Must-read book for all whoever is working as an employee or you are doing your own business.

I am summarizing 5 principles of Lean Startup methodology.

Five principles of the lean startup methodology

• Entrepreneurs are everywhere
• Entrepreneurship is a management
• Validated learning
• Innovation accounting
• Build, measure, learn

Over to you to read out and get amazed by the methods to follow to get improve and keep learning

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Another, the idea of Minimum Viable Product (MVP). I am doing it for the last 3 years in my professional role, where we use to develop and prototype a lot of innovative ideas for different customers with the use of Emerging Technologies.

MVP has helped us to achieve more in less time and show the basic concept of the solution to customers and we relate to the Lean Startup methodology this is an essential component that represents a prototype of future service or product with a minimum amount of effort and time. The key point is MVP should have key characteristics of a future product, and it is created with the aim to receive feedback from the end-users/customers, as well as to make quick relevant adjustments to the MVP.

Another important point to consider that just creating a minimum viable product (MVP) won’t be enough to enter the build–measure–learn cycle. You need to find ways to reach early adopters and potential customers and present them with your MVP so that you can get the feedback and according to the feedback, you must align the product/service.

Tools of Titans book is divided into three sections: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise. Tim Ferriss has shared pearls of wisdom from high-achievers of the world based on his interviews which he did from last so many years. Some of them are like Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon and actor Kevin Costner, culture writer Maria Popova and Reid Hoffman co-founder of LinkedIn.

Then he also has shared his common questions which he used to ask during his interviews of different high profile personalities of our world.

17 Questions to Change Your Life

1. What if I did the opposite for 48 hours
2. What do I spend a silly amount of money on? Can I scratch my own itch?
3. What would I do/have/be if I had $10m? What’s my real TMI?
4. What are the worst things that could happen? Could I get back here?
5. If I could only work 2 hours per week on my business, what would I do?
6. What if I let them make decisions up to $100, $500, $1,000?
7. What’s the least crowded channel?
8. What if I couldn’t pitch my product directly?
9. What if I created my own real world MBA?
10. Do I need to make it back the way I lost it?
11. What if I could only subtract to solve the problem?
12. What could I put in place to go off the grid for 4+ weeks?
13. Am I hunting antelope or field mice?
14. Could it be that everything is fine and complete as it is?
15. What would this look like if it were easy?
16. How can I throw money at the problem? How can I waste money to improve my life?
17. No hurry, no pause

after reading this book i can very clearly co-relate how Microsoft is transformed under his leadership and this we can see from the outside.

Highly recommended to read and get inspire from the wise words of Satya

This book is about Transformation

As written by Satya “Its about how people, organizations, and societies can and must transform – hit refresh – in their persistent quest for new energy, new ideas, relevance, and renewal. its about us humans and the unique quality we cal empathy, which will become ever more valuable in a world where the torrent of technology will disrupt the status quo like never before.”

“Hit Refresh” is a magic word for all of us to apply to every aspect of our lives – where ever we feel we need to re-start, we need new perspective, we need to re-start = just hit refresh

over to you to read this book and HIT REFRESH…

coming back to book, Second Chance: For your money, your life and our world

some of the key points from book:

1. Schools only teach people how to be poor (key point was, school teach to go for jobs)
2. Pick one of the 4 asset categories and start learning. (Business, Real Estate, Paper assets, Commodities)
3. Don’t fear debt – as long as you’re using it to acquire assets

Expiration Dates on Ideas

This paragraph is very good, where it talks about that we should have a expiry dates on ideas, just copying as it is from the book: “When people go to a grocery store to buy a carton of milk most will check the expiration date. Smart people know drinking old milk is not good for their health.

Unfortunately, most people do not check the expiration dates on their thoughts and ideas. Most people do not ask,”How old are the ideas in my head? Are the ideas in my head out of date? are the ideas i keep in my head making me sick, causing me to struggle financially?””

Cone of Learning developed by Edgar Dale

Another good point and graph “Cone of Learning”, very self explanatory and i am impressed with the chart that how true it is as we are facing in our daily life in Software whatever actually we do or practice that we remember the most.

Source: Second Chance Book

another graph on Cone of Learning

Reference: Second Chance: for your money, your life and our world

few of the takeaways:

Content is the King, but Context is the real ruler

focus on less ‘right-hooking’ and more ‘jabbing’

its all about super-micro content

Story Telling: Brands are using social media as a distribution channel rather than a storytelling channel and story telling resonate to consumer, which is missing even from big brands on social media.

Now head over to Amazon or local bookstore and get your copy of the book. You will find this book to help you how to craft your social media posts and how other brands are doing. happy reading

Seven Ways to Peace and Happiness

1. Find Yourself, Be Yourself
2. Practice Four Good Working Habits
3. Know What Makes You Tired and What You Can Do About It
4. Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry and Resentment
5. Would You Take a Million Dollars for What You Have?
6. Remember That No One Ever Kicks a Dead Dog
7. Practice Accepting Criticism

there are part 2 and part 3 also in the book so just head over to book and start reading its an exceptional book to different aspects of personal life and professional life.

Based on my some surfing how to do a market research, i found this book Will It Fly and same time i was going on short vocation, thought to get this book so that i can take with me and it may help during the discussion with my cousin. after few thoughts finally i have ordered through Amazon and spent few days of my vocations on reading of this book.

Overall Book is good and gave some very practical methods to do proper market research, document each and every step starting from passion, idea, mind map, market map, the customer P.L.A.N (problem, language, anecdotes, needs), remedies, validation method etc. We like the book and it helped to draw some practical discussions and reach on final conclusion. We named it “Litmus Test” and you can see some of our work on the screen shot.

Finally my cousin was able to launch his online business at Lahore, Pakistan. It is launch of online selling of designer/customized cakes for events with the brand name Cake Feasta

Personally i co-relate this book to Agile methodology of software development, the way now a days we are doing any software development or even any Oracle applications implementation project in Cloud Era by following agile method. In Agile Approach, we are doing with short phases of the actual project and going live with the each and every phase, we can name it like version 1.0, 2.0 so on. Each phase goes into Design, Build, Test & G0-Live Version 1.0, and again start for version 2.0

few of the top benefits of this approach are:

• Mitigate risk and business change
• Opportunity for quick business wins
• Define and prove out the solution in small steps
• Build skills and expertise
• Coordination & Communication

Back to the topic of book Personally i like the book and strongly recommend if you are looking for to test any business idea. a good read for your weekend or vocations.

Social Selling Techniques to influence buyers and change makers

Overall book is okay, it gives basic ideas and thought process behind Social Selling, a new way of sales process with the current social media influenced world. authors talks about how social media is replacement of cold calling which sales personal use to do in old days.

when question comes to on practicality of social media how to use this book lacks what strategy someone should be following and very detailed step-by-step process is missing. However for any sales person, must to read book!