Words of WISDOM

Business books and the minds behind them

THE INTERVIEW

Today he is a consultant, speaker, founder and president of a marketing consulting firm, as well as author of How to Become CEO and How to Become a Rainmaker, but Jeffrey Fox was once a paperboy. Noticing that the pre-teen job is often mentioned in the bios of successful people, Fox began suggesting in his talks that hiring a former paperboy was smart business practise. In fact, an accomplished businessman once told him, “Everything I learned about business, I learned as a paperboy.” After that fateful comment, his latest book RAIN: What a Paperboy Learned About Business was born. CONNECT finds out more about the world’s most famous paperboy.

Do you feel that without your experiences as a paperboy, you would not be the businessman you are today?
There are many paperboy lessons that have helped me in my career. Probably the most important is that a paper must be delivered undamaged and on time. The morning paper delivered a minute too late cheats the customer. This must happen with every paper on every delivery. No excuses. It is not as hard as the great chefs and cooks who toil mightily in hot kitchens combining countless ingredients to get different dishes out on time, all perfectly cooked. But being a paperboy does teach responsibility and self-reliance.

With the downward trend in newspaper readership – what other work can young people do to develop their life skills in their formative years?
Child labour is good. Kids should be encouraged to work in family businesses – to wash dishes, peel potatoes, bale hay, to mow lawns, to wax cars, to volunteer at old age homes, to shovel snow, to walk dogs, to caddy.

Why did you opt to illustrate your points through a fable in RAIN?
People learn best through stories. They remember stories more than textbook information. People like stories that are metaphors, riddles and mysteries with hidden meanings. I think the fable or parable format is good for RAIN because readers from nine to 90 years of age can enjoy all the little stories in different ways.

This is my first work of fiction and the letters I am getting from fans say it is my best book. I don’t know about that, but these stories resonate with expaperboys and papergirls, and with kids who worked similar jobs growing up. RAIN is available from www.wiley.com/ business at US$18.95

THE REVIEW

Callum Laing, serial entrepreneur and founder of Networking for Success reviews Two Degrees of Separation by Sonia Fernandez (US$39.95, Marshall Cavendish)

“Creating a truly effective network of contacts” is what this book offers to teach you and certainly its appearance on the shelves is a timely one as people find themselves struggling to find new clients or even a new job in the current financial climate.

The essentials of networking are laid out in a clean, simple format with a basic plan to follow. You’ll find a nice blend of online and offline networking tips that should suit both the introverted and extroverted closet networkers out there. While the book offers very little that hasn’t been already published, it is a good introduction for those new to the game.

DOING IT ONLINE

Two new releases negotiate e-commerce

Starting an Online Business for Dummies by Melissa Norfolk and Greg Holden (Wiley, US$24.99)

If you’re looking for information about starting an online business in a book rather than online, then perhaps you should have already ruled yourself out of participating in this particular sector. However, for a solid and wide-ranging overview of a fast-changing and confusing topic, this book does a good job and is easier to read in bed than a laptop. Topics range from setting up the business to the most common forms of online revenue generation. In true ‘Dummies’ style there are plenty of action points, tips and checklists to keep you focused and progressing. – CL

The Little Black Book of Online Business by Paul Galloway (Wiley, US$22.95)

Anyone involved in online marketing should consider this handy little resource guide. Those who think they have it covered with their commercially driven twitters or e-networking forums may find they haven’t considered some of the following: search-engine-boosting ‘article marketing’; exploiting eBay; creating e-books; mind-mapping software; vidcasting, press-release dissemination; and viral marketing. So you don’t have to painstakingly research these topics and hundreds of others, Little Black Book will give you the information you need to go forward. – Peter Myers