Tag Archives: Fortune
Where Barker’s Best-Seller Ranks Today on Major Lists
We discussed the business best-seller rankings today, and specifically, how fast books move on and off these lists.
The book that I presented a synopsis of this morning, Barking Up the Wrong Tree (Harper One, 2017) by Eric Barker, is no longer on a published list. I first saw it on the Wall Street Journal list a few weeks ago.
Yet, its performance is very strong on one source, and that is the Amazon.com list. This one continually updates the status of book sales, and has become one of our favorite sources for determining the books that we will present at the First Friday Book Synopsis.
As of 3:15 p.m. today (7/7/2017), Barker’s book is in the top 25 in three Amazon.com sub-categories, and is in the top 100 in three major categories. You can review all of those categories by CLICKING HERE.
There are many sources for business best-seller lists, and we do not confine ourselves to any single list. However, the New York Times list, due to its monthly publication, is the one that we consider the most reliable. These sources publish best-seller lists, and we look at all of them:
Amazon.com
Bloomberg Business Week
Fortune
New York Times
USA Today
Wall Street Journal
Will Krawcheck Unseat Lean-In for Working Women?
A new blockbuster book for women in business rocketed all the way to # 3 in the Wall Street Journal business best-selling list (January 28-29, p. C-10). It may well undercut the popularity of the famous Lean-In best-seller by Sheryl Sandberg.
The book is called Own It: The Power of Women at Work (Crown Books, 2017). authored by Sallie Krawcheck. The book is a certain future selection for us at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas.
Released for sale only on January 17, the book has also found its way into the top 100 of three of the book categories on Amazon.com. She was recently featured in an issue of Fast Company magazine. You can read the feature story about her at this link:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3036587/generation-flux/i-knew-i-would-get-fired-sallie-krawcheck
What is this one about? Here is how it is summarized on Amazon.com:
” [This is] a new kind of career playbook for a new era of feminism, offering women a new set of rules for professional success: one that plays to their strengths and builds on the power they already have.
“Weren’t women supposed to have “arrived”? Perhaps with the nation’s first female President, equal pay on the horizon, true diversity in the workplace to come thereafter? Or, at least the end of “fat-shaming” and “locker room talk”?
“Well, we aren’t quite there yet. But does that mean that progress for women in business has come to a screeching halt? It’s true that the old rules didn’t get us as far as we hoped. But we can go the distance, and we can close the gaps that still exist. We just need a new way.
“In fact, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future, says former Wall Street powerhouse-turned-entrepreneur Sallie Krawcheck. That’s because the business world is changing fast –driven largely by technology – and it’s changing in ways that give us more power and opportunities than ever…and even more than we yet realize.
“Success for professional women will no longer be about trying to compete at the men’s version of the game, she says. And it will no longer be about contorting ourselves to men’s expectations of how powerful people behave. Instead, it’s about embracing and investing in our innate strengths as women – and bringing them proudly and unapologetically, to work.
“When we do, she says, we gain the power to advance in our careers in more natural ways. We gain the power to initiate courageous conversations in the workplace. We gain the power to forge non-traditional career paths; to leave companies that don’t respect our worth, and instead, go start our own. And we gain the power to invest our economic muscle in making our lives, and the world, better.
“Here Krawcheck draws on her experiences at the highest levels of business, both as one of the few women at the top rungs of the biggest boy’s club in the world, and as an entrepreneur, to show women how to seize this seismic shift in power to take their careers to the next level.
“This change is real, and it’s coming fast. It’s time to own it.”
Follow our website to see the exact month that we will present this book at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas. My feeling is that many working women will find this to be a fresh approach to what seems like to have become a perpetual issue.
Finally, who is Sallie Krawcheck? She may be one of the best-kept secrets in business. This is her biography, as published by the newsroom of Bank of America.com.
“Sallie L. Krawcheck is the former president of Global Wealth & Investment Management for Bank of
America, one of the largest wealth management businesses in the world with more than 20,000 financial advisors across the entire wealth spectrum and $2 trillion in total client assets. Global Wealth & Investment Management provides comprehensive wealth management to affluent, mass affluent, high net worth and ultra high net worth clients, individual and institutional retirement plans, philanthropic management and asset management.
“Before joining Bank of America, Krawcheck was the chief executive officer and chairman for Citi Global Wealth Management, responsible for the Citi Private Bank, Citi Smith Barney and Citi Investment Research. During her time as CEO, she was also a member of Citi’s senior leadership committee and executive committee.
“Krawcheck joined Citi in October 2002 as chairman and chief executive officer of Smith Barney, where she oversaw the global management of the Smith Barney and Citi Investment Research businesses. In 2004, Sallie was appointed chief financial officer and head of Strategy for Citigroup Inc. Prior to joining Citi, Krawcheck was chairman and chief executive officer of Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, where she became one of the most influential voices for research quality and integrity.
“For six straight years, from 2002 to 2007, Fortune recognized Krawcheck as one of the “Most Powerful Women” in business. Forbes magazine, in 2006, listed her as #6 in the rank of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” She was also the recipient of CNBC’s “Business Leader of the Future Award” in 2007. In 2002, she was recognized as one of Time magazine’s “Global Business Influentials” and, in 2003, Fortune magazine named her the “Most Influential Person Under the Age of 40.”
“A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Krawcheck attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the Morehead Scholarship and graduated in 1987 with academic honors and a Bachelor of Arts. In 1992, she received a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University.
“An active participant in the affairs of her alma maters, Krawcheck has endowed her former secondary school, The Porter Gaud School, with the Krawcheck Scholarship, a needs-based scholarship awarding full tuition to students of exceptional aptitude. She is a member of the board of directors of Dell Inc., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Foundations, Inc., and Carnegie Hall; the board of overseers of Columbia Business School; and the board of trustees for The Economic Club of New York.”
As always, we are interested in where this book lands on the New York Times business best-selling list. It is my guess that it will appear and stay on that list for quite some time.
Resurgence in Physical Bookstores is Encouraging
I am excited by the news that there is a resurgence in physical bookstores.
Locally, the Dallas Morning News announced in an article last week that a new bookstore, Interabang Books, would open in May, 2017, at Preston and Royal in Dallas, one of the busiest intersections in the city. The article states that the store will be a “5,000-square-foot site that will carry 12,000 titles and focus on fiction, children’s books and creative nonfiction. It will have space for up to 100 people for book signings, and a children’s stage for story times.” You can read the entire article here:
http://www.dallasnews.com/arts/books/2017/01/17/dallas-getting-new-independent-bookstore
This is a national trend. This article summarizes results from seven different stores in cities where traditional bookstores are thriving. This is the citation for that article:
http://www.bookweb.org/for-the-record
Even the large chain, Barnes & Noble, has seen gains in physical, on-site purchases. This article, published in Fortune.com, sites a three-month period in 2016 when online sales dropped more than 12%, but in-store sales rose 1.3%. You can read more here:
http://fortune.com/2016/03/03/barnes-noble-results/
Of course, these bookstores look nothing like the “bookstores” of ten or more years ago. They contain coffee, food, music, gifts, games, and other items that attract and keep shoppers interested. The result is that the bookstores continue to be an important part of an intellectual, but also, casual shopping community.
I don’t understand the enthusiasm that some people have for technology to replace these traditional stores. There are plenty of people who do not want to read a book on a tablet, laptop, or phone. I don’t understand why we don’t view these as alternative sources, rather than as replacements. After all, if the purpose of all these sites is to increase reading, thus producing a more intellectual and informed community, why wouldn’t we want to have multiple ways to put content in everyone’s hands?
My Pick for 2016’s Best: The Seventh Sense
I am often asked at this time of year, what I consider the BEST business book published in the past twelve months.
We presented my selection for 2016 in August. You can buy the synopsis at 15MinuteBusinessBooks.com.
My choice is The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Joshua Cooper Ramo (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2016). Perhaps I am biased, since I have taught courses in “Communication Networks in Small Groups and Organizations” in MBA classes. However, I did so without this book.
Even today, the book is in the top 10 in three business categories on Amazon.com.
Ramo is a very eclectic guy. He is the author of the bestseller, 
The Age of the Unthinkable. He is co-chief executive officer and vice chairman of Kissinger Associates and a member of the board of directors of FedEx and Starbucks. His first book, No Visible Horizon, chronicled his experiences as a competitive aerobatic pilot.
The book is amazing. It’s real focus is on encouraging the reader to see the world in a different way. The book includes references and stories to many contemporary successful leaders perceive in their environment. The emphasis is on using networks, but not just from the Internet. He introduces DNA networks, political networks, and financial networks. The book is not simply descriptive, it also has many practical and implementable elements.
This post is not the book’s first critical acclaim. It has received high marks from reviewers at respected sources such as Financial Times, The New York Times, New Yorker, and San Francisco Chronicle.
Vaden’s Unique Approach to Managing Time Deserves Attention
I won’t spoil the presentation next week at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas, but if you attend, you will certainly find Rory Vaden‘s approach to time management very different from every traditional approach you have ever seen.
Vaden’s best-seller, which debuted last month, is entitled Procrastinate on Purpose (Perigee Books, 201
4). In the book, he provides five permissions that allow you to multiply your time.
His premise is different, yet realistic. We all have the same amount of time. His idea is to ignore methods and tools you have heard about for years. These include prioritizing daily tasks, segmenting parts of your day into specific focused activities, and so forth. Rather, his focus is on understanding and coming to grips with the emotions that get in our way and preventing us from maximizing our time. To Vaden, time is not something you spend, but something you invest.
You will remember his previous blockbuster best-seller, Take the Stairs. Over time, Vaden has become one of the most popular and influential speakers and authors of our time.
Who is he? From his own web site, I copied this biography:
As an award-winning entrepreneur and business leader, Rory Co-Founded Southwestern Consulting™, a multi-million dollar global consulting practice that helps clients in more than 14 countries drive educated decisions with relevant data. He’s also the Founder of The Center for the Study of Self-Discipline (CSSD). Rory is the world’s leader on defining the psychology around modern day procrastination, called Priority Dilution™ – in fact, he coined the term. He speaks and consults on how to say no to the things that don’t matter, and yes to the things that do. His client list includes companies and groups such as: Cargill, The Million Dollar Roundtable, P&G, True Value, YPO, Wells Fargo Advisors, Land O’Lakes, Novartis, and hundreds more. His insights have recently been featured on/in: Fox News, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Inc, Fortune, and the New York Times. He is a regular contributor for American Express Open Forum, Huffington Post, and The Tennessean and his articles and insights average more than 4 million views every day.
For more, you need to attend the presentation on Friday. You will hear all about the five permissions.
I can promise you it will be a very different approach to managing time, from someone who is very different himself.
I will see you then!
