kids.

Source: https://www.stoneandheen.com/authors

Three big ideas

1) The gift and the colonoscopy

2) The three types of feedback

3) Know your triggers

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About the book

For a dozen years as one of the world’s most admired CEOs, Indra Nooyi redefined what it means to be an exceptional leader. The first woman of color and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company — and one of the foremost strategic thinkers of our time — she transformed PepsiCo with a unique vision, a vigorous pursuit of excellence, and a deep sense of purpose. Now, in a rich memoir brimming with grace, grit, and good humor, My Life in Full offers a firsthand view of Indra’s legendary career and the sacrifices it so often demanded.

Source: https://www.indranooyi.com/thebook

About the author

Indra Nooyi is the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo (2006-2019); a Fortune 50 company with operations in more than 180 countries.

In this role, Ms Nooyi was the chief architect of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo’s pledge to do what’s right for the business by being responsive to the needs of the world around it. As part of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo was focused on delivering sustained growth by expanding its portfolio to include more nutritious products, limiting its environmental footprint, and empowering its associates and people in the communities it serves. During her tenure, PepsiCo grew net revenue more than 80%, and PepsiCo’s total shareholder return was 162% beating the S&P over the same period.

Source: https://www.indranooyi.com/meetindra

Three big ideas

1) Find unselfish mentors

2) Learn, learn, learn

3) Purpose

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About the author

As a black child raised by five sets of white foster parents (some incredibly loving, some - not so much) I always felt that I had to prove my worth, so that I would to be 'allowed to stay.'' I had to be not only a 'good girl' but a 'good black girl'. I had no say in where I would live or who my new mum and dad would be, or where I would be living next.

I was told to always be thankful, always be grateful for what I had, to never ask for more and, to never rock the boat.

And now with thirty years of personal and professional development in my bones, things have changed.

Professionally, I am an ICF credentialed coach with nearly a decade of ethical coaching under my belt.

I work with women who want to lead value based and empowered lives.

I am a feeling person. I can be with and honour my own feelings; so I can sit with and honour your feelings.

I am a person of meaningful action; so I can guide you to create meaningful action that supports you and your life.

I have no agenda and I don't judge.

If you want someone to walk alongside you, as you step into your worth and begin to create the life that you want, it will be my honour and privilege to support you.

Source: https://www.keminekvapil.com/aboutkemi

About the book

The world does not need busy women, it needs present and powerful women.

Blending inspiring stories with reflective coaching practices, POWER provides the tools to navigate the challenges that impact who we are, from discrimination and burnout to trauma and self-doubt.

Reclaim your power and create a life of true joy and fulfilment.

Source: https://www.keminekvapil.com/power-book

Big idea #1 – Defining Power

Kemi pays careful attention to the definitions. Throughout the book, she pulls out the Oxford English dictionary and defines some words where their meaning has been attached to things that aren't their original dictionary definition.

Included in this is defining power. She talks about how power is abstract and intimidating for many women so often we need to call it other things, to feminise it, call it 'soft power' to make it more palatable. But it's time to redefine and reclaim it for what it is. Power might have always looked male, white or some other combination of traits that just aren't yours.

Power might also feel associated with other words, for example, ambition. Kemi associated ambition as a less positive trait until she looked it up, and realised that ambition is not a bad thing at all.

She calls for a new paradigm, starting on the inside; women believing in themselves and feeling like they belong, owning their power and supporting and coaching others to do the same.

Power redefined can be used as individuals and as a collective. Importantly it is power ‘with’, not power ‘over’, using the Brené Brown language. Power ‘over’ is what most people have experienced, hence the more negative connotations and ideas that we have about the idea of power. Like most systems, patriarchy is designed to support itself and sustain itself. So, we must dismantle it by using power differently.

Big idea #2 – POWER

Kemi breaks power into its own acronym. ‘Presence, ownership, wisdom, equality, and responsibility’

• Presence is being aware in the moment, knowing the impact that we have and using it to connect with ourselves and with others.
• Ownership is the ability to integrate all parts of ourselves. Who you are, what you stand for, your experiences and the impact those have had on you and owning the story, rather than someone else's interpretation.
• Wisdom is our inner wisdom, trusting your gut, and knowing that we often give our power away in the language we use of stories we tell ourselves. We need to trust ourselves rather than deferring trust or deferring power to other people because that's what we've always done.
• Equality is the role that we have to play in shaping global equality, helping others who have less than we do, and owning our privilege. This allows us to help and shape things in a different way for others.
• Responsibilities - taking responsibility for our power and deciding how we're going to use it. We can use that to act or behave in a particular way that is aligned with the power that we have.

Using these principles, you'll be able to build power from the inside out. Which allows you to shift the structures around us so that more people are empowered.

Big idea #3 – Practice Makes Power
Practice makes power, or power takes practice.

Power is not something that can just be reclaimed by reading a book. It's not knowledge based. It does ta...

About the Author

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers–The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath.

He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy‘s Top Global Thinkers.

Source: https://www.gladwellbooks.com/landing-page/about-malcolm-gladwell/

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https://www.bookdepository.com/Blink/9780141014593/?a_aid=stephsbookshelf

About the Book

Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant–in the blink of an eye–that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains
really work–in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?

Blink reveals that great decision makers aren’t those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of “thin-slicing”–filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

Source: https://www.gladwellbooks.com/titles/malcolm-gladwell/blink/9780316172325/

I read a quote from Malcolm on why he wrote Blink, he said; “to demonstrate that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately; to help decide when we should and shouldn’t trust our instincts; and to show that snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.”

Links

Check out Malcolm’s Revisionist History podcast – http://revisionisthistory.com/
If you liked this episode, you might also enjoy the summary of Outliers, also by Malcolm Gladwell

BIG IDEA 1 (4:28) – Find the right thin slice of information

This is about pattern recognition “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience”. What are those important bits of information and what can be ignored?

Thin slicing is a key principle in the book and is the reason why some people make good ‘split’ decisions – a lot of this is down to the fact that they’re picking the right ‘slice’ of information to assess – just the important bits.

This was brought to life in the work of John Gottman in analysing married couples to assess if they would stay together or get divorced. There were certain ‘thin slices’ (such as contempt and a ratio of less than 5:1 positive:negative interactions) which were sure signs of relationship failure.

Other studies such as one where strangers had to analyse the personality of someone by looking in their dorm room, and a study on doctors’ tone of voice with a patient as an indicator of whether they would get sued, were other examples of the power of the right ‘slice’ of information as predictors.

BIG IDEA 2 (8:43) – The dark side of blinking.

When we pick the wrong piece of information to thin slice, we can end up making horrible decisions. A great example in the book was a Warren Harding, who essentially became President because he ‘looked’ like a great president. However, he turned out to be one of the worst Presidents that America has ever had.

A great quote from the book is “mediocre people find their way into positions of authority because when it comes to the most important positions, our selection decisions a less rational than we think.”

This still happens today – in the top 500 CEOs, almost 33% of them are over 6ft 2in. However, in the general male US population, only 3.9% of men are over 6ft 2in. This is a perfect example of how we look for appealing visible traits in people as a ‘thin slice’ of information to make unrelated decisions and judgements on.

BIG IDEA 3 (11:49) – Listen with your ears not with your eyes.

In the past, classical orchestras were sexist and believed you could only play a certain i...