Connection, Leaping, SuperConsumers, Bankruptcy & 27 Other Tips [CEO Bookshelf]

You’ve heard you are what you eat, well we believe that you are what you read. Teach a CEO presents lessons from our bookshelf on how you can improve and grow your venture. We have taken gems or nuggets from our library and provide them for CEO’s, startups, entrepreneurs and business owners.

1. We create ourselves through connection with others, and we deepen our capacity to connect with others through the work we do to connect with ourselves. (The Art of Connection)
2. Businesses that generate customer loyalty stamp out the risks most likely to affect customers by providing customers with complete surety that they can predict the outcome of every single transaction. (Capturing Loyalty)
3. This si the essence of what I call a superconsumer strategy: find, listen to, and engage with your most passionate customers; understand their tastes, emotions, and behaviors; lean into the aspects that also resonate with a much larger group of potential superconsumers; and then tailor your decision making, coordinate and concentrate your cross-functional investments, and innovate–both your product and your business model–to give these consumers what they want and need. (Superconsumers)
4. You can change your life by changing the way you think about yourself and your potential. (The Art of Connection)
5. Your comfort zone is doing you no favors because it's keeping you from the greatest rewards in life. The people willing to move out of this safe zone are the ones who reach the end of life with fewer regrets, a high level of life satisfaction, and results more aligned with the desires behind their actions. (Permission to Leap)
6. Stories will hook your audience more than abstractions. (Rock Your Presentation)
7. As a first prerequisite, the would-be entrepreneur must have some reason in his or her mind that this business endeavor is the grates thing since sliced bread, and that he is going to do very well at whatever that business is all about. (The Bankruptcy Alternative)
8. Superconsumers can dramatically decrease the cost of failure. You can learn rom them more rapidly, which means you can test, learn, and improve a product as you go. (Superconsumers)
9. Real customer loyalty arises from a profound belief held by High Satisfied Customers that the companies to which they entrust their custom will not disappoint them. (Capturing Loyalty)
10. True humility emerges from a sense of wonder and awe. It's an appreciation that our time on earth is limited but that there's something timeless at the core of every being. Embracing humility liberates us from the egotism that drives both perfectionism and self-sabotage, opening us to a deeper experience of self-worth. (The Art of Connection)
11. The biggest savings come from economizing on the time it takes customers to deal with you. The sooner you understand exactly what they want, the sooner you can deliver it. Your ability to reduce the inefficiencies in dealing with your loyal customers can deliver cost savings for you and your customer. (Capturing Loyalty)
12. The most effective and ultimately fulfilling style is to be a Giver with some strategic Matcher competencies. (The Art of Connection)
13. How you deliver your material is almost as important as what you have to say. (Rock Your Presentation)
14. When you visualize your desired result over and over again, it becomes reality for your brain. (Permission to Leap)
15. To summarize the four important steps of this approach, we label it the FUEL framework: (1) Find superconsumers (2) Understand superconsumers (3) Engage with superconsumers (4) Lean into superconsumers. (Superconsumers)
16. This book is about knowing when to throw in the towel, about calling a spade a spade, about recognizing when there's nothing left that you can give to make something work, and then about having the guts to get rid of it., to close it down, and to take it through the process that I have described. (The Bankruptcy Alternative)
17. Focusing on eliminating a few risks may seem overly simplistic. But consistent risk elimination surfaces time and again as the bedrock of path-breaking enterprises. (Capturing Loyalty)
18. Skills in managing and resolving conflict are important for everyone, yet they are rarely taught in school or elsewhere. Conflict generates energy. When the energy is mishandled, it can lead to disaster. When it's dealt with intelligently, it can deepen our relationships and enrich our lives. (The Art of Connection)
19. A visionary leader in the world of customer loyalty is someone who defines the reason for an organization's existence as service customers in some unique, needs-satisfying way. Operating under the guidance of the organization's reason for being, the visionary leader pursues all means available to enable the organization to achieve what she or he imagines as possible. (Capturing Loyalty)
20. This ability is the greatest point of leverage for everything in the whole book. When you are centered and present, you are able to connect, and when you connect, you can blend and lead. (The Art of Connection)
21. Generating high levels of sustained customer satisfaction–eliminating the key risks customers perceive in trading with your company–requires a sustained top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top approach, from the middle outward and back again. (Capturing Loyalty)
22. It's best to employ focus as you're creating your vision. You can take a million actions all day long, but–not only do you not have time for that–when you spread your focus across a million actions, you diminish the impact they have. (Permission to Leap)
23. A shift in consumers, increased competition, or some unexpected external shock may require a tweak in strategy over the years. But a strong superconsumer culture, where the newest entry-level employee can offer an opinion on growth because he or she is a superconsumer, has an impact that can last decades. (Superconsumers)
24. And the second part of this book is about never quitting!!! It's about doing everything in your power to go over any and all o the obstacles and stumbling blocks that will show up in front of you, and to never give in to those circumstances, but keep on truckin' and get ‘er to the end, successfully. (The Bankruptcy Alternative)
25. We are all in the relationship business! Now, leaders who cultivate the art of connection will have an increasingly powerful advantage over those who don't (The Art of Connection)
26. Think of yourself as a conductor — someone who brings together all parts of the performance — when you are planning and enabling audience involvement. (Rock Your Presentation)
27. Taking a stand for your vision is a game changer. It's one thing to commit to your vision within yourself, but bringing others into your leap will catapult you further toward what you desire. (Permission to Leap)

CEO Bookshelf

• The Art of Connection: 7 Relationship-Building Skills Every Leader Needs Now – These days, it’s often easier to avoid face-to-face contact in favor of technological shortcuts. But as Michael Gelb argues in this compelling, entertaining book, the meaningful relationships that come from real interaction are the key to creating innovative ideas and solving our most intractable problems. In The Art of Connection, Gelb offers readers seven methods of developing this essential rapport in their professional and personal lives. Each chapter covers specific techniques and illustrates them with memorable stories, relevant scientific research, and hands-on exercises that allow readers to apply their new skills. Most important, Gelb reminds us that developing rapport with others is not just a business tool to enhance productivity but a valuable end in itself. He guides us to cultivate the skills we all need to deepen our relationships, broaden our humanity, and transform our lives.
• Capturing Loyalty: How to Measure, Generate, and Profit from Highly Satisfied Customers – Written by two highly successful business coaches and management consultants, this book explains how to improve profitability by focusing on turning a business's already satisfied customers into highly satisfied customers by removing their sense of risk. The authors also provide a fail-safe method for identifying the risks inherent in your business. (1) Provides research-based insights into consumer behavior across a diverse series of businesses, including health care, food service, hotels, pharmaceuticals, and retail. (2) Demonstrates that the idea of there being a linear relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is a myth (3) Refutes the oft-heard objection that creating highly satisfied customers is too costly by showing that highly satisfied customers are consistently 2–5 percent cheaper to serve than satisfied ones. (4) Offers business owners and managers a proven methodology for better understanding the key aspects of a company's product and service offerings that create highly satisfied customers. (5) Examines the organizational challenges inherent in deploying a customer loyalty initiative and discusses ways that successful companies have overcome these challenges.
• Rock Your Presentation: A New Guide to Speaking with Passion – Nearly all of us have to pitch or present our ideas, whether in a formal setting after lunch to a hundred jaded salespeople, in a lecture theatre or classroom, putting over our thoughts to a team of colleagues, or even selling a concept one-on-one to your boss. In all these situations we can choose between delivering a message that sounds like muzak, or one that wakes the listener up. Most presentations and pitches could benefit from being ‘rocked up' – becoming more dynamic and memorable, in ways that arouse the passion of the audience. By applying the ideas in ROCK YOUR PRESENTATION you can deliver better, livelier and more emotionally engaging talks which leave audiences with the kind of high you get from being in a crowd at a great concert. Barlow applies the rock'n'roll metaphor throughout the book, turning what, to many, is a stressful subject into an exciting and fun exercise you can't wait to try out. So take the Van Halen approach to planning your presentation, deliver it like a hit song with a chorus and a bridge, play a few well-rehearsed power chords and set your audience ablaze.
• The Bankruptcy Alternative: Close Your Business Your Way, Without Bankruptcy. Save Time, Save Money, Save Your Sanity! – Businesses, large and small, old and startup, are failing all around us. When financial disaster looms in front of the owner / entrepreneur, the first of two very important and difficult decisions that must be made is: DO I CLOSE THIS BUSINESS DOWN? If that answer is “Yes”, the second decision that must be made is: “Do I declare bankruptcy, or is there some other viable alternative I can choose to settle everything?” Decisive action is a must. This book is a study of the decisions one business owner made, and the detailed history of how he made it through the maze with a self-managed liquidation. • Closing your failing business is not about quitting: It is about knowing when it is time to close it down, and having the guts to do it! • Grasping the “S” Curve of Business is a must for any would-be entrepreneur. • When dealing with credit card debt, the key is understanding this: “It’s a game!” Here you will learn how to play that game. • See how you can make Walt Disney’s Storyboarding system become your most valuable business management tool. • Become aware of how vital embracing the concept “the market IS the market” is to your business and personal planning. This book is a message of hope, and resilience, and never giving up. If you can use that message in your life, then this book is for you.
• Permission to Leap: The Six-Phase Journey to Bring Your Vision to Life – You know that there is more available to you. Life is calling for you to be more in the world. And while you've taken a few baby steps to find out more, the thought of jumping without a parachute terrifies you. You can feel yourself torn between the comfort that you know and that invisible whisper inviting you into the expansive and vast unknown. The doubts and ‘what if's are paralyzing you on the fence of indecision. You look left to the comfort and right to the possibility. And left. And right. Which side do you choose? ‘Permission to Leap' will guide you through the process of leaping from the day you commit to the day you land softly on the other side. Because the world needs you to leap sooner than later. Inside you'll learn: (1) How to move past your fears and out of your comfort zone to say YES to your vision.  (2) Tools and techniques to strengthen the inner foundation upon which your vision will be built. (3) New mindset and beliefs to support you your vision creation. (4) The science and psychology behind comfort zones, leaps of faith, and manifestation. (5) Habit creation to support you in sustainable and lasting change.
• Superconsumers: A Simple, Speedy, and Sustainable Path to Superior Growth – Pork dorks. Craftsters. American Girl fans. Despite their different tastes, these eclectic diehards have a lot in common: they’re obsessed about a specific brand, product, or category. They pursue their passions with fervor, and they’re extremely knowledgeable about the things they love. They aren’t average consumers—they’re superconsumers.Although small in number, superconsumers can have an outsized impact on a company’s bottom line. Representing 10% of total consumers, they can drive between 30% to 70% of sales, and they’re usually willing to spend considerably more than the average consumer. And because they’re so engaged and passionate, they can offer invaluable advice to managers looking to improve their products, change their business models, energize their cultures, and attract new customers.