How to Tell Your Story - Ethan Rasiel

From the author of "The McKinsey Way" :

How to tell your story
1) Articulate the problem you are solving
2) Focus on benefits, not speeds and feeds
3) Minimize jargon and calibrate to a mainstream audience
4) Have a point of view — not just a product
5) Know your competition and be very different
6) Have a firepole pitch

What is PR : It's not the ads - it's a way to influence a target audience - to take action - like go to your website - customers, employees, government policy makers - sounds like advertising, but it's not - ads - whether in print or TV - are what you're usually trying to flip through - PR is getting into the editorial content - working with editors and reporters, etc.

FYI, Spin City is a whole show about a PR team. 

Zandman and Perski (Peres) - On the DNA of Success

At the age of 93, Shimon Peres was visited at his home by Yaakov Katz, author of "The Weapon Wizards" :

"There is something in our DNA that makes us Jews never feel satisfied. Give a Jew something and he will add to it or fix it. Give the air force a plane and they will add to it and change it.. We believe that anything is possible."

When Felix Zandman (Vishay Intertechnologies) started his first plant in Israel, he found :

"Israel may have been my spiritual homeland, but conducting business there was truly an experience with a different culture. As I found out almost immediately, Israelis are never content to leave well enough alone. They are an independent lot, inveterate tinkerers and innovators. They want to improve everything. No matter what it is, no matter how good it might be, they insist on making it better. There is no place in their heads for the truism that sometimes the enemy of good is better. I told them, 'Look, this is the resistor we produce in the US today. To be successful, we have to produce exactly the same thing here. I don't want you to make something better than this. I do not want you to improve it. Make it neither worse nor better. I want you to produce the same thing tomorrow as today. Once you know how to produce exactly what we stupid guys over there are producing, then we'll talk about producing better. But don't do it at the same time. Okay?'"

Earlier, during Hashoa, holed up in a hideout in a Polish home :

"... the great prodigy violinist from Grodno whom I had gone to hear just before the war. The smell and heat of the hole would fade away, and the Mendelsohn violin concerto with all its glorious details would fill my mind. Whatever I knew I listened to in my private concert hall. I kicked myself that I hadn't been a more serious student, that I hadn't learned ten times as much."

"Discussions of the holidays inevitably became discussions of morality. It began to dawn on me that our rules, Sender's rules, were enabling us to survive. It was no wonder that the Ten Commandments had been created; they gave people a way to live together. There was nothing abstract about moral rules. They were hard and simple precepts for survival. If we had started to have sex, or if we had started to cheat each other with food, or if we began to quarrel with each other, the results would be fatal. Janova would have to throw us out, or we would have killed each other. Jealousies and resentment and anger - we had to stamp all that down. The lesson was stark: You have the rules, you abide by them, you survive; otherwise you don't."

General Israel Tal:

"We as an army, as Israelis, and as Jews, cannot have tanks that make our soldiers expendable. We must protect our most precious resource. That is the backbone of our military commitment."

So when he started to design the new Merkava, his first priority had been protection. To assist with that he put the engine up front, rather than in back, where it is on the rest of the world's tanks. That switch put extra shielding forward and also opened up rear space for infantry soldiers. As a result, the Merkava was more than a tank: it could transport soldiers into battle or serve as an armored headquarters for a commander and his staff. With its unusual rear-hatch, the Merkava also could evacuate wounded from the field. Tal described for me his fire protection inventions, ammunition, storage departures, and his novel approach to armor design. These were startling innovations; it was obvious that a tremendous amount of new technology was going into this.

When he explained these things to me I said, "My God, you must have a tremendous scientific staff - just to come up with the concepts, let alone implement them." But no, it was a staff of one: Talik himself. As a career tankman and tank commander, he had had fighting experience with most of the world's leading tanks: American, British, French, even captured Soviet models. He had an insider's feel for what was wrong with all of them.

And this from a man who studied philosophy in college and taught himself engineering!

One of my favorite parts of the book :

The Haganah would make arrangements to get us to Israel. I packed my backpack and took the train to Paris. Before I joined the group, I stopped at Sender's to say goodbye. Sender wasn't there, but our close friend (and Sender's business associate) Josef Weiss was. Sender was off on a buying trip, he said. He wouldn't be back for a couple of days.

When I told Weiss why I was in Paris, he almost had a heart attack. He grabbed me and started talking and pleading. He didn't stop for the next thirty-six hours. "Felix, you can't do it. You absolutely cannot do it. You can't do it to Sender. You can't do it to yourself. You will break Sender's will if you do this, you will destroy him. If you go and get killed there, he will never recover. This is like a death sentence for him. You must think of your family, Felix!"

Weiss was hysterical. I couldn't get him to stop. "Josef," I said, "I have to go. Who else is going to defend the country if we don't? This is my duty. I have to do it."

"Felix, it's not just Sender. It's the memory of your family. You're the last one, Felix. You're the seed. Everyone is dead. All those children, everyone! You are the only survivor. You can't do it to the memory of your family. The seed of Zandman has to create a family. YOU CANNOT GO TO ISRAEL AND BE KILLED!"

Weiss kept talking and talking. The rendezvous time came and went. Then the time for my train to leave passed. There must be other groups going, I thought. I'll just have to hook up with one of those. I was exhausted from arguing, but Weiss's voice never stopped cajoling and wheedling and begging and ordering. I dropped off to sleep, but he shook me awake. Finally, I promised to stay until Sender got back.

Sender told me to finish my studies. "Look," I said, "the war won't last forever. I'll be there for a year, then I'll come back."

"No. If you drop out of your program, they won't take you back (which was true). Your engineering profession will be finished. You have to understand that."

"So I won't be an engineer. I'll work on a kibbutz."

"Well, maybe. But you know you'll be much better off being an engineer. You'll also be much more useful to Israel as an engineer than giving your life in this way. They're sending so many youngsters who don't have your capability, your possibilities to really help the country."

"Sender, these are all bubbe meises. I have to go."

In the end, I did not go. Instead, I went back to school. I was in love with school. I was in love with finishing my studies. But it felt hollow. I wanted to be in Israel. I had betrayed myself, and I knew it. I followed the news from Israel day by day.

Look No Further : Hugh MacLeod

Sheer genius. What would he do without Evernote, you wonder.. the book wrote itself we're told to believe :)

1	Ignore everybody	You are all you got.
2	The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours.	The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.
3	Put the hours in	If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, itls probably because she works harder at it than you do.
4	Good ideas have lonely childhoods.
5	If your business plan depends on suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
6	You are responsible for your own experience.
7	Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
8	Keep your day job:	The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task at hand covers both bases, but not often.
9	Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
10	Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.	You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don't make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.
11	The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props	Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would seriously surprise me. A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind. Which is why there are so many second-rate art directors with state-of-the-art Macintosh computers.
12	Don't try to stand out from the crowd	avoid crowds altogether. Think blue ocean strategy.
13	If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
14	Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside	The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa.
15	Dying young is overrated	Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there's a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work.
16	The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not	It is this red line that demarcates your sovereignty; that defines your own private creative domain. What crap you are willing to take, and what crap you're not. What you are willing to relinquish control over, and what you aren't. What price you are willing to pay, and what price you aren't.
17	The world is changing	If you want to be able to afford groceries in five years, I'd recommend listening closely to the (people who push change) and avoiding the (people who resist change).
18	Merit can be bought. Passion can't	The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does. Eric Schmidt : go for missionaries, not mercenaries!
19	Avoid the Watercooler Gang	Any place has malcontents who have grown weary. Watch out!
20	Sing in your own voice	The really good artists, the really successful entrepreneurs, figure out how to circumvent their limitations, figure out how to turn their strengths into weaknesses.
21	The choice of media is irrelevant
22	Selling out is harder than it looks	Diluting your product to make it more ?commercial? will just make people like it less.
23	Nobody cares. Do it for yourself	Scratch your own itch!
24	Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time	To me, it's about what you are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth.
25	Don't worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually	Writer's block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something. Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough.
26	You have to find your own shtick	Jackson Pollock discovering splatter paint. Or Robert Ryman discovering all-white canvases. Andy Warhol discovering silk-screen. Hunter S. Thompson discovering gonzo journalism. Duchamp discovering the found object. Jasper Johns discovering the American flag. Hemingway discovering brevity. James Joyce discovering stream-of-consciousness prose. Somehow while playing around with something new, suddenly they found they were able to put their entire selves into it.
27	Write from the heart	Be authentic.
28	The best way to get approval is not to need it
29	Power is never given. Power is taken	You didn't go in there, asking the editor to give you power. You went in there and politely informed the editor that you already have the power. That's what being "ready" means. That's what "taking power" means. Not needing anything from another person in order to be the best in the world.
30	Whatever choice you make, the Devil gets his due eventually	Ending up with some regrets is par for the c.
31	The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it
32	Remain frugal	Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.
33	Allow your work to age with you	You become older faster than you think. Be ready for it when it happens.
34	Being Poor Sucks	The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.
35	Beware of turning hobbies into jobs	James Goldsmith once quipped, 'When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.' What's true with philanderers is also true in life.
36	Savor obscurity while it lasts	Once you "make it," your work is never the same.
37	Start blogging: Express yourself	Spread the word out. Build a following online.
38	Meaning scales	Create meaning.
39	When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams

Become What You Were Born to Be - Brian Souza

My latest audiobook, and it's a good one.

Analyze your life patterns.
Develop a burning desire for something or to get away from something.
Inspirations : Slavimir Rawicz (internet accounts are controversial, but Souza makes him sound like a hero. Definitely, the story is a bit on the fantastic side. He did on land what Capt. Bligh did on water - I guess), Momma Walker - first self-made millionairess in the US, Franklin Chang-Diaz (first Costa-Rican space shuttle astronaut). Good stuff, in general.

Souza spent tens of $k on seminars after he quit his corporate ladder job to find out who he was.