Book Review: The Power of Moments

The Power of Moments
Author: Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Reviewed by me

Genre: Marketing/Business
Topic: How to create meaningful/memorable moments

Summary:

What if we didn't just remember the defining moments of our lives but made them?

Chip and Dan believe if we just leave our life up to chance and luck, it's a missed opportunity for people to create positive experiences for others. By cultivating defining moments, businesses can improve customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and employee performance.

Why are some memories more memorable than others? Defining moments consist of one of the following four elements:

1. Elevation

• Definition: Spontaneous; delightful surprise; rise above the everyday routine.
• Examples: Birthday parties, weddings, presentation, performing on stage, traveling to a new destination, date night, romantic trips, sport games
• How to: Build peaks by planning the details of the event. Raise the stakes by setting a date. Incorporate gifts or host a ceremony with an audience. Break the script by doing something different.

2. Insight 

• Definition: Self-realization; transformation.
• Examples: Alcoholic stop drinking to live a sober life, changing career path, starting a business
• How to: Realize the truth about something that makes you change your behavior or point of view. Accept the truth or understand why you are discontent and make a decision to improve yourself or your situation. 

3. Pride

• Definition: Achievement; courage.
• Examples: Promotion; standing up for something you believe in. 
• How to: Acknowledgment/recognition. Setting many small motivating goals (leveling up strategy). Look at how far you've come.

4. Connection

• Definition: Shared experience with others
• Examples: Team games, social event/gathering, recitals, festivals, concerts, protest, volunteering
• How to: Deepen bonds with others by being vulnerable and share something personal which invite others to reciprocate; Unite to fight for a cause or work for the same purpose; Understand each team member's role is important. Team members are motivated to contribute to the team because they feel a responsibility to the team and believe their work is meaningful. Having a shared purpose will increase high performance and will spark the individual to go above and beyond what is required of them and do their best. 

The following are 3 natural defining moments:

1. Transitions (First day of work; promotions; relocating)
2. Milestones (Anniversaries; retirement; graduation)
3. Pits/negative experience (Loss/grief; health issues; customer complaints due to service failures)

How can we make defining moments more meaningful and positive? Chip and Dan presents unique ideas on how businesses can strategically and intentionally create moments that generates a positive experience. Companies can make the first day of a job a defining positive moment by sending a video of the owner and staff welcoming the new employee instead of the generic acceptance email. Milestones can be acknowledged and celebrated by personal congratulations and personalized gifts. When employees have to deal with negative feedback, they can improve the customer's experience by connection and validation. Listen to the customer and hear what they want and value. Understand their reaction to the situation and then offer alternate solutions to help them. It is those moments of compassion and spontaneity that people are most grateful for. Sometimes negative experiences can be a defining moment when they provide insight. For example, realizing that you are not good at something after you have tried it. Realizing you've made a mistake and you don't want it to happen again.

My Personal Opinions:
The authors provided many examples on the key elements of defining moments and how big companies like Southwest, educational programs like YES, and a Age 42 mother who decided to become an entrepreneur became successful by cultivating the customer's experience and creating their own defining moments. I agree creating positive and personal experience is the key for a successful business and an individual's decision to act in times of transitions/milestone/pits drives their personal success. I think the most critical factor is having a vision for success and realizing that you have an impact on people's lives. Some moments are coincidental and some moments are specifically designed for a response.

It was difficult to stay interested in this book because the authors created their own phrases and used lingo that made no sense to me. Phrases like "stretching for insight"and "multiplying milestones". I thought the entire book had no structure or flow and there were too many examples when they could have used simple English to get to the point.

Some important takeaways was the manager/mentor tips on improving a team's effectiveness and performance. There were some good tips on how to be a leader and motivate others, how to enforce good practices and procedures, and how to work with others. By having high expectations, you are pushing the team to be more efficient and to improve their performance. This push is what the authors call "stretching for insight" in which the pupil will come to realize they are more capable then they thought. You can also increase team collaboration through activities aim at building connection and team bonds.

I thought it was interesting when the authors brought up business ethics: "Instead of teaching people what is the right thing to do, we should teach people how to get the right thing done".  Exposing new hires to potential problems and difficult situations leads to growth and helps build their confidence. They can practice the best response and be confident if a similar situation should occur.

Book Review: Rich Dad Poor Dad

Rich Dad Poor Dad
Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki
Reviewed by me

Genre: Business
Topic: Personal Finance

Summary:
Robert shares six simple lessons that he learned during his childhood from his Rich Dad and Poor Dad about money and how having a solid foundation on finance made him a millionaire. He strongly believed, "One of the reasons the rich gets richer, the poor gets poor, and the middle class struggles in debt is that the subject of money is taught at home, not in school." Money comes and goes but if you are educated on how money works you gain power over money and begin building wealth.

Poor Dad is Robert's real dad who has a Ph.D. and works for the government. Rich dad is Robert's friend, Mike's dad who never finished the eighth grade but was one of the richest men in Hawaii. Poor Dad worked hard for money and Rich Dad made money work for him.

Robert explains how Poor Dad always taught him that money is evil, therefore he should play it safe. Get a degree and get a high earning job with good benefits. Rich Dad says that this formula is a direct path to the Rat Race; an endless cycle of get up, go to work, pay the bills, and repeat. Most poor and middle class people are stuck in the Rat Race.

Rich Dad taught him the most valuable asset is your mind. Having a strong mindset about money will determine if he can get out of the Rat Race. Instead of saying "I can't afford it", ask yourself "How can I afford it?" Use your powerful mind to come up with creative financial solutions. As a young boy, Robert learned that it is important to be aware of your thoughts and how you express yourself. Your thoughts become your reality. Poor Dad never thought he could be rich. Rich Dad always referred to himself as rich, he would say, "Broke is temporary. Poor is eternal". Proper mental exercise increases your chances for wealth. There will always be risk, but use your financial intelligence to lower the risk. To have financial intelligence is to have more options by using your mind to create opportunities or alter situations to work in your favor. If opportunities are not going your way, what can you do to improve your financial position? You create your own luck.

The key to financial freedom is a person's ability to convert earned income (job) into passive and/or portfolio income (investments, stocks, bonds). If you want to be rich, then work hard to obtain passive/portfolio income so you don't have to rely on earned income.

Below are the 6 lessons from Rich Dad:

1. The Rich Don't Work for Money
Life is going to push you around but you have to decide if you're going to give up, fight back, or learn something from it and move on. Those who don't learn the lesson, blame others for the situation they are in or play it safe and never risk or win big. Realize that life is giving you a lesson because you need to learn something and grow wiser from it. When it comes to money, people are controlled by two emotions: Fear and Greed.  Poor/Middle class people work for money so they either accept the small paycheck or look elsewhere for a higher pay. Rich people work hard because they fear being poor. Emotions are what makes us human but don't let fear do the thinking. Money is an illusion. It is not real. Money is an idea. If you want more money, simply change your thinking. Instead of falling into the trap of the Rat Race, use your mind to think of opportunities to grow money.

2. Why Teach Financial Literacy?
People have money problem because of lack of financial education, they spend money they don't have and they don't understand what is an asset and a liability. If you want to be rich, then buy or build assets and keep liabilities and expenses low. You must understand cash flow. A poor person's cash flow is earn income from a job to pay expenses. A middle class person's cash flow is earn income from a job to buy liabilities (home/car/luxury) which increases your expenses and leaves no profit. A rich person's cash flow is assets generating more than enough income to cover expenses with the balance reinvested into assets.

3. Mind Your Own Business
There is a big difference between your profession and your business. Jobs are people's profession but they still work for someone else: employer, the government (taxes), and the bank (mortgage). Your business revolves around the asset column whereas your profession revolves around the income column. To become financially secure, a person needs to focus on spending additional money on income generating assets instead of liabilities. Robert recommends acquiring assets that you love or have interest in so you'll take care of it and you'll enjoy learning more about it. Understanding accounting and market trends is important for identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a company and making smart investments. Is the product/service emotionally driven? Is it feasible under current market conditions?

4. The History of Taxes and Power of Corporations
The government created tax laws primarily to punish the rich. However the government got greedy and taxes trickled down to middle/law class people. However, rich people find legal loopholes like corporate deductions to avoid paying more tax. Corporations has lower income tax rate than individual tax rate. Certain expenses from corporations can be paid pre-tax. To be rich it is important to know the protections of the law and the tax advantages.

5. The Rich Invented Money
Small amount of money can turn into a large amount by compound interest and smart and well-timed investments. Reinvest money earned from assets to grow income. Spend excess on legally allowed pre-tax expenses to avoid taxes. "It takes money to make money" is the thinking of financially unsophisticated people. They simply have not learned the science of money making money.

6. Work to Learn. Don't Work for Money.
There are so many talented and highly educated people earning less than what they are capable of because our current education system prepares youth for the workplace by developing specialized skills. The more specialized you are the more you are trapped and dependent on that specialty. Rich Dad encourage the opposite: know a little about a lot. Rich dad groomed Robert to learn all areas of business and management skills, such as managing cash flow, managing systems, and managing people. Robert recommends for young people to seek work for what they will learn more than what they will earn. Take a long view of your life and think about where you are headed. Do you want to struggle paycheck to paycheck or do you want financial freedom?

In addition to being financially literate, you have to overcome fear, cynicism, laziness, bad habits, and arrogance. Winning means being unafraid to lose. Winners are inspired by their failures and losers are defeated by their failures. Instead of being cynical, analyze the problem and see opportunities that everyone missed. Instead of making excuses and avoiding problems, think of possibilities and have the desire to do and be better. Being arrogant is costly so have an open mind and surround yourself with experts.

Robert gives some self motivating advice to stay focus: have a goal/purpose, make daily choices to feed your mind, don't listen to poor or frightened people on money, work with people smarter than you, learn quickly, be self-discipline and do not succumb on pressure, have a hero/mentor, give for the joy of giving.

Robert gives advice on how to get started: assess what is working and what is not working, look for new ideas, find someone who has done what you want to do and learn from them, take classes/read/attend seminars, make a lot of offers to get the best deals.

My Personal Opinions:
Robert offers many great advice and motivation to get rich. He knows that the current education system will put many young people in the Rat Race and he provides hope for them to get out of the trap by promoting the importance of financial education. Instead of letting life push you around and having financial burdens, you have to take control of your life and get ahead. Knowing financial terms is not enough to be rich, you must develop a strong mind to overcome fear and self-doubt. Money is a scary subject since we let it control our lives but if we realized that money is not real, it is only an idea, we can use our mind to make money work for us.

Rich Dad taught Robert that buying a home is a liability and Robert teaches that as well, however I think it's hypocritical since Robert's fortune came from buying foreclosure property and selling them for a profit. Therefore I think real estate that generates income is an asset worth having.

I think Robert was very privilege to learn these lessons from Rich Dad at a young age. Like Robert's Poor Dad, I also grew up with parents that pushed me to get a secure job with good benefits. I wonder what my life would be like if I had learned these lessons as a child/teen, however putting aside the what ifs, I am motivated to taking the steps to make wiser financial choices to better my life. I am encouraged after reading this book to develop my financial literacy. The next step I will take is learning what is passive and portfolio income and how to obtain them.

Book Review: All The Light We Cannot See

All The Light We Cannot See
Author: Anthony Doerr
Reviewed by me

Genre: Fiction
Topic: WWII

Summary:
The novel tells a story that takes place from 1934 to 1944, about two characters: Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig, and how their lives intersect during the bombing of Saint-Malo.

Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind French girl, raised by a single father, Daniel LeBlanc, a locksmith that works at Paris' National Museum of History.

The museum held an ancient stone known as the Sea of Flames. The stone belonged to a prince who many believed was a diety. As long as he kept the stone, he could no be killed. The myth of the stone was that the Goddess of Earth made the Sea of Flames for her lover, the God of the Sea, but when the river dried up the prince plucked it out and the goddess became enraged and curse the stone, "the keeper of the stone will live forever, but so long as he kept it, misfortunes would fall on all those he loved one after another in unending rain".

It was 1940 when the Nazis occupied Paris. The director of the museum assigned an important mission to hide the Sea of Flames. There would be three decoys and a real diamond. One would stay behind at the museum and the other three sent in different directions. It is for the best that no one knows whether they carry the real diamond or a fake. One went with Mr. Daniel LeBlanc to Saint-Malo where he and his blind daughter stayed at his Uncle Etienne's six story house.

The locksmith trained his daughter for survival by building live models of the streets and having her memorize the directions and number of steps from each location. Marie-Laure, always careful and graceful, was left with her Uncle Etienne, while her father was to return to Paris. The locksmith left the diamond inside the live model of Uncle Etienne's house. Marie-Laure twists the chimney of the miniature house ninety degrees then slides off the roof and turns it over, the diamond drops into her palm.

Werner Pfennig, a German boy, brilliant for his age, grew up in an orphanage with his younger sister, Jutta. Werner had a exceptional talent for fixing radios and tracing transmitters. His talent was acknowledged by a lance corporal, Herr Siedler who referred Werner to attend General Heissmeyer's school, the National Political Institutes of Education. Werner befriended a kind boy from Berlin named Frederick who was targeted as the weakest boy. Werner witnessed Frederick being severely beaten up to the point where he obtained brain trauma and long term memory lost. Werner had it easy since the instructor of technical sciences, Dr. Hauptmann took favor in Werner for his engineer skills and mathematical intelligence. Werner was recruited to track down the resistance and his job was to trace radio frequencies. It was in 1944, while tracking down the resistance he was trapped in the cellar of The Hotels of Bees due to the bombing in Saint-Malo. Werner was monitoring the radio when he heard a girl say, "He is here. He is right below me.. He will kill me" The girl was Marie-Laure who has been hiding in the attic for 5 days from a German soldier, Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, who was out to retrieve the diamond.

Werner dreamt of himself as an award winner for something spectacular like code-breaking or building a world class machine. Werner who desperately wanted a future was exploited and used for war. He experienced guilt and shame for betraying his only friend, for leaving his sister behind in the orphanage. Then he hears this girl on the radio and he wants to help this girl. He wants to save her. Werner escapes from the cellar with a rifle on one arm and enters Uncle Etienne's house. In his best attempt to speak French to Marie-Laure, "I am not killing you. I am hearing you. On the radio. Is why I come."

The novel ends in 1974, Werner's sister travels to Saint-Malo and then she meets Marie-Laure LeBlanc in Paris.

Opinions:
Anthony Doerr writes with intricate details of the complexity of a person's intention.
"How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?", says Daniel LeBlanc.
Mr. LeBlanc was sent out on a mission in which danger he could not foresee. He did not know if he held a decoy or the real diamond. He did not know he would have put his only daughter's life in jeopardy. He did not know that he would never see his daughter again.

"Don't you want to be alive before you die?" Characters like Uncle Etienne who has isolated himself from society for decades, finds the passion and bravery to risk his own life to participate in the resistance. To feel alive and useful even in his old age.

Then there is Marie-Laure who is blind and miraculously survives by her own wits for 5 days while being hunted. Marie-Laure says, "When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?" He says, "Not in years, but today. Today maybe I did".

Werner who only saw opportunities to escape from hell, found himself deeper in hell. He thought if he could past the entrance exams, if he could turn a blind eye on evil, if he was acknowledged by people of power, that he will become who he wanted to be. "Your problem, Werner" says Frederick, "Is that you still believe you own your life". Eventually Werner learned the hard way that he had no free-will serving the German army. He was a tool and nothing more.

Overall, the book felt heartwarming and left a good impression. The author reveals many great themes on fear, cruelty, kindness, resilience, and bravery. The structure of this book is unique and was difficult to read since the author writes in different timelines and switches back and forth from different character perspectives throughout the book. It is important for readers to pay attention to the dates and characters.

Book Review: Factfulness

Factfulness
Author: Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Ronnlund
Reviewed by me

Genre: Non-Fiction
Topic: Misconception of the world

Summary:
Factfulness is written in Han's voice. He's a scholar from Sweden who specialize in statistics, medicine, and public health. A doctor, TED speaker, adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Hans was listed as one of the 100 leading global thinkers by Foreign Policy 2009, one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company 2011, and 100 most influential people by Time magazine 2012.

Based on the polling results from Hans 13 multiple choice fact questions, the majority of people knew less about the world than chimpanzees. Han's vision was to "eradicate ignorance" and to "upgrade" people's worldview knowledge. His goal is to change people's way of thinking from fear-based to fact-based. When it comes to global trends, the most positive answer is the correct answer, says Hans.

Hans figured that the major problem was because people are attracted to drama and tend to dramatize news about war, violence, natural disasters, corruption, and other bad news. Most people think the world is getting worse when actually the world is improving every single year.

In the last 20 years, extreme poverty is almost halved. Human life expectancy has increased to 70 years. The world population growth curve is expected to flatten between 10-12 billion people by the end of the century not because of more babies, but because of more adults due to better living wages and education.

Hans suspect if people wrongly believe that nothing is improving they may conclude that nothing we have tried so far is working and lose confidence in measures that actually work. Hans says that the progress in global trends give people hope and encourages them to work hard to reach their goals. It's important to control the negative instinct without dismissing the fact that more work has to be done. In Hans point of view, the world is both bad and better, at the same time.

Opinions:

• Hans use four levels of income to group people and most people are in level 4 with access to technology/secondary education/cars/homes with plumbing and electricity, however I believe there should be a level 5 for business owners/celebrities/politicians/doctors/millionaires. 
• Hans expresses many of his own personal political views in this book that may offend many readers. Instead of presenting both sides, he writes as if his views are obviously the right views and everyone else is wrong. 
• Hans shares his experience in Mozambique where he argued that it's unethical to spend all of his time and resources to save those that come to the hospital. Instead he could save more lives by improving the services outside of the hospital. I think his view is bias and insensitive since he is disregarding the pain and suffering of the patients. Yes, it is important to prevent diseases, however it's arguably as important to care for patients who are ill and in need of immediate medical care.
• Hans argue against cultural traditions. He says that certain values like gender roles and patriarchal is found in all nations and that these values "will vanish, just as they did in Sweden". I disagree, I believe cultural traditions are honored and practice throughout generations and though will be less dominate in normal modern life, I still believe cultural traditions will affect an individual's values based on how they were raised and their family dynamics.