Book Review Guerrilla Marketing For Free

Sure, advertising is easy if you’re Pepsi or Apple, but what if you don’t have millions of dollars to throw at TV and print ads? Any business owner out there looking to cut their marketing budget should look no further than Guerrilla Marketing for FREE – Dozens of No-Cost Tactics to Promote Your Business and Energize Your Profits by Jay Conrad Levinson.

We’ve all heard examples of businesses that spend nothing on marketing and yet never seem to be lacking in customers (Krispy Kreme Doughnuts comes to mind), but how do they do it? On the first page of the book Levinson lets you know that it is possible to grow a business without spending a dollar on marketing, but that it takes a lot of energy and time. Each of the simple tactics the book discusses (there are 100) are deceptively simple and, according to Levinson, have proven track records.

All that you need to get started is a telephone, a computer, a printer, business cards, and access to the internet. After that you will not spend another dollar. Techniques range from the relatively obvious, such as “write a marketing plan” and “have a website”, to not-so-obvious things such as “establish a referral program” and “get involved in your community.”

Many of the tactics involve giving to receive. In addition to doing volunteer work in your community, Levinson suggests joining local networking groups, giving away your product for free to non-profit organizations and schools, and doing free presentations on your area of expertise to local organizations. Levinson’s tactics will not just help improve your bottom line, they’ll help you become a more altruistic entrepreneur.

If there’s one downside to the book, it’s that some of the techniques involving computers are outdated. For example, Levinson suggests advertising on free online classified sites. That may have worked years ago, but these days those sites are covered in spam and I doubt that any business would gain anything from listing on them. The book was written in 2003, so most of the techniques are still pretty valuable, but there’s just a few that stand out as infeasible in 2006.

When reading Guerrilla Marketing for FREE by Jay Conrad Levinson, I found myself constantly putting it down and jotting down ideas that could help supercharge my business. Levinson truly invokes your creative juices. And the best part is that all of the techniques cost you NOTHING. This is a no-brainer purchase for all entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Book Review Warriors Workers Whiners And Weasels

We all know a Weasel. You know, that person that threatens to take down your organization by using every sleazy tactic in the book to advance their careers regardless of how it effects others. Warriors, Workers, Whiners, and Weasels: The 4 Personality Types in Business and How to Manage Them to Your Advantage by entrepreneur Tim O’Leary takes a refreshing look at the different personalities we encounter and how to handle them.

The premise of the book is that essentially everyone fits into one of four personality groups – Warrior, Worker, Whiner, or Weasel. O’Leary defines each as the following:

Warriors, who confront change, see possibilities, innovate and manage to win!

Workers, who deal with the ups, downs and challenges of everyday corporate life dependably, and who can reliably implement the change and direction established by the Warriors.

Whiners, who get through life by complaining about everything they do, who profess negativism and dissatisfaction wherever they go, and blaming others for their own shortcomings.

Weasels, who lurk everywhere and threaten your career and life-goals through their own deception and insecurity and who spread these feelings quickly throughout the organization.

The book is designed to help you recognize what group you fit into, give you the necessary tools to get to the group you want to be in, and learn how to effectively deal with people in each group. The book really does a great job of forcing you to truthfully analyze yourself. O’Leary warns you that you might not like what you find, but also is quick to point reinforce that you are in control and that you can make the changes in your life to fit into the group that you desire.

Even more interesting (and fun) is visualizing the people you know and placing them into their appropriate categories. We have all encountered a Whiner or Weasel and it helps to know what makes them tick and how to effectively deal with them so that they don’t negatively impact your life. O’Leary uses the analogy to the common cold – you can’t completely eliminate Weasels from your life but you can take precautions to limit the frequency in which they enter your life and the damage that they do while they’re a part of it.

O’Leary uses a mixes light-hearted humor with a fiercely intense attitude to combine a business book and a self-help book in an exciting fashion. One chapter might focus on a self-analysis, the next might be about personal stories from O’Leary’s experiences, and the next about management. The book is well over 200 pages but reads at the speed of a book that’s half that. I often found myself reading several chapters in a sitting, which is a testament to the writers’ ability to hold readers interest. If there’s a downside (and it’s not much of one), it’s that O’Leary is so brutally honest that it may rub some people wrong, especially those who fall into the Whiner and Weasel groups.

Warriors, Workers, Whiners, and Weasels: The 4 Personality Types in Business and How to Manage Them to Your Advantage by Tim O’Leary is a must read for every entrepreneur, business owner, manager, and worker wishing to learn more about themselves, take advantage of their best traits, and protect themselves from those who could sabotage their career.