Category Archives: Personal Development

Book Notes: Solution Selling by Michael Bosworth

Leave a reply

Solution Selling Book Notes by Michael Bosworth

Don’t assume sellers desires/needs. Don’t defend or waste time discussing features in which the buy is not interested. Tailor sales to focus on the advantages that fulfill a need the buyer explicitly expresses.

The key is selling is not what you know, but what your buyer sees.

Three levels of need: Latent > Pain/Active Need > Vision a solution

The difference between latent need and pain is hope.

Most peoples mind can hold and focus about seven subjects or ideas at one time. This is the number of issues, concerns, “balls in the air”, or needs most individual human beings can manage simultaneously. So we must focus on energies to occupy the foreground brain of our buyers with an issue that our product or service addresses.

Take the time to diagnose a solution, even through you think you already know what the buyer needs. This is key in gaining buyer loyalty when creating, participating, or reengineering the buyer’s vision of a solution.

Because businesses and their sellers often have superior product and capability knowledge, they see the buyer’s situation and start prescribing solutions. These sellers suffer from seller impatience (premature elaboration).

Often, a seller sees a problem and the solution; the buyer does not. Don’t be Continue reading →

27 Life Lessons

Leave a reply
Below is a list of some life lesson I’ve learnt over the past several years. Some relate to personal experiences, some to professional experiences, while others are from books and internet articles I’ve read. All have forever altered my constantly evolving world-view.
  1. Stress is a code word for fear.
  2. Everything people do aims to gain pleasure or avoid pain
  3. Don’t wait for other people permission.
  4. Taking care of the things (and people) you love in your life matters everyday, no matter how busy you are
  5. 3 greatest human fears: rejection, we’r not enough and we won’t be loved.
  6. Sometimes it’s necessary to be unreasonable
  7. I don’t need to be perfect, but people do need to know they can rely on me
  8. People respect you when you admit you were wrong
  9. Relationships are never 100% equal
  10. Fear of loss generally drives more action than desire for gain
  11. We are motivated by our emotions and we then backward rationalize our actions
  12. Pursue passion, not titles and dollars
  13. Focus on the vital few. Ignore the trival many
  14. Making a decision is more important than doing things perfectly
  15. When I think my limit has been reached, take on step forward
  16. Offer solutions when identifying a problem.
  17. Agility matters
  18. There is massive power in simplicity
  19. Systems cannot change culture
  20. Some customers/friends are not worth having
  21. Companies/People can’t help helped until they’re ready to be helped
  22. Raise issues immediately and directly – don’t delay
  23. There is power in persistence
  24. Disorient yourself when life  gets too comfortable
  25. There is a direct relationship between $ and value added
  26. Chose doing over having
  27. Most of the time, it’s not enough to be better. You need to be different. You need to be interesting.

Favorite Quotes

Leave a reply

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.”

Below is a selection of my favourites. Click here to download the full list as a PDF.

———————————-

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

A journey can only begin with your decision to embark. – Michael Dell

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. – Marcus Aurelius

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. —Oscar Wilde

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything. – Alexander Hamilton

Those with more talent require fewer props. – Hugh

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. – Dr. Seuss

It’s not about being treating like a superstar, it’s about being treated like part of the family. – Steve Lawler (DJ)

I work extremely hard doing what I love, mainly to ensure that I don’t have to work extremely hard doing what I hate. – Hugh

You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not. -Isabel Allende

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? – Maurice Freehill

Success is the culmination of failures, mistakes, false starts, confusion, and the determination to keep going anyway – Nick Gleason

2009 In Review

2 Replies

In 2009, my adventure bug bit again which shook me out of my comfort cocoon and made for a very interesting year. 2009 started in Las Vegas with my friends from Barcelona and ended in Sydney, with my new friends that I’ve made in my first 4 months in Sydney.

Below are a few of the more memorable moments (6 good, one challenge).

  • Went to the Obama Presidential Inauguration (thanks again Brian! I owe you).
  • Left Chicago Tribune after 1.5 tumultuous years (survived 4 rounds of layoffs, and then resigned).
  • Spent 2 ½ unforgettable months on summer holiday in Barcelona, spending the time with my friends that I first met when I lived in Spain from August 2006-August 2007….also making plenty of new friends
  • Traveled to Washington D.C, New York City, Los Angeles, Madrid, London, Bangkok, Istanbul, Dublin, Athens and Santorini (Washington D.C., Thailand, Turkey, Ireland and Greece were all firsts)
  • Relocated to Sydney, my current residence.
  • Started new job @ Myriad Minds
  • Father was diagnosed with prostate cancer, a challenge he’s facing with courage and grace.

2009 was an incredible year. It’s hard to believe that a decade has passed since the apocalyptic predictions of 2000. Yet here we are. So much has changed in the world and within my life in the past ten years. It’s certainly a much different world.

I have no idea what will happen over the next 10 years, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. For me, it’s the excitement of the unknown, the chemical high of anticipation and the thrill of possibility that makes life worth living.

Beach / Blond Correlation?

Leave a reply

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald and its comments provided incredible insight to the old (and tired) Sydney vs Melbourne debate.

More importantly, the author raises an incredibly interesting question whether more attractive, but less intelligent people tend to gravitate to beach cities like Barcelona, Miami and Sydney.

Hmmm…certainty worth pondering.

Growth Roids

Leave a reply

Do you worry more about being overwhelmed or underwhelmed? Being overwhelmed is a valid concern and can become a source of great stress if not managed properly. More than being overwhelmed, I worry about being underwhelmed. Being underwhelmed is a sign that you’re stagnating – that you’re not growing & learning. Given the choice, I’ll almost always pick being overwhelmed.

Growth is built upon a series of stress and recovery, so you can excellerate your growth by consciously putting yourself in situations that make you uncomfortable. Over time, you’ll resilience and comfort with the uncomfortable will grow.

30 Day Challenge #1: No alcohol & caffeine

Leave a reply

I’ve always enjoyed trying new things, pushing the boundaries and seeing what happens. For the next 30 days, I’m challenging myself to not consume any alcohol or caffeine. For many people, this may sound extreme. The reality is that it won’t be that difficult because I already don’t drink soda and have I drastically reduced the amount of coffee I drink compared to as recently as 1 year ago.

I plan to do more of these challenges in the near future, but want to start with a more manageable challenge and build up to larger ones (such as a 30 day vegan diet challenge).

If you’re interested in reading challenge updates, I’ll post them at @crakowski.

Art of Living

Leave a reply

I came across this incredible poem by the Pulitzer Prize winning American author James A. Michener and wanted to share it. I feel everyone should strive for playful excellence and I hope it serves as a good reminder.

The master in the art of living
draws no sharp distinction between
his labor and his leisure,
his mind and his body,
his work and his play,
his education and his recreation.

He hardly knows which.

He simply pursues his vision of excellence
through whatever he is doing
and leaves others to determine
whether his is working or playing.

To himself, he is always doing both.

Book Notes: The Alchemist

Leave a reply

alchemistI was going through my computer files earlier today when I came across my book notes from The Alchemist.

I first read The Alchemist on January 19th 2007. I was at a friends house when I noticed the book on his table. The cover looked interesting so I picked it up and started reading the synopsis.

“The charming tale of Santiago, a shepherd boy, who dreams of seeing the world, is compelling in its own right, but gains resonance through the many lessons Santiago learns during his adventures. He journeys from Spain to Morocco in search of worldly success, and eventually to Egypt, where a fateful encounter with an alchemist brings him at last to self-understanding and spiritual enlightenment. “

I was intrigued because I was on my own European adventure at the time (in Zurich at the time). My friends went out dancing later that night but I was so engrossed in the book that I stayed in to finish it.

It’s an incredibly powerful book that I highly recommend to anyone that hasn’t read it. Below are my notes.

The Alchemist

Maktub – it’s written

If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.

When you search for your own personal treasure, you’ll discover things along the way that you never would have seen had you not had the courage to try things that seemed difficult, crazy or even impossible.

People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or Continue reading →

Book Notes: The China Study

Leave a reply

the-china-studyHippocrates, the father of medicine once said, “He who does not know food, how can he understand the diseases of man?”.

This incredibly insightful book details the findings of “The China Study”, the most comprehensive study of diet, lifestyle and disease ever done with humans in the history of biomedical research. It was a extremely provocative book that has profoundly impacted how I view health & nutrition. While it’s clear the author advocates for a vegan diet, the books was written to inform, not preach.

My notes are really light because massive book can be boiled down to one key concept – eat a whole-food plant based diet. This diet is very different than the “junk food” vegetarian diet that so many vegetarians embrace (this is why you still see so many overweight vegetarians). The rest of the book is supporting evidence and extremely interesting commentary and observations on the authors 40+ years as a scientific researcher and healthcare industry insider .

It was an especially interesting read because of the current healthcare reform debate in the U.S. (which I’ve consciously decided to not follow). I realize that a lot of people will dismiss the book and its findings as too radical. This is extremely unfortunate as I think readers would be shocked and moved to action if read with an open mind. I know I was.

After reading this book, I plan to complete a 30 day vegan trial. Look for more Continue reading →