Profit The Books

As an owner of a corporate travel agency, i've seen all types of poor business decisions based primarily on frequent flier program affiliation. This book sheds light on how the process went from inception to some of the stangest travel purchases one can imagine. A must read for travel managers

I give this book 4 stars not because it is a wonderful piece of literature nor because it is particularly insightful and will change your life in the travel business, but because it is easy to read, it is a good story and does share some very interesting perspectives with the reader. In short, it is worth the read.

This book does not take you where you think you're going to go. Most of us have been drawn into the frequent flyer miles game as consumers, and we see nothing wrong with it. But what goes on behind the scenes and what is revealed in this book's startling conclusion will change your mind. The book's "insider" style suggests a writer with an authentic knowledge of the world he describes. If you've ever worked in big business you will recognize the people (every company has them), but you won't predict how it ends. Or how blindly we all let it happen.

As a long-time eBay seller who's taken too many photos to mention, the hints in this book are helping us to re-work our photo set up. I recommend this highly to anyone who has to take photos for eBay or any other web site on which they sell products.

Step back for a moment and consider this. Just a few years ago, the very idea of an online auction site that anyone could use would have been pure science fiction. Then along came eBay. Now we have this book, which is not even about the general experience of selling or buying on eBay, but just on taking photos of items you want to sell. Talk about specialised!

Yet the authors have a very valid point. It has been recognised that having a well taken photo, or several photos, of an auction item can tangibly boost the number of bids and ultimately the final price. [Quite independently of this book, there have been studies of eBay auctions that have quantified this effect.]

To this ends, the book gives many tips as to optimising those images. Having a well lit object, perhaps in a pleasing background. Or sometimes, if an object can be scanned using a flatbed scanner, doing that instead of using a camera. Certainly, a scanner is usually easier and quicker to use. So when should you do so?

The authors' judgment about the esthetics of the photos seems pretty good. While you might quibble about a few of their assessments, it's mostly very common sense.

I got this book a nights ago and read a few pages a night. Then a few minutes ago I went on-line to e-Bay looking for a RAID controller for my web server. The picture of the first unit was so dark that it almost looked like a big black blob. The image was way underexposed. You can see exactly what I'm talking about in the center picture on page 62.

The second unit had a picture taken using a flash. It was a straight on shot that caused the light from the flash to bounce straight back at the camera. The entire center of the item was pure white from the reflected light. All you could see was the few items at each end of the card. You can see exactly what I'm talking about in the picture on page 91 of this book.

A little simple math. To shoot either pictures of the RAID controllers would take say a minute. To shoot a much better picture might take three minutes. That's two additional minutes. Let's say that the better picture caused the item to sell for $5 more. That's $5 for two minutes. That's equivalent to $150 an hour. That's pretty good pay.

There are lots of good books on photography. This one talks about the standard photographic stuff, but explains in simple terms how it will help sell the item on e-Bay.

To set the scene for the book, the author reminds the reader that employment, namely working for a wage, has been with us for less than 300 years. Like former modes of labour utilization, the employment mode passed various stages: boon to workers and employers, with a concomitant rise in wealth, improved health, a flourishing culture; a stable rise in productivity; and finally a depressing working place with steadily falling human productivity and declining moral and cultural values. The author concludes that it is high time for employers to proceed to the next mode of labour utilization, namely the entrepreneurial mode, in which a worker would invest his labour for personal profit rather than sell his labour to the employer for a wage.



In the university environment in which I work, earnings are a small part of the motivation to do work, in fact, to do it well. The work itself motivates us to achieve success. Apparently, at production and service workplaces, earnings are a major motivator. If earnings will consist of wages that the worker invests with a view to making a profit, several positive outcomes would occur. The gnawing feeling of being exploited would vanish, which should end the adversarial worker/employer relationship. Workers would join their employer as a team for a common goal - profit maximization.



These ideas make a lot of sense to me. Read the book and see for yourself. It is an easy read, given the novelty of the topic. I enjoyed reading it. It made me think of a whole range if issues around the employer/employee relations.

This book, as the title says, is about making "Profits," with a capital P. The author describes a new concept in an almost utopian world, where workers will take part in an elaborate plan, that will transform them into entrepreneurs in their own workplace. Everyone will be smiling while making profits from innovation and increased efficiency. This is an interesting, easy reading book, leading the reader step by step towards implementing the author's innovative theory. It promises a better and happier world for all involved, workers as well as shareowners, and society as a whole. The author describes, with a good sense of humor, how he tried to find a single company that will implement his ideas, and why it did not work. The reader will certainly ask after reading this interesting book, "if it is so good and simple, why no one wants to join, or at least give it a try"? A partial answer is that "Smiling for Profits" applies mostly to manufacturing, but not to other parts of the modern economy, like services, high tech, financials, or health industry. Maybe the capitalist society is not ready yet for such changes. And in our fast changing world, the uncertainties of globalisation, and the loss of millions jobs to third world countries, the chances of "Smiling for Profits" to succeed look even less rosy.
In this book, every chapter's title is phrased as a question, and then the author answers it by presenting his views about a broad range of topics, that are all related to the title of the book. The use of math in the book is minimal, thus making it easier to read for the broader public, and the illustrations are quite funny.

I just have read a small but amazing book Smiling for Profit. I would call this book "How to Gain Twice from Your Enterprise" because it is a very practical "how to" book. It is also written by an easy-going intelligent person who gives you insights on economics and politics, history and evolution. First and foremost, the author makes a brilliant contribution to the workplace psychology and economics of enterprise. Communists had ignored human nature and fell on their face. Do you think that capitalists have ever used its full beneficial potential? Think again. Then read Mr. Perel's book and implement some ridiculously simple rules of the game. Within months, you will transform your lazy employees into the friendly, eager and thoughtful partners!

Just finished reading Successful Real Estate Investing and really liked this book. I have read numerous books on Real Estate and this is one of the better books I have read. Very informative and up to date. He really debunks the tv Guru's and gives you the nitty truth about what it takes to get into the market. He is also very conservative in his approach and tries to give all angles to buying property. Give this book a four out of five stars.

I have been reading many real estate books recently and this one is the one that stands out the most. This book is a very good start for beginners who are looking to get into RE investing, either as a full-time job or something to do on the side. This book takes you through most of the detail needed to accomplish these and other tasks: writting an offer letter, tenant management, rent control understanding, etc.
The book also covers area of mortgage negotiations, tips on how to be able to show profits without paying taxes immediately and other tips of the trade.
I recommend this book over many others who preach their seminars and other non-RE related topics.

The book is great. No pie in the sky stuff but real practical instructions that you would need to get started and realistically have things work. Full of ideas with the advantages and disadvantages so you know the up and downside of a strategy. Best money I ever spent.

Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro explain how companies try to solve the conflicts between competing business goals by making unnecessary compromises, and then get trapped in the never-ending spin of "the corporate cycle." Their book shows how to resolve three central "tensions": whether to grow or profit, whether to take a short view or a long view, and whether to favor individual units or the larger firm. Their case histories detail how leading companies (Cadbury Schweppes, Gillette and Nokia) thrived by resolving their tensions - and how other major corporations (General Motors and Coca-Cola) lost ground by not heeding them. Dodd and Favaro's "customer benefit" mantra is simple but appealing, and their writing is pretty sharp. The authors make their case using Russian proverbs, metaphors such as "the mud hut conundrum" and amusing anecdotes of managers caught on the tension treadmill. Their "new way of thinking" sometimes evokes a motivational speaker at the local Holiday Inn, but the authors readily concede that carrying out their advice isn't easy. They quote some blunt wisdom from corporate executives to add a needed dose of real world gravitas. getAbstract recommends this useful analysis to managers who are trying to balance equally worthy priorities.

This most interesting audio book explores the problems that all managers face when trying to balance profitability and growth....great results now or later...as well as other conflicting trade offs. The authors present helpful ideas that all managers can use based on research into the 20 year performance of over 20 CEO's of major corporations. It's a fascinating study that is a must have for any executive who wants to come out a winner.

The issues discussed in the three tensions are familiar to anyone with business management background. However, the authors do offer a clear and logical exposition of the challenges of balancing competing goals. The "batting average" they offer as a metric is interesting, if it is indeed as reliable as the authors indicate. A good book to read on a plane!

Product purchase acknowldgement was near immediate, billing timely, receipt of product within three days and the exact product ordered received. Excellent.

I finished reading this book by Bob Kaplan - TIME-DRIVEN ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING last week.

Its a great book for folks familiar with the basic concepts and applications of Activity-based Costing/ABC. In a way Kaplan makes an apology to readers of his earlier books and ardent fans of ABC, for making their lives difficult with the practical implementation approaches for ABC, and offers to make up for it by proposing a change to the new approach called Time-driven Activity-based Costing or TDABC. Personally I would have preferred the term "Capacity-driven Activity-based Costing".

Ofcourse one cannot help but be sympathetic to Bob Kaplan. Having interacted with him in the past, I had an opportunity to see at close range the genius of this man and the range of his knowledge. The book is certainly a big leap in our knowledge-base and tools for managing for managing companies better.

Kaplan aso originated another methodology "THE BALANCED SCORECARD" (BSC), several books on the subject, and co-founded another firm to offer servies around it. He is however, no longer associated with the firm in any management capacity, and the firm is financially troubled.

I recommend Kaplan's BSC books wholeheartedly, but if you are looking to implement at your organizations, I would recommend inviting select independent consultants who have more experienced at this, than the one's available at this firm.

Professionals with a serious interest in TDABC could also do well to reach out directly to Bob Kaplan and his new firm (The Acorn Group), and his former students for consulting advise.

This book has given me a great insight in an easier way to allocate resources down to costumers and products using Time-driven cost driver rates.

However, I am a bit sceptical about the Capacity Cost rate, which seems to be the key element to this models success... especially the way the authors describes the way to calculate this rate.. But with some methodical procedure behing when implementing the model, it is possible to get good results.... that's my experience

All in all, it is a great book about the fundamentals when wanting to use TDABC in your business.

Jack once again show us he is an american hero Thanks Jack for your work on this ugly corporation!!!!!!!

This book reports on the history of those who have been adversely affected by Dow's products, byproducts, and practices, especially from the forties onward. The three main topics are workplace (un)safety, hazardous products, and toxic waste. It's a bit disjointed, though. Most chapters focus on a single product or manufacturing site, and there isn't much of an overarching chronology or a neat conclusion on, say, Dow's culture, or much discussion on how it compares to large corporate culture in general. The author might also have made it clearer that establishing allowable levels for chemical releases doesn't help when bioaccumulation causes the presumed-safe thresholds to be exceeded in people.

Technical editing would have helped as well. There are several typos or misspellings of chemical names, and other errors that would be caught by an editor with some knowledge of chemistry -- for example, the author at one point states, incorrectly, that acetone and benzene are chlorinated compounds. This is not good for the book's credibility. Fortunately, many of the people the author quotes are chemical or medical experts, and the quotes at least seem to be (plausibly) correct. The best parts of the book are the stories of workers or nearby residents that have been affected by Dow, and the people who have tried to solve the problems. Unfortunately, so far it seems that only threats of regulation or litigation have had much effect.

Exposing chemical industry crime and the personal stories that make their poisoning of the world real to us, Trespass Against Us takes on Dow Chemical. The book was launched on the 20th Anniversary of the Bhopal Chemical Disaster that stole the lives of 22,000 people and counting. Social justice organizers hope the book will help spur Dow to present its subsidiary Union Carbide to the Indian Courts to face the criminal charges against them.


Asserting that it is a human right to be born and live free of manmade chemicals which enter our bodies without our permission; Doyle makes the case that Dow is guilty of legal and ethical trespass. The book chronicles the poisoning Dow has been responsible for through quality investigative journalism, while telling the story of dioxin, Agent Orange, and silicone breast implants. The lesser known stories of plastic wrap, pesticides, dry cleaning chemicals and myriad of other products that we use every day and inhabit our bodies are also told.

The book is both a human story and a thorough resource for anyone who wants to understand Dow's seemingly endless quest for power and the toxics that have made it the largest chemical company in the world. On a more human scale, the book helps one understand the connection between the subtle impacts of chemicals in the world on our health from asthma and endometriosis to cancer. I think this connection is the most important one in made in the book, the personal stories of suffering that are caused by Dow are not associated with everyday pollution and they should be. It is impossible to live in this modern world today and be totally untouched by Dow. The current administration would have us believe that Dow has more of a right to pollute than a child with Dow- triggered cancer has to live. The story of how this could happen in just 100 years is worth reading.

If you've been dabbling in a home business or dreaming about starting one, this is a book you've got to have. Turn Your Talents Into Profits will inspire you and encourage you. It's easy to read, gives you lots of great ideas, and has an amazingly complete bibliography.

I should be more disappointed with this book than I am. It's helpful in its own way, but suggestions to seek out further details using suggested Prodigy & CompuServe keywords seem, to be polite, a little quaint, & the publication date of 1998 makes it fairly clear that this is an "updated" version of an older (self-published?) book. One suggested business, for instance, is to start a BBS, a phenomenon that pretty much had gone the way of the mastodon by then.

The book is also lacking in serious instruction on how to run a business. Since this book is aimed at people who are enough adrift to need these ideas in the first place, the target audience probably needs more than a whirlwind 9-page overview of practical & critical business skills.

If that's all there is, I would've struggled to give this book a bare 3 stars. However, the majority of the suggested 100+ microbusinesses aren't too bad. Keep in mind that many of them require some sort of preexisting skills; you probably don't want to leap into a mural-painting business if you have absolutely no sense of form or color, for instance.

More important than the ideas themselves, though, is their range. If you read this book cover-to-cover, or even just flip through it & glean a few ideas that appeal to you, you will definitely be motivated to start concocting your own small-small business. It might be a variant of an idea from the authors, or wholly your own creation, but you'll have been bitten by the bug -- I guarantee it.

And if you already have an idea, read it anyway! One of the most crushing weights to the entrepreneurial spirit is the feeling that you're the only one crazy enough to try. Reading this book will make you feel a little less lonely. With that to brace you, you'll be a little more encouraged to follow your dream in a sensible & ultimately rewarding manner.

Turn Your Talents into Profits has been in the news quite a bit lately. It was featured on the Montel Williams show in late March, in the March issue of American Baby, and in the May 11th issue of Woman's Day. I think this book has been getting so much attention because it focuses on microbusinesses (very small, part-time, home-based businesses), and microbusinesses are the fastest-growing type of small business in America.

Though the translation leaves much to be desired, this book should be required reading. It challenges the infectious theories of many diseases - AIDS,polio,SARS,HPV,etc. It is brimming with illustrations-charts,diagrams,pictures, and other information that supports the views of the authors. Each disease could take a whole book to explain, and indeed there are many books on each of these diseases.

An excellent overview of the history of so-called "viral epidemics". Virus Mania describes how they have been used to terrorize the public for political and financial gain, most notably the "AIDS viral epidemic" which has been the most successful fraud, still raking in millions of dollars in fundraisers and taxpayer money on misdirected efforts to stem the real causes of AIDS: substance abuse and malnutrition.

I'm still reading this book. Let's just say that it is dispelling a lot of myths that I have believed in for years as a Registered Nurse--an infection control nurse at that. A lot of what I thought I knew turns out to be wrong.

Ken Burnett has been a friend since I was given the privilege of introducing him at the PBS Development Conference years ago. He wrote the book on donor relationships --Relationship Fundraising: A Donor Based Approach to the Business of Raising Money and here he's written the book on gift stewardship.

With all due respect to my many other published friends in the fundraising arena, if you have this book, Jim Greenfield's Fundraising Fundamentals: A Guide to Annual Giving for Professionals and Volunteers, and Kay Sprinkel Grace's Beyond Fundraising: New Strategies for Nonprofit Innovation and Investment, 2nd Edition, there's not much more you need to know.

Ken's book is an easy, breeze read--the whole message is delivered in less than 160 pages. But there's a depth of wisdom and experience here that belies the size. A great handbook from a terrific fundraiser.

This book is a snap shot of everything that works in donor relationships - and some good advice about things that don't. It's about building a relationship that really means something to the donor as well as the charity they are donating to. And it's also about being proud to be a fundraiser - stand up and be counted!!

Through a writing style, which stays light right to the last few pages, Ken manages to capture the essence of a lot of jargonese which penetrates the fundraising world. This is a simple book - but not for simple minds. If you like the snap shot style of American quick fixes then this is a great introduction to relationship fundraising and a whole lot more. At the end Ken makes some personal points and a bit of a plea for better customer service - well made and if only half the advice in this little book is put into practice, there would definitely be a shift.

Just try one simple thing which Ken outlines - I would suggest a fundraiser working on their own would really benefit from number 17. Really understand your donors - no amount of consultancy and research by other people can ever replace that one!

If you are new to fundraising, then take advice from number 71 - Be proud to be a fundraiser - and number 76 - `Be respectful of your donors, and show that respect even when they're not present' - and lastly number 78, which gives the ultimate in reading lists for fundraisers, both old and new.

The fact that Ken points us in the direction of best practice from a great variety of sources - big household names from Britain such as the RNLI but also from across the globe. Reading this on the tube was ideal, it is possible to dip in and out and I enjoyed creating my own `fundraising menu'. Recommended is a number 78, 72, 48, 22 and 17. Oh and definitely 87, the outlawing of killer phrases such as `'That won't work' and `There isn't time'. But then again...

I was hoping that this book would provide an overview of working smarter, not harder -- for example focus on understanding your own message in order to be more effective. Instead, it is a "to do" list (which the title states)that only the largest and best established organizations would have time/resources/or history to do. I'm a start-up, and for me, I can only hope to get to the point where most of the ideas in this book are useful -- or even possible.

It's good in that the underlying theme is: It's the customer, stupid. But that is something that all good salespeople/strategic marketing know: take care of your own customers first, keep communication channels open, listen more than you talk, find out why they do business with you. etc.

So: my biggest problem is the title: It should be: Maintaing Funding for Charitable Organizations: A checklist for focusing on your donor relationships. If you are in that situation you should probably read this book. But don't look for the zen.