Tag: book review

The Lego Story (book review)

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The LEGO Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen and the story is told in The Lego Story by Jens Andersen.

The takeaway, like all successes, is to work hard and get lucky. Rather than a review, let’s tour history through industry.

1919, Denmark’s economy slows. “Farmers in Billund and other districts benefited from Denmark’s neutrality during the First World War, by selling grain and meat to the warring nations and earning some extra hard cash by producing peat.” When farmers have money they can pay carpenters like Ole Kristiansen. And if farmers don’t, they can’t.

1925, a fire in Ole’s woodshop. This will be a recurring theme.

1929, the depression. “For a while, the future looked promisingly bright, but shock waves from the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 that wiped out billions of dollars in wealth quickly spread to Europe. Germany and England, Denmark’s biggest trading partners, were badly affected, and the price of grain, butter, and pork crashed.”

1932, anything that sells. Though woodworking had been his trade, it was the 1931 Yo-Yo craze that inspired Ole to make toys. “By the 1930s, yo-yo-ing had become a nationwide fad,” writes Chat GPT, “with tournaments and competitions being held across the country.” Ole’s brothers and sisters want to know why a good carpenter would waste his time, “I think you’re much too good for that, Christiansen—why don’t you find something more useful to do!”

1933. “We worked like dogs, my wife, my children, and I, and gradually things began to pick up. Many days we were working from morning till midnight, and I bought a cart with rubber wheels so the neighbors wouldn’t be disturbed when I took the packages to the station late at night.”

1940, Germany invades Denmark. Though occupied (and part of the resistance group, running grenades to saboteurs in LEGO boxes) it was a good time for LEGO. Parents were “keen to protect their children from hardship,” and during the five years of occupation, LEGO’s revenue grew.

1942, another fire in the woodshop.

1946, plastics? Ole buys a plastic molding machine. Through the early 1950s executives at LEGO will say no no no, plastic toys will never take off.

1947, Ole sees his first plastic brick from an English toy manufacturer. This is the seed for LEGO but will prove a thorn in their intellectual property side for decades to come.

1951, the top-selling LEGO toy is the (plastic molded) Marshal Plan-delivered Ferguson tractor.

1955, LEGO bricks roll out to toy stores.

1956, LEGO bricks roll out to Germany. Andersen writes, “Selling toys in Germany would be like selling sand in the Sahara.” LEGO advertises in one city, Hamburg, creating a two-minute film to play before features. Word spreads.

1958, good news, LEGO invents the tube on the underside of the LEGO brick. Ole Kirk passes away and his son Godtfred takes over.

1962, the Scale Model Line. Godtfred grows up playing LEGO, so do other people. What if we make LEGO for professional adults? The Scale Model line is for engineers to design with LEGOs. Even the everyman could create his own house. The project fails but leads to the 1/3 size pieces ubiquitous in today’s sets.

1968 LEGOLAND Denmark opens. It’s a hit.

1976 oil crisis. “A significant part of LEGO’s challenges in the 1970s could be ascribed to two separate oil crises, a stagnating global economy, Denmark’s falling birth rate, and a declining toy market abroad.”

1978 minifig enters. Lego, Kjeld Kristiansen notes, has three phases: blocks, wheels, and mini-figures.

1989 LEGO pirates. But Gameboy too.

…

If there’s one consistent lesson through each decade of LEGO it’s the importance of sales. Every few years someone comes along and says the toys are good enough and every few years someone else reminds them but we have to sell these things. It’s just hard work.

The End of Average (book review)

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If markets have a limited supply but high demand then prices will be high. Disney vacations are one example. Human capital is another. Computer science majors earn the highest salary out of college and humanities majors earn the least. Employers distinguish students (supply) by their degrees.

But how do you distinguish among the computer science majors? The answer is included in Todd Rose’s 2017 book, The End of Average.

Rose’s big idea is economic – society overpays for talent!

Throughout the 1800s and 1900s, modernization has been an experience of measurement. At first, the outcomes were crude because the measures were crude. Take the twenty years of Moneyball progress and stretch that through two centuries. In the same way that baseball teams overpaid for home runs, society overpays for talent.

Rose offers three explanations for our mistake.

1/ Jaggedness. What makes a good first baseman? That depends. What makes a good leader? That depends too. Unfortunately, nuance is neglected in our day-to-day functions. We tend to use loss-aversion-based heuristics. When you evolve from mammals focused on danger, food, and sex there’s only so much digging our default allows.

Winston Churchill is an example of a jagged leader. He excelled in oration and “stature” but less in collaboration. During the war, certain skills were more important than others. This brings us to…

2/ Context. Brent Beshore’s people are messy comment summarizes Rose’s idea. Instead, think of people as complicated creatures who act using If/Then statements. Someone may be honest or careful or diligent based on the situation.

We miss this, Rose writes, because our samples of other people aren’t wide enough. Jessica from the office may act snooty or kind at work – the only place we see her. But does that encompass her at church, at home, and with her family?

3/ Paths. There are not a million ways to do something, Rose writes, but there’s also not one. Think of a situation like being lost in the forest. The goal is to get out. One option is to find the path and follow it. But one could forge their own as well. Too often the focus is on the path and not forging a way out.

If a group undervalues these explanations then it restricts the possible outcomes. Imagine a rule that in order to start a business someone had to give up listening to podcasts. There are a lot of great business podcasts and the budding entrepreneur would be worse off – and so would we, missing out on the upside of their creation.

…

The End of Average is a Bob Moesta book suggestion and reading it from his point of view offers additional information.

Moesta is a product designer, researcher, and marketer. Put on that POV and we can see how products fit within Rose’s explanations as well. Our hunger is jagged, hence the difference between Snickers and Milky Way. Our purchases are context-based, Moesta comments that hot dogs and steaks are both the right meal for the right context. Lastly, consumers end up at a product in a variety of ways, there’s not a single sequence of “I need a new car”, but there’s not an infinite either.

My first impression of The End of Average was that I kinda already understood these topics and didn’t need to spend time on the macro-educational angle. Both impressions were true but there were deeper ideas too and giving names to jaggedness, context, and paths is and will be helpful.

Measure What Matters (book review)

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Measure what matters book review

There are two aspects – contents and context – to John Doerr’s 2018 book, Measure What Matters, a book about OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).

Content.

Objectives are “what is to be achieved, no more and no less.” Grow the blog, lose weight, or strengthen important relationships.

Key Results are ways to “benchmark and monitor how we get the objective.” List ways to grow the blog, lose weight or build relationships. “It’s not a key result,” Marissa Mayer would say, “unless it has a number.”

Straightforward enough. Is this a book that could have been a blog post?

Maybe, but Doerr offers a trio of cautions.

Warning 1: OKRs are not a way to show activity, they are to focus attention and weigh the opportunity cost. Organizational achievements, not ego appeasements.

Warning 2: Sometimes incentives hijack the Key Results (Goodhart’s Law). An antidote is paired counterparts. In the Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal the Key Result of open accounts could have been paired with monthly active accounts.

Warning 3: OKRs are a tool to use not a dogma to follow. If objectives change then OKRs change too.

Context.

Context is a Bob Moesta word encompassing who, what, when, where, why, and how? Steak and hot dogs are ‘good for dinner’ within the right context. The same goes for OKRs.

Doerr is a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins. OKR adopters include Intel – where Doerr learned from Andy Grove – and Google among other technology firms.

The OKR system, Doerr wrote, “was a great impedance match, a seamless gene transcription into Google’s messenger RNA. OKRs were an elastic, data-driven apparatus for a freewheeling, data-worshipping enterprise.”

Google was a perfect match. But your business may not be.

OKRs, as Doerr presents them, requires a certain culture. Part of their effect is to argue well. Andy Grove set the Intel culture for OKRs because Andy Grove was at Intel. Once he left the culture changed from bettering to bullying.

Doerr has many examples, one of which is Zume Pizza, but they’ve gone out of business. What’s the right lesson in that? What’s the context?

OKRs are lightweight, malleable tools. But their usefulness varies. Will OKRs be OK for you?

2022 Books

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These are the books I finished. Each is an Amazon Affiliate link.

Reading is slightly underrated. Get the most out of reading by starting more books, quitting more books, and diving into themes.

Personal maintenance. Familiar subjects and books to “remind me”.

Atomic Habits I was late to this because it’s not too new. The book is built around adjusting the friction in our lives. Clear does a great job explaining these things and the book is a reminder to redesign gunky systems.

Never Split the Difference, a reread. Voss’s best-seller is heavy on his own stories and I skip these parts for the tactics like: two copies? or help me understand or that’s right or how am I supposed to do that? Be empathetic and talk to people in their world with their words.

Courage is Calling. Holiday adds stories to his stoic virtues series. I need reminders like the one above my desk: don’t be overheard complaining about life at court, not even to yourself.

Fiction used to feel unproductive because there wasn’t a story to write or a way to hack novel solutions into our daily optimization. I’m dumb. Fiction is fun. And if you need – like I still sometimes do – a rationalization, remember that these are stories written about people by people for people. The payoff is humanity.

All the Light we Cannot See. Good and I can’t wait for the Netflix series. The fictional account of fleeing families during WW2, personal growth and love, attention, and riddles and mazes.

The Nightingale. Like All the Light… and last year’s Alice Network this book follows a pair of women (sisters) during WW2. Why read historical fiction about women during WW2? I’ve no idea. This book, man this book had it all, even a few good sniffles at the end.

Fellowship of the Ring. At the Council of Elrond, the members are amazed at the dangers Aragorn has faced. “There is little need to tell of them”, said Aragon, “if a man must needs walk in sight of the Black Gate, or tread the deadly flowers of Morgul Vale, then perils he will have.” I think about this a lot.

Better off Dead (Jack Reacher). Each year Lee Child writes a new book, mostly the same structure, always focusing on Jack Reacher. Each year I read it.

Prey. A Patrick O’Shaughnessy recommendation. Written in 2002(!!!!!) the book holds up. This was the only aged passage: “I had a ten o’clock meeting with my headhunter, Annie Gerard. We met in the sunny courtyard of a coffee shop on Baker. We always met outside, so Annie could smoke. She had her laptop out and her wireless modem plugged in. A cigarette dangled from her lip, and she squinted in the smoke. “Got anything?” I said, sitting down opposite her.” I’ll only add that thermite makes a great white elephant gift.

JTBD books. JTBD is a problem-solving approach we’ve covered a lot.

Demand Side Sales. A collection of stories from Bob Moesta’s experiences. But my favorite story is from the introduction by Jason Fried:

I noticed that when people browsed shoes on a wall, they’d pick a few up and bounce them around in their hand to get a sense of the heft and feel. Shoes go on your feet, but people picked the shoe with their hands. If it didn’t feel good in the hand, it never made it to their foot.

Jason Fried

Start With No. Recommended by Chris Voss. It’s a little JTBD and a little Never Split… though Camp’s stories are as good as Voss’s or Moesta’s. A good book to ’round out’ these ideas but not essential.

The Sandler Rules. Recommended by Bob Moesta. Another ’round out’ book. Full review here.

Other

The Accounting Game. This a short fun read for an introduction to accounting. Though I still don’t ‘get it’. What I want is a holistic approach. How did Buffett understand float? How do I understand high fixed costs relative to accounts receivable? Accounting is a bathtub problem. Right?

Virus of the Mind. Richard Dawkins coined meme but this book (by one of the designers of Microsoft Word) goes into it. Through evolution, we developed preferences for messages built around danger, food, and sex. Certain types of those messages (stories, images, etc) spread better than others.

Status Games. There’s a set of books like Miller’s Spent and Hanson’s Elephant… that address the idea of status, mimicry, and imitation. Status Games was the best personal fit because of its evolutionary focus. Miller’s is more commercial (it was also good) and Hanson’s never clicked for me.

Parenting Teens with Love and Logic. My daughters’ school suggested this one. The warning for books like this is that most of parenting is making sure kids are physically, mentally, and emotionally safe from the big stuff. The rest is just tweaks. What I liked about this book was the contrast between parents being ‘helicopters’ or ‘consultants’.

Nomadland. Stories of people living as nomads. Usually, people didn’t intend to end up as nomads but if they did it was because they lost their health, house, job, or spouse. Instagram #vanlife isn’t real, and these stories are tough lives – but there’s something to this. Why do people live in one place? What are the limits? If jobs, insurances, paychecks, fulfillment, and family photos are in the cloud does that change how we live?

Wanting, is this mimetic?

MIKE

This is not a book review of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. It is only a slice. Wanting should be subtitled ‘networks effects’. The book is based on network structure and connections but I can’t recall ‘network’ being used at all.

In mimesis, a centralized network is ‘Celebristan’. Our relationships with one-namers like Lebron or Cher is a centralized model. In mimesis, a dense, not centralized network is ‘Freshmanistan’, these are our relationships with roommates, neighbors, and colleagues.

2 networks

A network’s structure dictates information flow. Information is anything: ideas, vaccines, and so on. Lebron’s favorite salad dressing transfers widely, but only to us. He does not care about our top topping.

But, one-namers have dense networks with each other. Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal is an example of Burgis’s point. One-namers took the same trips, owned the same properties, bought the same toys. Though they were celebrity to us, their network was ‘Freshmanistan’.

The information in mimesis is status, rivalry, and desire.

Well, our best versions say, I don’t care about all that. This, mimesis OG Rene Girard said, is the romantic lie. Rivalry exists because we don’t really know what we want. “In the universe of desire,” Burgis writes, “there is no clear hierarchy.” It’s not that you want Ray-Ban sunglasses, it’s that someone else does.

This is my sticking point. I’m on board with the network structure and information flows. I’m okay with wants being fungible. But the conclusion feels wrong. Maybe.

There’s this dumb thing that happens to my wife and me. One of us suggests dinner, vacation, or weekend spot. The other mehs it. Time passes. A friend suggests that place to one of us. They go to the other and suggest it. ‘What the heck, I said that last month!’

Something is happening. Is it mimesis? I don’t know.

Status is an evolutionary advantage. Group membership helps us survive, and status games help the group because they are non-violent competitions. Draymond Green probably attacked teammate Jordan Poole because their status games were off. But the episode proves the point. Had Green’s punch landed, both individuals and the group would be hurt. Signs of status like cars, homes, jewelry, people, experiences prevent this conflict.

Is this mimesis? I don’t know.

Rather than rule on the mimetic ideas, we can triangulate them. In the spirit of looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck. How does mimetic theory fit with…

Network theory? Great! Network theory is the underlying structure. All networks have information like covid viruses, neighborhood gossip, bumping electrons. Mimesis fits with our social networks.

JTBD? Surprisingly okay. In jobs theory people begin to ‘hire’ for solutions with “passive looking”. Maybe that stage is our social influences. If we are imitative then seeing one person with something might influence us.

Status games? Not bad. Mimetic rivalry creates the status hierarchy within a group.

Incentives? Less good. In the aggregate a bunch of people work to make as much money as possible. But does any one of them do that because they have a mimetic rivalry with any other? “The romantic lie” is great branding but incentives feel more right than mimesis.

The book confused me. It seems kinda right but not really right. But here we are, thinking about it, which may be mimetic itself.

…

A few network examples that didn’t make the post: The Zappos Holacracy was CEO Tony Hsieh’s attempt to recreate college, increase random interactions, and optimize “a return on collisions”.

The Theodore Roosevelt Covid outbreak as another example of network structure and information flows.

Intentional living – winning or otherwise

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Good advice is tricky. The This Time is Different series is built around asking: Are these the correct lessons?

Part of the uncertainty is the truth and fit between the big idea and the story. In Start with No, the big idea is our ego, the story is sales, and the fit is: good salespeople have the right ego. Do people have egos? Are people in sales? Does the right ego for sales still matter? Yes – so the book is good advice. 

In Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, the big idea is network structure, the story is about mimetics the fit is: we are mimetic due to our network structure. That checks out too (though doubt the effect size). 

Winning by Tim Grover follows this pattern. The big idea is intentionality told through the story of winning a competition. Winning like Jordan or Kobe requires intentional actions. That checks out too. In Early Retirement Extreme, the big idea is intentionality but the story is financial philosophy. The same big idea but a different story. 

Grover focuses on intentionality in two ways: wants leading to actions and outsider status.

For Grover, wanting to win has to lead to acting to win. “If you don’t get on the same level,” Michael Jordan told one teammate, “It’s going to be hell for you.” Jordan was one of the first players to switch from carb-heavy meals to eating steak before games. Before Jordan, few players trained during and before the season. For Kobe, the actions were learning Slovenian to trash talk Luca Donic. In 2008, preparing for the Olympic Games, Kobe was going to the gym when the rest of the team came back from a party at five in the morning. 

Intentional living requires wants which require actions.

Grover’s second point is how it feels to be an outsider. Howard Marks popularized the idea that outperformance means being different and being right. Easy to say, hard to do. 

Investors, like Marks, can be different and right with good stakeholders. If limited partners don’t ‘get it’ the business plan can’t work. So investors look for LPs who will ‘stick with it’. It’s easier to be an outsider when surrounded by a collection of insiders. 

Grover’s clients are in the entertainment business and the ‘get it’ is social. Why succeed unconventionally when you can fail conventionally? 

To succeed as an outsider someone must have a plan and stick with it rather than stick your finger in the wind. “No,” Grover writes, “is a complete sentence.” Build up the don’t give a fuck muscle too. Some think it’s weird? Who cares! Successful outsiders will design easier paths. Kobe Bryant had the most ingenious form and LARPed as the Black Mamba. Winning wasn’t a great book. I hoped for more insider stories. But the big idea was a good reminder. 

Courage is Calling (review)

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For some things podcasts are better than books. I’d never read about their subjects but The Rest is History and Hardcore History podcasts are consistently great. 

But books aren’t bad. They’re different. Fiction is great for books. Non-fiction is harder to execute. Ryan Holiday’s book, Courage is Calling, is a different form of non-fiction. Part of the four stoic virtues series, Courage is a collection of vignettes and the mini-stories give the reader many hooks to hang onto. Appearing are philosophers, writers, officers, statesmen, stoics, men, women – they’re all here. It reads fast, which is a good thing! I took away four aspects for courage: 

Act now. Douglas McArthur summarized life’s failures as being too late. 

Don’t fear the imagined. Hurrying to make a rendezvous through the Texas countryside, Ulysses S. Grant remarked to a companion that there were many wolves about, maybe surrounding them. Pushing through the brush Grant and his companion eventually came upon the wolves. Only two, who scattered. Grand reflected later “there are always more before they are counted.” 

Courage and fear are required conditions. Fighting the Nazis and rallying the French, Charles de Gaulle wrote “The intervention of human will in the chain of events has something irrevocable about it.” The important stuff has weight. And that responsibility has “a moral element.” 

We grow. “The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life, “Joan Didion observed, “is the source from which self-respect springs.” 

Courage is Calling is not a quake book, it’s a wake book. It’s what to read instead of checking your phone first thing in the morning. It’s different non-fiction. It’s more holistic than linear. It’s a mental refresher. It’s a reminder from another version of yourself, a version that encourages courage.

Winning’s Structure

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Good advice is hard. Our This Time is Different series is built around asking: Are these the correct lessons?

Part of the uncertainty is the truth and fit between the big idea and the story. Start with No is an example. The big idea is our ego, the story is sales, and the fit is that good salespeople have the right ego. Do people have egos? Are people in sales? Does the right ego for sales still matter? Yes – so the book is good advice. 

Wanting by Luke Burgis is an example too. The big idea is network types. The story is about mimetics. The fit is that we are mimetic because of our network structure. That checks out too (though I had my doubts about the effect size). 

Winning by Tim Grover follows this pattern. The big idea is intentionality told through the story of competition. Winning like Jordan or Kobe requires intentional actions. That checks out too. An opposite story but the same big idea is Early Retirement Extreme. The big idea is still intentionality but the story is financial philosophy. 

Grover focuses on intentionality in two ways: wants and outsider status.

For Grover, wants like winning are preceded by actions. Kobe and Jordan wanted to win so they had to take actions that lead to that.  “If you don’t get on the same level,” Michael Jordan told one teammate, “It’s going to be hell for you.” Jordan was one of the first players to switch from carb heavy meals to eating steak before games. Before Jordan, few players trained during and before the season. For Kobe the actions were learning Slovenian to trash talk Luca Donic. In 2008, preparing for the Olympic Games, Kobe was going to the gym when the rest of the team came back from a party at five in the morning. 

Intentional living requires wants which require actions.

Grover’s second point is how it feels to be an outsider. Howard Marks popularized the idea that outperformance means being different and being right. Easy to say, hard to do. 

Investors, like Marks, can be different and right with good stakeholders. If limited partners don’t ‘get it’ the business plan can’t work. Investors then look for LPs who will ‘stick with’ a plan. It’s easier to be an outsider when surrounded by a (small) group of insiders. 

Grover’s clients are in the entertainment business so the ‘get it’ is social. Why succeed unconventionally when you can fail traditionally? 

There are ways to deal with outsider status. Have a plan and stick with it rather than stick your finger in the wind. “No,” Grover writes, “is a complete sentence.” Build up the don’t give a fuck muscle too. Some think it’s weird? Who cares! 

Successful outsiders design easier paths. We are wired to not stand out. Kobe Bryant had the most ingenious form and LARPed as the Black Mamba. Winning wasn’t a great book. I hoped for more insider stories. But the big idea was a good reminder.

The Sandler Rules (a short review)

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It is helpful to think of The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them like Parenting Teens with Love and Logic. Both books suggest shifting from helicopter parent or pushy salesperson to more of a consultant. For Sandler it’s principle 39. 

For Sandler, for sales, the customer’s progress is all that matters. It’s not how hard you worked. It’s not the feature. It’s not what you think. It’s not the last time this happened. 

It’s. Just. The. Customer’s. Progress. 

To find that the salesperson must be honest, a contradiction to the caricatures. “When interacting with prospects and clients, your objective is to uncover the truth, even if it’s not something you want to hear.” 

One obstacle, ironically, on the path from honesty leading to truth is knowledge. You can know too much. So, act like a dummy (Rule 17). Remember, selling is not about telling (Rule 14). 

Doctoring is a helpful analogy. Dermatologists don’t digress into the sciences  – they diagnose damage. The sales system differs from the medical one and strictly comparing the two makes the man on the moon mistake, but the philosophy is the same. 

Author David Mattson does a nice job of collecting the principles and assigning interesting ideas to each. My favorites: 

  • Rule 2: Don’t spill your candy in the lobby. Get information don’t give it.
  • Rule 4: Explain ‘no’ is okay. Aim to uncover the truth – even if it’s something you don’t want to hear.
  • Rule 13: No mind reading, don’t assume and clarify vague responses.
  • Rule 14: “‘Selling’ is not about “‘telling.’”
  • Rule 22: Defuse bombs right away – bring up the problem.
  • Rule 27: “You can’t sell anybody anything, they must discover they want it.”
  • Rule 37: “All Prospects Lie, All the Time… but why, and about what.”
  • Rule 38: The problem they bring you is never the real problem, “diagnosis is the salesperson’s responsibility”.
  • Rule 41: Whatever is happening is your responsibility
  • Rule 48: A life without risk is a life without growth

Sandler was suggested in Bob Moesta’s book Demand Side Sales. This book is an aligned sales system to the JTBD approach. Rules 37 & 38 (“all prospects lie, all the time” & diagnosis is the salesperson’s job) fit well with the curiosity inherent in JTBD.

The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them is a fast read, best for the JTBD curious and those looking for some sales support. 

…

Here’s the review for Parenting Teens…

And the JTBD series

Start with No (book review)

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In his 2016 book, Never Split the Difference Chris Voss suggests Jim Camp’s, 2011 book, Start with No. 

To Voss, ‘no’ is progress. Too often ‘yes’ is said for appeasing purposes and ‘maybe’ means we haven’t clarified what’s important. But ‘no’ is firm, it’s progress. 

Camp explores this idea deeper. He, like Voss, dislikes win-win negotiations. First, they lead to unnecessary compromises. In an effort to let both sides ‘get something’ negotiators compromise too much and on the wrong things. A 10% discount in exchange for a longer contract is good only if it’s important. Too often, Camp writes, people compromise on things which don’t matter. 

Second, win-win is considered fair. Who judges what’s fair? There’s no master evaluator. There are ethics though. Camp’s model is analogous to sports. Prepare, train, and play as hard as you can within the rules for the full period of time. Once the event is over, shake hands and respect your opponent. 

Third is the idea Voss runs with, a ‘no’ is progress, it’s “a decision that gives everyone something to talk about.” 

If ‘no’ is so important, why write a book? This coulda been a tweet. 

Well, no. There’re better ways to get to ’no’. And this book is really about something else entirely.

Our second house was a for sale by owner. A nice family with a nice home. We sniffed around each other like dogs with our initial questions and when asked about his timeline for building their next house the owner said, ‘I’m in no rush, I’ve got a house now’. 

That was good. He conveyed un-neediness. Being needy is Camp’s first warning. Do. Not. Need. A. Deal. Both Camp and Voss frame themselves against the classic negotiation book, 1981’s, Getting to Yes. Their books, they say, highlight what GtY gets wrong. Fair. But Getting to Yes presents the BATNA: best alternative to a negotiated agreement. That’s essential to un-neediness. 

The heart of un-needines, and of good negotiations is the secret message of the book. Start with No is really about our ego. 

Being needy is ego. Camp’s second rule is to act like Columbo. Disarm the adversary. In other words, put ego aside. Don’t try to be impressive, smart, or IN CHARGE. Don’t elucidate and don’t use words like elucidate. Camp warns about trying to be liked (chapters 2, 3), to be smart (6), or only talking about your side (4, 7, 8, 9). 

It’s hard to Start with No when you start with yourself.

The role of ego varies in size and scope. A successful negotiator finds the right balance of their own and their adversary’s point of view. This is the root of Camp’s system. It’s also the heart of copywriting and JTBD. 

Good negotiations are difficult and rare, Camp writes. That makes sense! To be a successful negotiator (according to Camp) we have to check our ego – a problem humans have been dealing with for hundreds of years. 

Camp tells a lot of ‘me’ stories. They’re about his big deal big deals, his awesome son, his business. It’s a little much (Voss’ stories are better). But hidden in those is a wonderful exploration of our ego and what we can do about it. 

Ego is tricky because like picking our nose, we don’t notice. It’s part of us. But when someone contrasts another way it makes us pause and consider that. For instance, “the most important behavioral goal and habit you can develop is your ability to ask questions” or “The self-image of the individual in the selling role traps him or her in a neediness mode and often leads to bad deals.” That frames our behavior and leads to questions like do I ask enough questions or am I needy because I want to feel smart, impressive, helpful, or whatever?

Camp’s book introduces his perspective, and that’s a good start to good negotiations.