 | Jump Start Your Business Brain: The Scientific Way To Make More Money |
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(43 customer reviews)
Product Description
- Amazon Sales Rank: #63371 in Books
- Published on: 2005-04-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .84" h x 6.03" w x 9.07" l, 1.13 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 340 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9781578601790
- Condition: New
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Review
Jump Start Your Business Brain is the first piece of TRUE, fact-based marketing wisdom since David Ogilvy. -- John Ruffley, Director of Marketing, M&M/Mars
Listen, learn and take action NOW! -- Guy Kawasaki, CEO, Garage Technology Ventures and author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad .
The author's passion for turning dreams of success into reality is evident on every pageand quite contagious. -- Successful Meetings Magazine
About the Author
Doug began his entrepreneurial career at age twelve, later earned a degree as a chemical engineer from the University of Maine and then worked for Proctor & Gamble, where he rose to the rank of Master Marketing Inventor and set a corporate record developing and introducing nine new business initiatives in a twelve-month period. After 10 years, Doug retired from corporate life to found what is now known as the Eureka! Ranch, a corporate think tank that has won accolades from some of the biggest corporations in the world including American Express, Procter & Gamble, The Ford Motor Company, Nike and Walt Disney.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Foreword: by Tom Peters
Doug Hall has put me in a ... HORRIBLE POSITION. (I'll not soon forgive him.) He asked me to "Write a Foreword" to this book. That means ... 1,000 words or so. BUT ... I can't do it. No ... it's not that I don't like the book. To the contrary ... I LOVE IT. And ... there's my problem.
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE RATIONAL? All I want to say is ... I LOVE IT. IT'S SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPEALIDOCIOUS. (There ... I said it.) Every damn practical question Doug poses, and there are dozens, is ... simply ... ESSENTIAL ... to creating a Cool/Profitable/Wildly Different business.
Here's how he hooked me: DRAMATIC DIFFERENCE.
Dramatic difference. PAYS OFF. Big Time. That's true ... and his new quantitative models prove that ... as never before.
But it goes beyond that. I am thrilled that his Quant Studies PROVE what I've long believed: SERIOUSLY COOL ... WINS ... BIG. (P.S. And: takes Guts! Big Time!)
It's ... THE PASSION ... for the IDEA ... of ... D-R-A-M-A-T-I-C DIFFERENCE. (And ... those COMPELLING/STUNNING/HARD NUMBERS ... to back it up.)
I LOVE IT. (Okay?)
AND. As in ... AND. Every Chapter is brimming with PRACTICAL QUESTIONS & EXERCISES: None of us can escape from his ... INEXORABLE LOGIC.
This ain't a book for Wimps. It is a book for those who will Never Rest until they have Set the World on It's Ear. With a local auto-body shop. Or a 23-table French restaurant. Or Mega-corp. (Or a one-person window-washing service.)
You see, there's another thing Doug & I agree on. BIG TIME. (Again.) We don't think "branding" is limited to Coke or Pfizer. We believe "branding" is ... AVAILABLE TO ALL ... WITH VISION AND NERVE AND VERVE. We believe that "dramatic difference" and Brand Position is as plausible at $1,000,000 as at $1 billion. NO BULL.
DD is a FOM. (DRAMATIC DIFFERENCE ... is a ... Frame Of Mind.)
PERIOD.
Doug provides GAJILLIONS of Practical Examples. (No Barren Desert of Theory here!) And ... YOU MUST READ THEM ALL. (Trust me. Please.)
I LOVE THIS BOOK. (And I rarely -- never before, truth be told -- go that far.) It SOARS ... and provides PRACTICAL STUFF ... worth its weight & price 1000X over. PLEASE. P-L-E-A-S-E. Read -- and ingest -- this book. PLEASE.
You may end up making a ton of money. Far more important ... your life will take on Meaning as never before. (Meaning that flows from the Relentless Pursuit of Dramatic Difference.) How Liberating!
Thank you, Doug, for allowing me a few lines in this masterwork.
Most helpful customer reviews
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
By Robert Morris
Perhaps you have already read Hall's previous book, Jump Start Your Brain (1996) to which David Wecker was a contributor. Most of the core concepts introduced in that book are developed in much greater depth in this sequel. However, Hall makes a much greater effort to explain their direct relevance to achieving business success. He shares "good news" in the Introduction: "Business success is not random. There are patterns in the universe of business. There are reproducible scientific lessons and laws that, when applied with diligence, can help you win more, lose less, and make more money with your new products, services, sales, and advertising efforts." Contrary to Darwinists, Hall rejects the term survival, replacing it with "thriving" through the effective use of data-validated scientific laws. Although he states that small business owners are the "focal point" of his book, I believe that literally anyone can benefit from this book who needs to formulate better ideas within a competitive marketplace.
These new ideas need not be limited to "new products, services, sales, and advertising efforts." On the contrary, they could also help substantially to improve the cycle time and first-pass yield of a process to produce new products and services, to increase both sales and profits, and to maximize the impact of marketing (i.e. creating demand for) whatever is offered for sale. In addition, effective application of "reproducible scientific lessons and laws" can generate new ideas which help a company to strengthen its relationships with customers, vendors, and strategic allies as well as with its own employees or "associates," as they are called at companies such as Wal-Mart and JCPenney.
Hall introduces and then explains what he calls "The Three Laws of Marketing Physics" in Part I (Overt Benefit, Real Reason to Believe, and Dramatic Difference) in Part II and then what he calls "The Three Laws of Capitalist Creativity" in Part II(Explore Stimuli, Leverage Diversity, and Face Fears). If I understand Hall correctly (and I may not in some instances), he works with a rather inclusive definition of "scientific" which bears greater resemblance to the thought processes of a Benjamin Franklin and Eli Whitney than those of, lets say, Frederick W. Taylor and W. Edwards Deming. Moreover, writing with what I characterize as a "Batman Style" (i.e. Pow! Bam! Gadzooks!), he seems to attach much greater value to enthusiasm, indeed PASSION! than he does to highly structured deductive and inductive reasoning. Hall asserts that ideas "are the only true fuel for winning customers and growing profits." How they are generated is determined by both attitude and process. With regard to scientific laws (however derived), they "provide a foundation for making decisions and taking action in the face of chaos."
Throughout this book, Hall includes all manner of exercises by which to "jump start" a brain. (FYI, each brain has about 12-trillion cells and is capable of 10,000 connections -- neurons forming synapses -- with other cells. To jump start is to expedite as well as increase such connections.) In Chapter 10, "How to Fuel Your Brain for Maximum Productivity," Hall includes several "Practical Tactics" such as those which can help anyone to break "mental constipation," "walk the talk," and complete a "mind dump." The extent to which a brain can make connections is determined almost entirely by the quantity and quality of what is available to connect. Hall recommends various specific strategies and tactics by which to increase, constantly, the number of one's "connectible."
Near the end of many of my reviews, I ask "For whom will this book be most valuable?" With regard to this book, that is an easy answer to provide: Anyone who has a brain and wants to make much more effective use of it. If your primary interest is in increasing "creativity" and "innovation" within primarily a business context, I highly recommend this book as well as Lynne C. Levesque's Breakthrough Creativity: Achieving Top Performance Using the Eight Creative Talents, Joey Reiman's Thinking for a Living: Creating Ideas That revitalize Your Business, Career, and Life, Stephen M. Shapiro's 24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint for Surviving and Thriving in an Age of Innovation, and Roger Von Oech's Expected the Unexpected (Or You Won't Find It): A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus. If I were to buy only one of these books, Hall's would be my choice.
If your interest is more general in nature, check out Bernie DeKoven's The Well-Played Game: A Playful Path to Wholeness, Guy Claxton's Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, Michael Michalko's Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, and Roger Von Oech's A Kick in the Seat of the Pants: Using Your Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior to Be More Creative and A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
By Erik Gfesser
The average 5-star rating that this book has received to date is interesting. My 2-star rating credits Doug Hall's follow-up to his classic "Jump Start Your Brain" text with introducing readers to basic marketing in an enthusiastic manner. However, unlike the first "Jump Start" book (refer to the associated 5-star review I wrote for that text), there really is no uniqueness to this book when compared to other business-related marketing books except for the style in which the material is presented. Hall constantly brings up his "Merwyn" probability success tool that is being sold to the reader as a good way to predict the outcome of their product ideas, but since it is a proprietary tool there is no concrete explanation of the analytics behind the tool. Often, the book seems like it is merely a 300+-page sales pitch for Merwyn (and by the way, there is even a coupon in the book to get a one-time discount on use of his tool through the author's firm). After reading "Jump Start Your Business Brain" line by line for the first few chapters, it became quickly apparent that there is definitely a large amount of non-value-added fluff in the material. I still highly recommend "Jump Start Your Brain", but I do not believe this new Hall effort is worth your time unless you are completely new to marketing theory.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
By John C. Dunbar
Doug Hall has mellowed somewhat from his earlier works and is more focused on bottom line results in creating products/services and creating marketing messages. Before he could be "bounce off the wall creative." His prior book "Jump Start Your Brain" is also excellent, but this one is better. Start with this one first. Then get the previous one if you can. If it weren't for the Foreword by Tom Peters, I would have rated this book a 10 in a scale of 1 to 5. So, I guess it is just a 7 on a scale of 1 - 5 since I had to suffer through one page of capital letters from Tom Peters glowing praises of this book. Can Tom Peters ever write a sentence without using all caps?
Fortunately, the writing style of Hall is very readable. In fact, this is much better than his previous books. In my copy, every page has many underlining's and comments or notes to myself. If you are in the process of creating a marketing campaign, or creating products/services, you really need to read this book. I highly recommend this very practical book. And, the author comes across as a great teacher, consultant, coach, motivator and friend. He has an excellent background to teach this subject and his recommendations appear easy to apply.
John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX
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