Book Reviews: Beyond Culture & Never Be the Same
Beyond Culture by Edward T. Hall
I’ve always found Hall’s books to be interesting and relevant to my life from business to spirituality and this book has lived up to that same expectation. In this book Hall, discusses inter-cultural communication patterns and raises up concerns about the tendency to focus toward using external resources as opposed to examining and utilizing internal, behavior skills. I find this relevant in an age where more than ever the focus is on using technology to communicate, with all the inherent problems that brings, especially when relying on text only to interact. This is a useful book for exploring cross cultural communication and examining the increasing role of technology in communication.
5 out of 5
Never be the Same (Link to author’s website) by Mark LeBlanc
If you’ve had the privilege of working with Mark LeBlanc, you know that he is a dynamic person who is always on the go with business. Never be the Same, an autobiography and business book presents a different side of Mark, but one no less compelling than him as a professional speaker. In this book he is candid about his ups and downs as a business owner and as a human being. I found his description of his pilgrimage on the Camino in Spain to be particularly moving and engrossing. But most of all as I read this book, I came away with a better understanding of how I can learn from Mark on yet another level and also never be the same. I highly recommend this book as one that will give you insights into your business process, while also reminding you of the value of also being more than just your business.
Note: You can only currently order this book from the author’s website
10 out of 5, because 5 stars wouldn’t be enough
My Achiever’s Circle experience
Last Weekend, I attended Mark LeBlanc’s Achiever’s Circle, a weekend intensive on business improvement. And what a weekend it was. I learned a lot about my own business that I hadn’t been fully paying attention to, until I took that course. All of us got a copy of Mark’s excellent book Growing Your Business, which I highly recommend. I’d already read it and used some of the concepts in it, but this weekend helped me polish my focus.
In fact, what I really came away with was a set of tools and practices I could use to grow my business, provided I could be consistent about it. Now, I’m already fairly consistent with what I’d been doing, but the Achiever’s circle showed me I needed to track my metrics a lot better than I had been and I’m already putting those tools into place so that I can not only see the income generators, but also determine the order of priority for those income generators.
I’d highly recommend the achiever’s circle to anyone. It’s a weekend that will change your business life and help you get focused and sharp on what you need to. A week after having been through it, and I’m really seeing changes in a positive direction.
Also I’ll be interviewing Mark LeBlanc on my radio show in a couple of weeks, so you’ll get to learn some more first hand from him.
