I'm Just Sharing

Always Like The First Time – A Book Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 13, 2011

I don’t do a lot of book reviews on this site, though I’ve done a couple. I’m going to start sharing more of them because I’ve read a lot of books, and I know some of them will help folks that come to this blog. Some are just enjoyable as well. This book I’m highlighting today is a bit of both.

A disclaimer up front. The author of this book, Kathryn Pape, is one of my web clients. I also helped edit this book before she sent it to the publishers. I mentioned her in February when I wrote a post about some new blogs I wanted to share that I’d helped to create. Still, this is an unbiased opinion of the book; that’s just how I roll.

I have to admit that I wasn’t sure what I was going to be reading when I started out. Kathryn talks mainly about color therapy, something I’ve learned more about since I manage her site and actually created the page, but something I didn’t really know as much about when I started helping with the book; it’s not a brand new book by the way.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book as I was going through it, even though it was also sad. Kathryn tells the story about going through both the treatments and eventual passing of her 3-year old son from cancer, and how she came up with her beliefs in color and how they could make people feel better both mentally and physically.

She talks about how we all have the choice of feeling better and being positive or negative in our lives based on how we view the word “like” and when we decide to “like”; no, this has nothing to do with Facebook. lol In general, she talks about these 5 principles, in order in the book as:

This isn’t a long book to read, and after she sent the book to the publishers I got a regular copy of it as well. I think a few people could benefit from this book as it’s a feel good book handling a tough issue. You can buy it from me by clicking on the image above, which should take you to the Barnes & Noble page, or you can visit her site, see what she’s about, and buy it from her products page instead.

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4-Hour Work Week – Lifestyle Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 26, 2011

I know what you’re thinking; two things in fact. One, didn’t you just see this picture a couple of days ago? Yes, you did. And two, if this is a post talking about a book then why not call it a book review instead of a life review? Hey, it’s me, so I have to do something a little bit different. After all, my buddy Marelisa just wrote on it as well, giving it a much different take than just a book review as well.

You know, one of the things about speed reading is that, when you’re doing it kind of for pleasure, you tend to stick with stuff that you’re specifically looking for and thus you’re normally happy with what you’re reading. If one is speed reading something they don’t like it won’t stick, and thus it becomes harder to speed read. I actually read half of 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss at Barnes & Noble many months ago and was really enthusiastic in what I’d read. The concept of finding ways to reduce one’s workload and stress load were very appealing to me. And I understood some of the concepts that could get me there. It was enough to get me to buy the book and read it more thoroughly.

Part of me is now wishing I hadn’t done that. The early concepts I got from the book are still valid, and yet I found myself not enjoying some other parts of the book as much, to the extent that at a certain point I started speed reading some of it again because I just wanted to get past extraneous stuff that I knew I didn’t care about.

First, let’s talk about what I liked in the book. I liked his concept of finding ways to free one’s time so they can do more of what they want to do, which in Ferriss’ case is travel. He set up many ways to get this done, from outsourcing some of the things he didn’t want to do to giving people working for him more power to make decisions for himself. What a life for someone with many interests.

I liked his talk about moving towards minimalism in many ways, including how he travels with luggage at less than 10 pounds; man, that would be sweet. I also enjoyed some of the “case studies” which he was able to include in this particular book because it’s updated and expanded with stories that weren’t available at the first printing, since obviously people hadn’t read his book yet.

And I liked him talking about not being available to everyone 24/7 and having some down time when you really need it. In relating some of this to my life, I rarely give out my cell number because I don’t want everyone being able to always reach me. If my phone rings in the car, I know it’s one of only 5 or 6 people. If I’m out of town, I might give it to a client I’m working with at the time, but I also know that once the assignment is over that’s one less person who’ll ever use that number again.

Now let’s talk about what I didn’t like about the book. I didn’t like that it concentrated so much on travel. Probably 20% of the book covers that topic, and that’s not the book I wanted to read. I thought that some of what I read was irresponsible. For instance, at one point he talks about how one of his plants ended up being closed while he was gone, yet he had fun doing this or that by being unable to be contacted. In other words, his fun was more important than all the jobs that were lost because he decided not to concentrate on an aspect of his business; that’s shameful and affected the lives of a lot of other people.

Tim Ferriss

I wasn’t crazy about the way he and some of his case study people outsourced certain things such that someone else took care of aspects of their personal lives and pulled them away from personal contact. For instance, he tells the story of giving an assignment to college students to reach 3 celebrities and get them to answer 3 questions within 24 hours. However, as a celebrity himself, he’d have never been available to be reached for any student that decided to reach out to him. Being in business and telling people to only check their email once a week for about an hour or their phones for the same amount of time kind of irks me. True, both can kill time, but if you’re in business you might just have to suck up some of that. Then again, he does have other people handling most of this stuff for him; how many of us could do that sort of thing as readily?

There’s also the advocating outsourcing everything at the cheapest price possible, which leads to him and others sending a lot of their business out of the country and really being kind of smug about it. Yeah, I’ll admit that one of the things that irks me a little bit is not using workers in one’s own country if the only difference in quality is price. That might be a minor sticking point, but it’s one I have so I thought I’d mention it.

To be fair on that last point, though, the concept of finding things one can outsource to someone else isn’t a bad one, even if it costs you a little bit of money. Something I absolutely hate is making cold calls of any form; I find reasons not to do it, preferring email or only wanting to talk to people from whom I know there’s already some kind of interest in what I have to talk to them about. Right now I’m contemplating hiring someone to handle a few hours of phone calls for me in one of my industries so I can work on something else. I already have an accountant that handles my bookkeeping and such, and I have a guy who cuts my grass, and let me just get one big contract and I’ll be outsourcing some other things that I not only don’t have time to do, but don’t want to do.

Where do I come down in the end? I think it’s a book many people still need to read because it does get one thinking about ways to make their lives simpler, even to possibly learn how to work it out with your employer so you can not only work from home, but potentially work while being mobile with the feeling that you’re actually sitting at home. True, I have some things I didn’t like, but overall this is a book that, if you’re looking to change your life in some fashion, you need to break down and read.

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Don’t Ask – Book Review

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jan 10, 2011

I figured that since I’m pimping stuff today I might as well finally get around to talking about our friend Beverly Mahone’s new book Don’t Ask, And I Won’t Have To Lie. It comes with another subtitle as well, ’50 is the new 30 and other tall tales’.

At just under 80 pages the book is a very easy and entertaining read. Bev talks about her own “lie” and how it almost cost her life because she wasn’t telling her physician the whole story on how she felt and if she’d been taking care of herself. That started her exploring this concept of lying and the intricacies about it.

The strangest things she talks about are the lies we tend to tell ourselves when we should know better. Things like ‘I don’t smoke much’ or ‘I know I exercise a lot’ when we don’t necessarily do those things. I like to say how good I am often enough when it comes to eating patterns, yet when I was taking time to write down everything I put in my mouth I realized that I do have a tendency here and there to snack a bit here and there, which adds up over the course of a day.

The last quarter of the book consists of a liar’s daily survey you might think to do on yourself, which of course I didn’t do because I don’t want to know. lol It also consists of responses to a survey she conducted that yield some interesting responses here and there, answering questions such as “Your girlfriend’s husband makes some inappropriate comments to you while drinking at a party you’re all attending.” What do you do? Nope, I’m not revealing the answers; it’s on you to buy the book and read it.

Oh yeah, two things for clarification. One, the book is slanted more towards women than men, but there’s enough for men to go around. And two, yours truly is quoted in the book on page 43, where I said: “I have no problem with lies of omission, as I don’t believe everyone needs to know everything.” Ah fame; you’re right on the cusp of my grasp!

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Beyond Blogging

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 21, 2009

Okay, this is definitely something different for me, but different times call for different actions.

I’m on the ground floor of helping to market a brand new product; a J-V (joint venture) if you will. The product is called Beyond Blogging, and it’s a book that has interviews with some of the top money making bloggers of our time.

Now, here’s the thing. The book isn’t available until December 28th. Going to the links now gives you a chance to download a sypnosis of the book, which is pretty good. How do I know? Y’all know me. I’ve said that, except for some of my CJ banner ads, I’m not endorsing anything I haven’t seen. And one of the authors, Mike Cliff Jones, has given me a copy of the book to review up front so I can tell y’all about it. And you know it’s going to be in my words. Sure, they’ve created their own copy, but it’s not my style to use someone else’s words instead of my own on my blog. Nope; ain’t gonna happen. So, here’s a legitimate review; gotta love it!

The book is actually a compilation put together by two authors. One I’ve already mentioned; the other is Nathan Hangen. And this is a book; more than 160 pages worth of very good stuff. They’ve talked to some impressive names if you know anything about big time bloggers.

For instance, we have Gary Vaynerchuk, someone our friend Sire just found out about and had written that post about him, so he’s a big deal.

You’ve got Chris Brogan, who many people know as not only a big A-list blogger but an expert on social media as well. Chris also has a couple of books out there that some of you have seen.

You’ve got David Risley, someone who just came to our attention through an infamous post, once again, on Sire’s site (man, two mentions in my sales letter; is this guy living the life of Riley or what?). I have to admit that after reading his story and his bonafides in the book that I have a lot more respect for his accomplishments.

Of all things, they even got John Chow to sit down with them and discuss how he made his money online. For those of you who scoff at this guy, trust me, you need to pick up a couple of tips from him and how he’s done it, because this is a guy who really didn’t need money from the internet to be considered successful, and he did it anyway.

And there are a lot of other people inBeyond Blogging, for a total of 15 profiles. They all have a bit about their background, they get to tell their stories of success and failure, and how they see blogging and making money will go in the future. I have to say it’s a very good read, and I’m proud to have had the opportunity to not only read it, but to be an affiliate for it. And y’all get to let me see just what kind of marketer I can be, because I’m going to be following their time schedules in marketing this book, which means this isn’t the last post you’ll see on the book.

So, here’s what I’d love you to do for me now. Click on either the Beyond Blogging book, the link in the book name above, or the banner ad below. Go to the website and download the free pdf so you can see more of what the book is about in someone else’s words. There’s might be flashier than mine, but hey, it’s me! Anyway, go there, check it out, then stay tuned as I work with them for the hopefully successful launch on December 28th. I’ll also be adding the book to my sidebar to remind you of it, because I’ll be marketing it long after the launch. I think this book is quality stuff, and I know most of you will also. Have I ever lead any of you down the wrong path? And who among us hasn’t talked about wanting to make more money by blogging?

By the way, notice one very interesting thing, something I actually tried to do but couldn’t do because the domain name was always taken. Every one of the folks above has their own website in their own name. Something to think about, especially where this book is concerned. That’s the only hint you’re getting from me!

CSS In 24 Hours

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Nov 3, 2008

Although some of my friends might not believe it, I’m not an uber computer geek by any means. I learn what I need to learn, then go about my business until it’s time to learn something else.

Back in 2003, when I needed to learn HTML pretty quickly, I used a program called PageTutor. The fact that I learned HTML in just about 3 hours is proof enough for me to recommend it to people even now if you need to learn it. However, when it came time to learn CSS (cascading stylesheets), I found PageTutor couldn’t quite get me there.

So, I went to my favorite bookstore, Barnes and Noble, and went through all the books there on CSS. And the one I came home with was a champ. It’s called CSS In 24 Hours, and this was just the book I needed to help me get over the hump.

Not only was it quick and easy to use, but he gives you the different codes to use with each step, and you can go online and download templates and other information to help you see what’s going on. The chapters are broken into “hours”, hence the title, but you know I went through it faster than 24 hours. The best thing about a book is that you can go back and look at things over and over if you need to, and with this book, finding everything is simple and easy. Of course, I will make a confession, that being that I never make any websites based on CSS alone. One day I will, but so far, since I’ve noticed how websites with total CSS seem to not always have the same formatting from browser to browser, sometimes even within versions of the same browser, I’ve decided to stick with the

Anyway, I recommend CSS In 24 Hours for anyone who needs to learn CSS in a hurry, and without much hassle.

CSS In 24 Hours by Kynn Bartlett