Hello Everyone!
Well we have made the big time!! Check out this great story on CNN MONEY.com. Lemuria is mentioned in it! We do have some great local business here in Jackson, MS! Make sure you read the entire story it talks about all the great things that are going on in town. Click on the photo gallery and you can see all the local business mentioned!
Hope to see you soon!
Maggie
Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?
Portfolio: New York (2008)
After Tribes I wanted more Seth.
Lemuria feels in-sync yet out-of-sync at the same time, during all this election, stock market, hyped up emotional b.s. that’s floating about on TV, computer and even our recent la-la-land reality.
Meatball Sundae helped me understand that Lemuria needs more effort in a new way to be a better bookstore. However, being a better bookstore may not make us successful or even survive in the future. I use this example to emphasize how I read Meatball: Lemuria needs to enhance our message to you, our judge. Meatball can make the reader think about and apply Godin’s suggestions to their own marketing.
Meatball opened my brain to the concept of needing to represent my work more effectively on the web. Also, Meatball made me more aware of how I was being marketed to by other web marketers = what, why and how this new web selling is working. Godin’s book also helps clear up the difference between new marketing (non-interruption information) and old advertising (commercials). We the consumers have learned to be smart and block out obnoxious ads.
It seems that learning how to be more authentic with our story is the key. How to use all our tools on the web, our daily work, selling, service, marketing, etc. to tie into a complete authentic package. Once the consumer can believe in and buy into us enough to support us and then to share their experience with others.
Meatball is specific with examples but also general. Ideas are there for you to pick out what you the reader need right now to use to help relate your work better to others. Relating to our customers could be the key we are looking for to enhance business not relying on rude old school customer interruption.
Read it, soak it up and run with your ideas.
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
Seth Godin
Portfolio (October 21, 2008)
Seth’s new book challenges us to be leaders. He points out how the tools are there for anyone who is willing to lead.
To lead, is to challenge the system of old ways success. To do it your way, with your ideas, with your skills, keeping the genuiness of your mission forthright in your effort and consciousness. Old school techniques are not necessary to follow for success today. Following the status quo is old news. By learning to be fresh, creative and with genuine individualness, you are in a better chance of getting supporters for your mission. Seth labels these supporters, your Tribe.
This is a tight compact little book packed with suggestions of how to expand your contribution with your work and putting yourself into the position of expanding the value of work’s result. Gaining momentum faster so that your contribution can fall into place quicker and with more success.
Quick stimulis and correct marketing communication using all the modern tools open the world to the individual more than ever before, giving quicker results.
Now is the time for us to challenge ourselves to contribute more to the world and enlarge our fingerprint on it.
I consider Tribes, a fun thought stimulating book. A must for anyone in small business. Good ideas against not being stuck in your own self produced mundane business habits.
I wish I could have read this book many years ago.
Work as a Spiritual Practice: A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction on the Job
by Lewis Richmond
(Broadway, 1999)
Around twenty years ago, I studied Paul Hawken’s book, Growing a Business.
Billy Neville, a pal and fellow retailer told me about it, and
he was right. Hawken’s book still remains a must read for small business
people.
Lewis Richmond, ex-Vice President for Smith-Hawken, wrote this book about
10 years ago. I missed it then, but had recently discovered it in a
particular reference and went back to get it. Work is an excellent follow
up to Hawken’s book and for fans of Michael Carroll’s book about work.
Now that it is out of print, I had to find it on the used market. This
one should not be out of print.
Richmond, a Buddhist teacher and entrepreneur, explores ways to be
fulfilled with the pleasures of good, hard work. He deals with the daily
issues we face and offers insight into the rewards of proper coping.
Work breaks down the issues of conflict, stagnation, inspiration and
accomplishment. It deals with subjects such as: boredom, failure,
discouragement, quitting, money and time, control, power, gratitude and
etc. Addressing the aforementioned, daily issues that we face in work
allow us to see our own attitudes about these issues. By examining our
“work selves” within, we are able to address our strengths and weaknesses
in a more constructive way…should we make the choice to do so.
Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass it On: The Wealth-Accumulation Secrets of America’s Richest Families
by Catherine S. Mc Breen and George H. Walper, Jr.
(Portfolio, 2009)
I just finished reading, and found Pass It On to be the perfect fit for the title of this timely book. I will pass this read on to my children. This book is a perfect follow up for families who have studied Schwab’s It Pays to Talk. Pass It On is a good one for families to read together, think about and discuss. Family financial goals are just another way to share love and friendship together in this important way that in the past was a hidden or taboo subject for some.
The main theme is that there are only two definitive ways to create the kind of wealth that can be bequeathed to multiple generations.
(1) Own income-producing real estate-in addition to your primary residence. An asset that can earn money for you and that can be passed down to your heirs as part of your legacy.
(2) Practice what we call continually innovative entrepreneurship—being involved in or investing and reinvesting, in a company product, or service that represents a whole new way to make money.
Pass It On stresses self-assessment, character ethics and self-analysis of your business passions. This practical book teaches you that only way to really have wealth is to have a plan for generational wealth.
It’s hard not to pay attention to politics during an election year. Yesterday morning John and I were talking about Thomas Sowell’s column and how we both appreciated his ability to cut through the nonsense and hammer away at the central issue. His books don’t have the most brightly-colored covers, or the most attention-grabbing titles, but I think his approach to the material is entertaining to read, insightful, and educational (which sounds dry but isn’t).
Some of my favorites of his works are Basic Economics, Applied Economics, and A Conflict of Visions. I haven’t read The Vision of the Anointed yet, but I think that’s next — in it Sowell examines public policy and the disconnect between intentions and results.
Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower
by Cynthia Cooper (former Vice President of World Com)
(John Wiley, 2008)
The WorldCom fraud story shows how power and money can effect and change people, exposing weakness in character. How individual rationalization for behavior and judgment can lead good, common people to make erroneous decisions giving into job pressure and superior intimidation.
Cynthia’s story is told in her very fine book. Written in a readable, compelling “Woodward-style,” yet not falling into the trap of slanting facts to reinforce her own opinions as Woodward seems to do – she uses clearly presented facts to create a reader’s window into the time-line, personalities, hierarchical structure and the corporate collapse of WorldCom. Cynthia’s understanding of the whole breadth and depth of events is laid out so clearly that the reader is able to understand the events as the dominoes fall.
Cynthia’s honorable story is one of a woman in corporate America standing up for beliefs and ethics grounded in her youth. Good character choices and courage clearly shine. While tragedy is all about in Extraordinary Circumstances, this book is pleasurable and informative reading.
A common person we can all identify with and respect, Cynthia Cooper is clearly a corporate businesswoman who can wear the suit without letting the suit wear her.
Business and the Buddha: Doing Well by Doing Good
by Lloyd Field
Foreword by the Dalia Lama
Wisdom Publications (2007)
As I have read business books over the years, I have read them with the goal of improving my work and the store.
I believe we work hoping to do well and be successful. We hope our good work is meaningful to those we engage in the workplace and those we help by our services rendered. Being in business solely for profit seems to shortchange us. True business worth is sharing human values and understanding realities about our contribution to others and our planet.
I find the continuous effort of imprinting the quality of my life’s labor a serious and rewarding project. Field’s book gives insight to help the reader address their life work choice with awareness. He presents helpful ideas of alternative concepts dealing from profit to ecology, from global economics to personal self value, from business ethics to creating a healthy workplace, etc.
This is not a difficult or dry business book, but one to be read with an open attitude giving the reader new ideas on how to increase work pleasure and reward.
The Mindful Leader: Ten Principle For Bringing Out the Best in Ourselves and Others
by Michael Carroll
A couple of years ago, Michael visited Lemuria for his book Awake at Work to a packed house. Awake at Work is helpful reading for anyone wanting to get more out of their day’s labor–especially in every aspect of contribution to self, business and job.
In October of 2007, Carroll came out with a new book about bringing out the talents of leadership while cultivating mindfulness in our job and growing a business that has the best interests of everyone at heart.
Even though Mindful Leader is written more for the corporate job structure, the book challenged and inspired me to come up with some new ideas on how to make Lemuria a better bookstore.
Here is just one quote of many which I marked from the chapter on “Authenticity Leadership”:
“If we are going to synchronize with our world and be at home, we will have to trust ourselves to lead with our heart without scripts, deals and preparation. In fact, our gentleness is how we step in over our head and take on life’s problems and joys, challenges and passions…such tenderness is precisely the courage we hope to inspire in others.”
I have two hopes after reading Michael’s new one:
Here is something that I just read in one of my favorite blogs. Seth Godin is talking about employees who are the kind of folks that have been raised to be obedient and are given brain dead jobs – people who follow like sheep. He says it much better than I can. Anyway, this makes me think about the difference between the Independent and the chain book store. Hopefully there are enough booksellers at Lemuria to be different. Enough people who are really trying to do something different, think creatively, and make a real bookstore.
A few years ago I read Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth Revisited. The premise is that the really fun way to make money in small business is to start something that fills a need, then streamline it so that it is franchisable, finally, sell and make a bundle. Well, this is exactly what the Independent Bookstore can’t do – we don’t want to streamline our services – we want to do for people what the big guys can’t do. We actually read books.
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