Buddy's #2 Work the System

I have to say that Work the System was my most anticipated book of recent memory. In fact, right up until the end of the book I was anticipating something better to come. I felt like Edmund Pevensie from the Chronicles of Narnia lusting after Turkish Delight but never finding the satisfaction I was looking for.

I am craving order in my life and making some changes. The idea of creating systems to simplify my life was intriguing but not as all encompassing or immediately applicable as I had hoped.

I will give props to the author on two fronts: First quitting caffeine cold turkey was definitely the way to go. Secondly, he does a great job of bringing to life the ideas presented in Michael Gerber's "The E Myth Revisited"

The book is a little verbose and he repeated things like being a single Dad while going through all of this at least 5 or 6 times. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it was 100 pages instead of 228. The other major drawback to me is that he doesn't really offer practical help on creating systems. For $200 he offers software that will help you create systems in your life. I think that is what I was looking for right up to the end but not ready to plunk down $200 for some templates.

That being said I definitely think it was worth the read and I am going to give it

**** stars out of five.

From January 12 to the 15th at 3pm PST you can get a PDF copy of the book for free by sending an email to pdf@workthesystem.com.

Buddy's #1 Google Speaks

I really felt like I should read something great for my first book of 2010.  Unfortunately I had a head ache one day after work (14 days so far without caffeine) so I picked this up and pretty much read it straight through.  A good novel would probably have been a better choice.  It's mildly interesting but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

To me the most interesting thing was that they were trying to sell Google for a million dollars in 1999.  At the same time that Yahoo! said no to Google for a million dollars they purchased egroups.com for 243 million.  Also they originally tried to name it googol, the mathematical term for a 1 followed by a 100 zeros but someone misspelled the name and it turns out that googol was not available anyway.

For the business minded people out there the author Janet Lowe says, "The person who finds an effective way to capitalize on YouTube will have discovered a great treasure."

** stars out of 5.