September 2nd Meeting: Outliers Summary

August 26, 2010 — Amy


Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I found an excellent summary online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29 which you can look over to supplement this summary.

Outlier:

1. Something that is situated away from or classed differently from a  main or related body.

2. A statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.

“This book is about outliers, about men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary…And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us…I will argue that there is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success.” (p 17-18)

Part I Opportunity

“We do owe something to parentage and patronage,” people don’t become successful in a bubble or because of who they are alone. Advantages in the form of  “opportunities and cultural legacies allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” (p 19)

Selection, streaming and differentiated experience:

It is not the best and the brightest who rise to the top. It is those who get a head start, those who are able to practice longer and get more experience based on determinations made about them which are often not related to being the best but maybe just being the oldest. Also known as “accumulative advantage” one advantage leads to another and another ultimately leading to more success than you would have had otherwise. (p 15-31) “Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others to the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures” (p 32).

10,000 Hour Rule: Talent vs. Preparation

While initial talent may draw you to an activity, practice will determine your level of success. Not just any preparation, but 10,000 hours of practice (single minded, repetitive, consistent) will make the real difference in your level of success. To be at the top, you must not only work harder but work “much, much harder” (p 37-39). Reaching 10,000 hours of practice in anything automatically weeds out those who have to do it alone or have to spend time focusing on other things like a job. You need extraordinary opportunities to achieve 10,000 hours as a young adult in any discipline (p 41-42).

Geniuses: ultimate outliers?

“Intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated” (p 90) in fact, you don’t have to have the highest IQ to be the best of the best. You just have to pass the threshold- the point at which anything higher will be as likely as another to succeed. Same goes for the college you attend, it doesn’t have to be Harvard, it just has to be as good as The University of Illinois (p 83). Not only does your IQ number mean very little once it is over, say 130, but practical intelligence is even more important! Practical intelligence is “knowledge that helps you read situations clearly and get what you want” (p 101) and without it you will not succeed. The good news? This skill can be taught! The bad news? This skill must be taught and too often it is differences in income and class that lead to those without wealth missing out on this critical skill as well as other advantages (p 101-112). Conclusion? Maybe we should be teaching these skills so that more people are offered the opportunity to succeed!

The Myth of Luck: (p 121-129)

A possible definition of luck is what happens when “what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity” (p 128). Pretty lucky right? Wrong. “That word luck fails to capture the work and the efforts and the imagination and the acting on opportunities that might have been hidden and not so obvious” (p 129). It wasn’t luck, it is in fact people taking “advantage of the circumstances that came their way” and they are then prepared when the tide suddenly shifts and their skills become in demand (p129). Luck is more involved with when you were born- small or large generation? Beginning or end of the year? Before or after major generational defining events like war, The Great Depression, or perfectly timed with a revolution like the Technology Revolution (p 129-139).

Origins of Success:

When mapping out family trees, they found that those professional Jewish Doctors and Lawyers all came from families that worked in the Garment Industry after coming to America. Experiences growing up with parents that immigrated and work so hard day in and day out just to have work that is meaningful (autonomy, complexity, and link between effort and reward) taught them that “through your own powers of persuasion and initiative you” can get what you want out of life. Even take your kids to Carnegie Hall (p 149-153).

Part II Legacy

Cultural Legacy a.k.a. Social Inheritance:

“Whatever mechanism passes on speech patterns probably passes on behavioral patters as well” (p 175). “Each of us has his or her own distinct personality. But overlaid on top of that are tendencies and assumptions and reflexes handed down to us by the history of the community we grew up in and those differences are extraordinarily specific” (p 204). This means just as the region you are born in and how people talk where you grew up can affect how you talk, and the way they behaved and the way their ancestors behaved probably influence how you behave as well. Why does that matter? Well…you can turn everything around if you acknowledge the importance of your cultural legacy (p 175-182).

Conclusion: So what is the point?

“We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth…To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork  of luck breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success…with a society that provides opportunities for all” (p 268) for the outliers Gladwell describes did not achieve success all on their own. “They are the products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances….critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all” (p 285).

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The Big Short- part II

July 1, 2010 — Amy


Due to poor turnout for the July 1st meeting, we will repeat our July book choice for our August meeting. If you haven’t read it, check out the summary and if you have read it take the month off and enjoy the sun!

See you August 5th!

~Amy

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The Big Short- summary for July 1st meeting!

June 29, 2010 — Amy


The Big Short by Michael Lewis

Reviews:

Seattle Post Intelligencer: http://www2.seattlepi.com/articles/422063.html

Barnes and Nobel Review: http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Reviews-Essays/The-Big-Short/ba-p/2298

The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031202291.html

The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/books/review/Gross-t.html

Media Coverage:

On the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/michael-lewis-the-big-sho_n_500862.html

On 60 Minutes: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/03/60-minutes-michael-lewis-the-big-short/

Google video search results

Summary:

Let’s set the stage of the financial industry leading up to the crash (from an English Major’s perspective):

  1. The industry began trading mortgage bonds a new form of bond trading.
  2. To get more capital for the mortgage bonds, there was an increase in subprime loans being offered and the loans were getting worse (being offered to more people with virtually no income at teaser rates they could only afford for a few years) and getting more prevalent. A mortgage bond used to have 2% in subprime loans by 2005 they were made up of almost 95% subprime loans and thus the bond was more likely to fail.
  3. FICO scores that were high only because the person had little to no credit card debt lead to more and more subprime and bad lending.
  4. A few investors figured that the mortgage bond business was getting too risky and they bet against it in the form of loan credit default swaps. Essentially creating a way to short the mortgage bond market. “When an investor goes long on an investment, it means that he or she has bought a stock believing its price will rise in the future. Conversely, when an investor goes short, he or she is anticipating a decrease in share price” (from http://www.investopedia.com/university/shortselling/shortselling1.asp). Basically, “You paid a small premium, and, if enough subprime borrowers defaulted on their mortgages, you got rich” (p 125).
  5. “Roughly 80 percent of what had been risky triple-B-rated bonds now looked like triple-A-rated bonds” (p 76) by leveraging Credit default swaps into a synthetic CDO. “It used credit default swaps to replicate the very worst of the existing bonds, many times over” (p 76). “Fully 80 percent of the CDO composed of nothing but triple-B bonds…to wipe out any triple-B bond…all that was needed was a 7 percent loss in the underlying pool of home loans” (p 129).
  6. The tower of debt: “The first tower was the original subprime loans that had been piled together. At the top of this tower was the triple-A tranche, just below it the double-A tranche, and so on down to the riskiest, triple-B tranche” which were “repackaged into another tower of bonds: a CDO”
  7. All that had to happen for these bonds to be worthless was to have house prices stop rising. Prices didn’t even need to fall! That is all it would take for the system to come crashing down.

Author Michael Lewis felt lucky. He had escaped what he saw as a “to good to be true” job as a bonds trader with Salomon Brothers, wrote a book about what he saw as a flawed system thinking it would soon collapse. It took 20 more years to finally do so, just when he thought he had been wrong. He contacted others who spotted the flaws and got a list of investors who bet against the house (the mainstream financial industry and their subprime mortgages) and as he investigated those on the list, the book The Big Short was born. This is the story of those who bet against the system and won.

Steve Eisman: A curious character, Eisman is a man with a talent to offend pretty much everyone, started with a job as an analyst at his parent’s firm. Never hiding what he thought, he was able to spot companies that were in trouble before anyone else and his opinions became more and more influential, his endorsement more and more sought after. He entered the market right around the time that mortgages were being turned into bonds, and right before the mortgage bond “was about to be put to a new use: making loans that did not qualify for government guarantees” (p 8). Vincent Daniel: The man Eisman hired to assist him with getting the truth about the subprime mortgage loans. They found that the delinquency rate did matter because “all retained some small fraction of the loans they originated, and the companies were allowed to book as profit the expected future value of those loans” (p 13-14) they predicted the boom in the late 90s of those making subprime loans at that time. But it never really went away and by the time Eisman had built his own firm, “he needed to learn everything he could about the fixed income world… [because] the fate of stocks depended increasingly on the bonds. As the subprime mortgage market grew, every financial company was, one way or another, exposed to it” (p 25). Eventually he discovered the secret behind synthetic CDOs, met Wing Chau who ‘managed’ them and got a new mission: “buy specifically credit default swaps on Wing Chau’s CDOs” (p 144). Eventually  they added short positions to the credit rating agencies as well (p 172) and then some of the biggest banks like Bank of America, UBS, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and more (p 174). His bet paid off.

Michael Burry: In 2004 he began looking closely at the subprime mortgage bonds to discover how he might short them (p 26). Why did they keep making these bad loans? “They didn’t keep the loans but sold them to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo and the rest, which packaged them into bonds and sold them off” so they were not left with the risk (p 28). His biggest problem was how do you short them when it isn’t allowed (p 29) and after much thought and research he “got an idea: credit default swaps on subprime mortgage bonds” (p 30). When he went into business as a money manager after losing interest in the medical profession, Joel Greenblatt invest 105,000 dollars with him as well as White Mountains who purchased a smaller amount of his fund at 600,000 dollars and gave him 10 million to invest on Scion Capital which was madly successful. In 2005 he began developing a way to buy insurance on the worst loans (those most likely to default) and in a few weeks he had purchased “several hundred million dollars in credit default swaps from half a dozen banks, in chunks of 5 million” (p 52-53) eventually owning $750 million in subprime mortgage bonds. He became the first to create them, then the one most doubted about their wisdom, and finally the one owning the majority of them when loans started to default. He was poised to make a fortune, and so were his investors. But when the subprime loans began to fall and yet this bet didn’t pay off, his investors wanted out and he wouldn’t let them (p 184-191). On August 31, 2007 Michael Burry began to unload his own credit default swaps and made profits of $720 million. While he made a killing in the market, his investors didn’t appreciate how he did it and the lack of recognition for being right killed any desire he had to continue his hedge fund.

Greg Lippmann: worked for Deutsche bank and was instructed to get people to invest in Credit Default Swaps so that more synthetic CDOs could be created and sold. He pitched his proposal with number crunching assistance from  Eugene Xu to Steve Eisman and his company. Once the research was done, Greg Lippmann found he believed the bonds would fail and had very little trouble getting behind the credit default swaps, however his way of presenting the proposition lead to most people including those who worked with Steve Eisman to distrust his motives making it hard to get investors. By the end of 2006 he had about 100 investors trying to hedge their bets by dabbling in the credit default swaps market. He made $47 million dollars in 2007 with Deutsche Bank.

Charlie Ledley: Partnered with Jamie Mai and Ben Hockett and began investing by trying to predict drastic changes in the market. They looked for ways to get themselves “into a position where small changes in states of the world created huge changes in values” (p 129). They would buy low priced stock right before something dramatic happened and then the stock would jump. It was a risky way to invest, hard to predict and hard to be consistent with (p 109-121). Deutsche bank institutional customer enabling them to purchase some of Greg Lippmann’s credit default swaps. They were among the first to spot the problem with CDOs and to buy the brand new and cheaper credit default swaps on them (p 130) and by “January 2007…they owned $110 million in credit default swaps on the double-A tranche of asset-backed CDOs” (p 134). Corn wall capital owned 205 million in credit card swaps by February of 2007 (p 163). On August 6th they sold those to UBS netting $80 million for them (p 221-222).

Howie Hubler: worked for Morgan Stanley and invested in credit default swaps on subprime loans. Now he needed a mark, and he found them. Eventually enticed to run Morgan Stanley’s Global Proprietary Credit Group Huber managed subprime-backed CDOs and had 2 billion in bespoke credit default swaps as well that would eventually pay off. He also bought  about $16 billion dollars of CDOs by 2007. He was cynical, but not cynical enough betting that less than 8% of the subprime mortgages in those CDOs would go bad when it turns out a much higher number than that would default. The risk he had taken was hidden from the Morgan Stanley’s reports (p 200-206). When Huber did an analysis of what would happen if there was a 10% default rate on subprime loans, they found that it would be a loss of 2.7 billion (p 212) but he was still convinced that kind of loss would never happen. They did. Morgan Stanley exited with a loss for about $3.7 billion and total losses were about $9 billion (p 214-215). His hedged bets weren’t hedged enough. “Howie Hubler lost more money than any single trader in the history of wall street- and yet he was permitted to keep the tens of millions of dollars he had made” (p 256).

Then it all started to go south (again, I’m and English major not a numbers girl). In the 1st half of 2007: “the ABX, a publicly traded index of triple-B-rated subprime mortgage bonds…fell more than a point” (p 161). “By early June, the index of triple-B-rated subprime bonds was closing in the high 60s” a loss of more than 30 % of their original value (p 164). However, the CDOs which were created out of these bonds did not collapse even though their collateral was gone (p 165). “The bond market had resumed what would become an uninterrupted decline” (p 172). “The facts on the ground in the housing market diverged further and further from the prices on the bonds and the insurance on the bonds” (p 194) and by July 2007 everything flipped. All of the sudden big names were interested in betting against the market, and by July most could see the writing on the wall that the subprime loans were going bad quickly and the safe bet was the short bet (p 195-199). Then comes the sharp decline in profits that those who spotted the problem early on were expecting. Those companies that had invested heavily or covered the credit default swaps were now facing major losses. In 2008: Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America. The stock Market fell by more than it had since 9/11/2001 and the government bailed out AIG to payoff the losses on the subprime credit default swaps they sold to Wall Street banks (p 237). Corporations yanked their money out of Money Market funds, and large Wall Street firms had taken huge losses on the triple-A CDOs. “The CEOs of every major Wall Street firm were also on the wrong end of the gamble. All of them, without exception, either ran their public corporations in to bankruptcy or were saved from bankruptcy by the United States government. They all got rich, too” (p 257). It didn’t stop there, as we know, and the repercussions are still being felt by the the industry and those that the subprime mortgages bonds were built on- the American People.

My opinion on the book:

This book did an excellent job of making the complex and jargon filled world of wall street easy for a layman to understand (at least somewhat!) and the author is such a good storyteller that those featured in the book come alive for the reader.

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The Big Short: Copies at Castle Pines Library!

June 7, 2010 — Amy


Today 6/7/2010 I have one print copy of the book choice for July- The Big Short. I also have an audio CD copy as well. If you need a copy, please stop by Castle Pines and pick one up! I will post here if I get more in as the month goes on.

Thanks,
Amy

Posted in Find the book!. 1 Comment »

Meeting July 1, 2010

June 7, 2010 — admin


For this meeting we will be reading The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis and Castle Pines Library has 6 YLD copies of this book and the Douglas County Library district has 78 copies with 128 on the hold list. If you want me to snag one of Castle Pine’s copies, just reply to this post, call or send me an email at along@dclibraries.org! I don’t see any ebook versions of this online (if you found it, please post the link as a comment) But you purchase the book from the Tattered Cover, Amazon or Barnes and Nobel .

About the Book

Product Description from Amazon: The #1 New York Times bestseller: a brilliant account—character-rich and darkly humorous—of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff. When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking.

The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar’s Poker. Who got it right? he asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this handful of unlikely—really unlikely—heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.

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June 3rd Selection Summary: It’s Not Who You Know It’s Who Knows You!

May 28, 2010 — Amy


It’s Not Who You Know It’s Who Knows You! The small business guide to raising your profits by raising your profile

By David Avrin- local author and our special guest for the meeting on June 3rd!

David Avrin introduces his book by explaining why it is more important for people to know you than for you to know them. “The fact is that you can never know all your prospective customers, but if you’re going to attract new customers or clients, they’d better know you” (p xx). This makes perfect sense if you think about how getting spot on TV to discuss your product can improve your sales. It doesn’t affect who you know, but it doesn’t increase the amount of people who know you and therefore your product can now be sold to them. How do you get your name out there? Be prepared, take opportunities that are presented to you “to showcase your expertise, product, service, location, name, jingle, logo, or message from the stage, the big screen, small screen, internet, radio, newspaper, webinar, billboard, soapbox, Tweet, tradeshow, podcast or e-zine…The point is that one well-placed media appearance or strategic presentation from the platform will likely trump any synergistic lunch meeting with a colleague or Facebook connection with an old flame” (p xxi).

In this book, David Avrin explores and presents wisdom, tactics, and strategies that will help you see your business as your customers do and ask you questions that will help you see your business in a new way. He includes helpful tips from the Visibility Coach throughout to sum up the important points in each section. His book is broken up into 3 main parts, Your Brand, Creating Awareness, and The Pitch to help you go from unknown to well known!

Part I: Your Brand

David Avrin helps us see in this chapter exactly what a brand is, what it can and can’t do, how much influence you have over it, and how to improve it. “Your brand is… Everything. It is everything you do and everything you don’t do” (p 6) and it is more than just your logo and tag line. To build a successful brand you need to make sure you are offering a unique product and experience and that you deliver on your promises to make your business memorable (p 4-5). It will help if you narrow your focus to what you are best at, not just what you can do (p 8-10) and make sure that you do everything you can to gain an advantage and stand out from your competition (p 10). You need to “Stand out, stand apart, and become the clear choice” to get the business and in order to do that, you need to highlight something about your self that is identifiable with you and only you (p 13-17). Tie the senses into how you build your brand, don’t forget the whole experience of your company, product and service (p 61).

Have you looked at your name recently? Is it too general or too clever? “Remember this: If your name requires and explanation, then you’ve just shot yourself in the foot” what you are looking for is a name that gives a sense of who you are and what you offer or says something about you, your audience, your market, what you offer or what you believe (p 20-21). Also look closely at your tag line. It should “tell people what you do, who you do it for, and why you are different from your competition” (p 21).

Make sure your business is the right business: “Step back and look at your business to see if you have struck the balance [between what you want and what your customers want and are willing to pay for] …ensure that you are clear on what your potential customers and clients want. Then deliver that” as the Visibility Coach says “deliver what your customers actually want, and they’ll come back. Do it better than your competition and they’ll come back again and again” (p 29).

There are some other things you can do to keep your brand strong. Make sure your personality comes through when promoting your business, focus and specialize your services/products so that you are the obvious choice, and improve your relationships with others. How do you do that? Be interested instead of interesting, focus on the person you are talking to and let them know you care what they think (p 36-38). Also, don’t work alone. Involve others in your work, products, and ideas and they will help ensure that what you put out in the world is free of errors that you might have missed (p 39-41).

Protect yourself: register the domain names of all versions of your company name so that they can not become the URL of someone seeking to defame your company. Add ‘the’ ’sucks’ and even the ‘F’ word to ensure that their site doesn’t end up higher on the search engine results than yours!  Just look at paypalsucks.com! (p 41-43) Nothing is ever lost so make sure that your communications can’t come back and bite you! Review all your written work and make sure it is clean (no typos, nothing profane or that will haunt you later) and remember that even how you dress, act and talk when you don’t think it matters– well, matters (p 43-55). If something happens and you are confronted with a mistake or issue, “Address [them] quickly, honestly, and effectively. Every minute you delay, doubles the amount of time the problem will remain an issue” (p 60).

Presentation is key: know your timezones, they will affect how you do business. Keep your style up to date because “how you dress and who you dress for matters” and make sure you choose the appropriate role for yourself  let the professionals do what they do best and if you are the best person to market your brand then do it! (p 60-68)

Part II: Creating Awareness

Fame these days can be attained without much effort- if you don’t care about what you are famous for! To be famous in a way that is good for you and good for your business, David Avrin offers this: “Do good work and good deeds. Treat your friends and clients well. Solve their problems, provide for their needs, and give them good value….then promote the heck out of it!” (p 74) which will make you famous for all the right reasons and keep you that way.

Other ways the author suggests to increase awareness:

  • Find the perfect partner to boost your product/service! (p 75-77)
  • Be Newsworthy- stand out from the crowd! (p 77-79, 94-97, 131-133)
  • Make sure you have an excellent on demand website and that it is on page one of the search engine results! (p 79-83, 159-162, 191-193)
  • “Memorable people and brands aren’t boring. Don’t be boring.” (p 83-85, 94-97)
  • Reconnect with old friends, colleagues or customers (p 86-88)
  • Know how to use social media to your benefit (p 88-91, 105-107)
  • Get on TV, get some press and make sure people know about it! (p 92-94, 122-125)
  • Free samples will draw people in  (p 97-100)
  • Join your local Chamber of Commerce, Referral/Leads groups, professional associations! (p 100-103)
  • Your visual brand: your look, logo, location, staff uniforms, signage and packaging (p 103-104, 129-131)
  • Write a book- get your ideas in print and get it on the news (p 107-114, 115-118)
  • Do something to be noticed and remembered (p 114-115)
  • Use connections to connect to others, Six Degrees of Business Success (p 118-121)
  • Change your voice, mix it up, try things out (p 126-129, 193-196)
  • In short: Speak up! Stand out! Step up and be visible! (p 131-136)

Part III: The Pitch

Here are some great ideas from the book on how to get your pitch on track and keep it there:

  • Is your brand really promotable? Do you satisfy a want or a need? Are you unique? Do you produce world class services and quality products? Are you highly visible? And look at your target market: What do they watch, read, do and where are they? Where they are you should be too! (p 139-143)
  • Don’t use common words: “take your key descriptors or tag line and write them down on a piece of paper without your name or product information. In isolation, do they specifically describe your business or industry or could they apply to anyone in other categories?… Market what truly sets you apart” (p 145-146). Offer something unusual, startling, or unexpected to get the attention you need – even take the risk to go against public opinion (p 147-153) and try to make sure that you are not annoying or intruding by timing and creating your message appropriately (p 154-156).
  • Strengthen your marketing by keeping in mind that “the Visibility Coach says: Focus on the big numbers to amplify the need, maximize the problem, and minimize the resistance to your price” (p 159).
  • Tie your product or service into an experience for your customer whenever possible. “Most mere items are not truly valued. Experiences by contrast, are felt, given meaning, and ultimately remembered” (p 163-164)
  • Don’t grow with your customers if your service or product targets a specific demographic- stick with what you do best! (p 165-166)
  • Be original! Don’t go where others have already been (p 169-172) and think of your product in an original way, what else can it do for people? (p 181-183)
  • Make people feel good. Then remind those who have used you in the past how much they liked you! (p 173-175)
  • Don’t be annoying (p 176-179)
  • Make sure you are ready to release your product, do your homework and work out the bugs (p 183-185)
  • Share your passion, but appropriately. Don’t spend too much time on you, focus on your product/service or customers (p 189-191)
  • Do you research! (Or hire a librarian) and make sure you are prepared to compete! (p 197-198)

And if you think that this list is good, just pick up a copy of the book and read through it. David Avrin does and excellent job walking the reader through step by step how to make changes for the better in how you do business, gain customers, and grow your business and reputation. My favorite part is the Afterword- but you have to read it to understand why!

David Avrin is know internationally as the Visibility Coach and lives right here in Castle Rock, Colorado. A noted speaker, author, branding consultant and executive coach, David shows professionals and organizations how to stand apart and raise their profile in a competitive marketplace. Visit him online at www.visibilitycoach.com.

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Book Selection for June 3, 2010- local author will attend!

May 8, 2010 — admin

DAVID AVRIN – “The Visibility Coach”

David Avrin is known internationally as the “Visibility Coach.” A best-selling author, popular speaker, trainer and executive coach, David brings his powerful Marketing and Branding presentations to audiences around the world.

David’s eye-opening, informative, interactive and always entertaining presentations are popular with large organizations, small business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals who want to stand out from their competition and become top-of-mind with their top prospects.

His Marketing and Branding presentations have received raves from Los Angeles to Washington, and as far away as Singapore, Bangkok, Melbourne, Antwerp and London. His creative and eye-opening promotional strategies have helped thousands of professionals and business owners, refine their message, build their brands and promote the “unique” aspects of their businesses, products and expertise to consumers and clients around the world.

About the Book

It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Who Knows You! – The Small Business Guide to Raising Your Profits by Raising Your Profile (2010 John Wiley & Sons) was released as the number one business book in the Denver Post in early December and spent almost a week as the number one marketing book on Amazon.com. Currently, it is listed as #1 on the “Books to Watch” on 800CEORead.com Click here: http://800ceoread.com/attribute/show/3-Books_To_Watch/2010/02

Posted in Past Reads. 2 Comments »

Monthly Poll- what did you think of Just Listen?

April 28, 2010 — admin


All meetings of the Business Book Club are held at the Castle Pines Chamber of Commerce the first Thursday of the month at 11:30 click here for a map! Click on Meeting Dates, Times and Book Selections for more info!

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Summary for Just Listen By Mark Goulston- May 6th Meeting

April 28, 2010 — admin


Just Listen By Mark Goulston

Chapter 1

The author begins by setting up his theory on communication, the techniques he has discovered to engaging people in meaningful communication even when they are trying to pull away. He tries to focus the reader away from common and misguided techniques of communication like encouragement, persuasion, arguing, and pushing all which create resistance instead of cooperation (p 4).  His techniques are instead: listen, ask, mirror, and reflect back to people what you heard.

Interspersed in each chapter are stories that illustrate how the authors techniques have worked in different high stakes situations. The stories are helpful because you can see both healthy and unhealthy patterns of communication and hopefully recognize yourself or situations you have been in before in those stories. I will not cover the stories in my summary, but I recommend reading them if there is a chapter you are particularly interested in.

“Almost all communication is an effort to get through to people and cause them to do something different than they were doing before” (p 7) the author asserts, and you can get through to them if you use the proper approach! His model of communication is called the persuasion cycle from page 9 seen here:

This cycle helps you move people from resisting to listening, from listening to considering, from considering to willing to do, from willing to do to doing, and from doing to glad they did and continuing to doing. (page 8 )

But note: “Ironically, the key to gaining “buy in” and then moving people through the rest of the cycle is not what you tell them, but what you get them to tell you – and what happens in their minds in the process” (p 8-9).

Chapter 2: Brain Science

“When you understand something about how the brain moves from resistance to buy-in, you’ll have a huge edge because no matter what your message is, you need to talk to the brain” (p 14). Goulston has boiled it down to three basic parts of the brain:

  • The lower reptilian brain- the “fight or flight” part of your brain. As we evolved, this part of our brain that functioned well in prehistoric times never left, just got written over. It still controls our reactions especially to perceived dangers through the Amygdala.
  • The middle mammal brain is the emotional brain- your “inner drama queen” where powerful feelings arise.
  • The upper primate brain is the part that logically and rationally generates a conscious plan of action after weighing the situation. This is the smart part of your brain, and the place you need to be thinking from to communicate effectively.

Amygdala Hijack- the death of rational thought

When you feel threatened “your body gives the amygdala the power to throw a switch, either directing impulses to or diverting impulses from the frontal cortex” where the logical part of your brain is. The hijack occurs when the amygdala cuts off access to the logical part of your brain causing “your ability to reason drops drastically, your working memory falters, and stress hormones flood your system. Your adrenaline rush will keep you from thinking clearly” (p 17) and you should always try to intervene before the Amygdala Hijack occurs because once it happens, communication is lost.

Mirror Neurons- why they matter

Mirror Neurons allow you to mirror another person’s actions in our own minds. This is why you cry when watching a sad movie or cringe when you see someone get hurt. “In effect, they transport us into another person’s mind, briefly making us feel what the person is feeling” (p 19) this can help you reach people by allowing you to mirror their point of view which can make them feel less lonely and like you are on their side.

The Nine Core Rules for Getting Through to Anyone

  1. Move Yourself from “Oh F#@& to OK” in a five step process

The idea is that with practice you can use this 5 step process to quickly move from stressed out to calm to keep yourself thinking clearly and avoid Amygdala Hijack. This will help you make better choices under stress and keep you clam in a crisis. This is the process:

  1. Rewire Yourself to Listen

Why do you need this? Each of us makes assumptions about things that are happening around us. These assumptions become a filter or barrier and keeps us from asking questions that might shed light on why a person acts the way they do. Until you free yourself of this filer by asking questions you think you already have the answers to and listening.

  1. Make the Other Person Feel “Felt”

By putting yourself in someone’s shoes you can ‘get’ each other and breakthrough barriers leading to cooperation, collaboration and effective communication. How do you do this? Decide what you think that person is feeling, ask them if that is the case and follow up if it isn’t, then ask them how (frustrated, angry, upset, etc) they are and ask them why. After learning how they are feeling, how strongly and why then find out what needs to happen to make it better and what you can do to help (p 48, 51).

  1. Be More Interested Than Interesting

How? “Think of conversations like a detective game and your coal is to learn as much about the other person as you can” (p 59) Ask questions about what they do, the people they care about, their hopes and dreams. Ask questions that will get them to say “I feel x, I think x, I did or would do x” (p 60). Why? Because being interested in them will make them feel good and then in turn be interested in you.

  1. Make People Feel Valuable

Find ways to show the people you value how much they matter. Now, go show the people who annoy and frustrate you that they matter! Why? They are starved for attention and if they can’t find good attention, they will look for bad attention (p 65). “Everyone competes for time, but no one should need to compete for importance” (p 68).

  1. Help People to Exhale Emotionally and Mentally

Distress- the point at which stress becomes so extreme that all we can think about is making it stop and are not being rational or reasonable. Behaviors under distress are Shooting from the hip, Venting, and Suppressing which people do to prevent Amygdala Hijack. Allow them to do this and then give them a chance to Exhale. “It’s the only response that relaxes stressed-out individuals and opens their minds to solutions from other people” and build a connection between you (p 71). How? Ask “tell me more” after the venting is over or ask them to close their eyes and breath.

  1. Check Your Dissonance at the Door

“Dissonance occurs when you think you are coming across in one way but people see you in a totally different way” or when you see someone one way but they don’t agree or didn’t intend it that way (p 78). How? Find out how others perceive you and ask others for suggestions on how to fix it- then do it!

  1. When All Seems Lost-Bare Your Neck

Own up to your own feelings of vulnerability: it prevents Amygdala Hijack and allows you to exhale. Why is this good? Because the person who your talking to can’t mirror your distress and understand it if you aren’t honest about it, instead they will mirror what you are using to mask it (hiding fear with anger will only get you anger in return) whereas if you tell people honestly what you are feeling even people who don’t like you will want to help and that will lead you to a solution.

  1. Steer Clear of Toxic People

Who are they? Needy people, bullies, takers, narcissists, and psychopaths. How? Confront them directly, neutralize them or walk away and don’t allow them to follow. Simple trick: “If you are hesitant to say ‘No,’ you may be neurotic. If you’re truly afraid to say ‘No,’ you’re probably dealing with a toxic person. And if nobody ever says ‘No’ to you, that toxic person could be you.” (p 108)

The Twelve Ways to Achieve Buy-In

  1. The Impossibility Question- Move a person from listening to considering-and from “Yes . . . but” to “Yes!” by asking people what they think is impossible so they will lower their guard to consider what is possible.
  2. The Magic Paradox- Shift another person from resistance to listening-from “nobody understands” to “you understand” by anticipating the other person’s reasons for ‘no’ and vocalizing them in a way that opens them up for the solution.
  3. The Empathy Jolt- Transition a person from resisting to “willing to do” in a single step, by changing the dynamics of a relationship. Use curiosity about how the other person feels to break you out of defensiveness which builds a better relationship.
  4. The Reverse Play, Empathy Jolt #2- Move a resistant underachiever all the way to the “willing to do” stage by creating empathy by apologizing to the person who frustrates you for things they perceive you have done wrong and it will shock them out of defensiveness and create better productivity.
  5. Do You Really Believe That? – Move a person who’s “over the top” from resistance to listening by lowering the person’s anger or fear by breaking through their hyperbole with the question “Do you really believe that?” which brings them back to reality and allows you to have a conversation with them.
  6. The Power of “Hmmm…”- Calm a person who’s upset or angry, moving the person from resisting to listening and then from listening to considering by not getting defensive and going deeper into the issue. Kick of this conversation with “Hmmm…” or you can use “Really?” or “Tell me more.”
  7. The Stipulation Gambit -Move a person from considering to “willing to do” by neutralizing your weak points out loud, call them out and bring attention to them so that people can empathize with you and move past it.
  8. From Transaction to Transformation -Move a person from considering to “willing to do” by transforming a relationship from impersonal to personal. Cause them to reflect on what you’ve asked them- ways to move into a bigger picture so you don’t sweat the small stuff and argue about details that don’t matter.
  9. Side by Side- Lower another person’s guard and move the person from resistance to listening by questioning rather than telling- don’t argue, don’t start lecturing, just keep questioning!
  10. Fill in the Blanks- Move a person to the “willing to do” stage by making the person feel felt and understood by asking leading questions that allow them to fill in the blanks: “You are upset because…” or “You love the library because…”
  11. Take it all the way to “No”- Move a person rapidly through every phase of the Persuasion Cycle from resistance to “doing,” by creating agreement where none exists by pushing until you get a ‘no’ then follow up to find out why they said ‘no’ and take the opportunity to fix it. Key question: “The question I failed to ask or the issue I didn’t address that would have made you feel differently was__________”
  12. The Power Thank You and Power Apology- Move a person from “doing” to “glad they did” and “continuing to do” by using the Power Thank You, or from resistance to listening with the Power Apology. Power Thank You Steps- 1) Thank the person for something specific that they did for you, 2) Acknowledge the effort it took for the person to help you, and 3) tell the person the difference that his or her act personally made to you. The Power Apology 4 Rs= Remorse, Restitution, Rehabilitation, Requesting Forgiveness. Key: the more often you sincerely say Thank you or I’m sorry, the less you need to pay your people and the quicker they will get back to work.

Fast Fixes for Seven Challenging Situations: read pages 189-220 for great scenarios and advice for the following real world issues:

  1. The Team from Hell
  2. Climbing the Ladder
  3. The Narcissist at the Table
  4. You’re a Stranger in Town
  5. “Disgruntled Employee goes Berserk” Scenario
  6. Getting Through to Yourself
  7. Six Degrees of Separation in Networking
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Meeting May 6, 2010

April 5, 2010 — admin


For this meeting we will be reading Just Listen: how to get through to absolutely anyone by Mark Goulston. We have three copies at Douglas County Libraries and they can be held, and we will be getting a copy for the Castle Pines branch. We were unable to get this title as an ebook through the library, but you can download it as an audio book or it can be purchased from Amazon for the kindle.

About the Book

Review: Publisher Weekly- [Mark] Goulston (Get Out of Your Own Way at Work) returns with a primer on dealing with hard-to-reach people in virtually every scenario—defiant executives, angry employees, families in turmoil, warring couples—through use of well-honed psychological techniques. Negotiating intractable situations is like driving up a steep hill, he posits, but most of us make the mistake of creating more resistance by shifting up; downshift, and you get control, he writes. His Persuasion Cycle filters illustrative snippets from counseling sessions during which he digs into an impressive bag of tricks—Magic Paradox, Impossibility Question, Empathy Jolt—techniques like martial arts moves: potent on their own, but even more powerful when you combine them. His successful persuasion case studies include negotiating a police standoff and assisting a married couple’s conflict resolution. Chapter summaries feature action steps preparing readers to encounter similar scenarios, yielding a guide that is as entertaining as it is useful. (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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