Business Book Summaries

The economy isn't in a happy place these days, and it looks as if the recession isn't going away anytime soon. Rather than sinking in the doom and gloom, you can turn your personal finances around and generate extra income by creating passive income streams.

What is passive income and how can you create it?

There are two types of passive income: residual and leveraged. Both types become passive after some initial work, meaning once you've set up the income stream, it continues to bring you money without you having to spend all your time working for it.

Residual Income

Residual income is money made over a period of time, such as:

• Rent from property you own
• Commission from a client who renews an account on a yearly basis
• Selling a book or video to accompany a class you teach
• Creating a e-books or online products and selling it online via your blog
• Making photos available as a stock image for various companies
• Owning a business and hiring someone trustworthy to run it for you

These are all examples of income you set up, get running, and over time they do the heavy lifting for you. Many times, you can create passive income by delegating tasks to someone else to free up your own time for other things.

Leveraged Income

Leveraged income is when you get other people to work and create income for you. For example, you could:

• Sell an e-book online through affiliates
• Franchise your business out to other people
• Build a downline in a multi-level marketing (MLM) organization and receive commission from what people below you sell

There are different ways to create leveraged income streams. The great thing is it only takes some initial effort for all of these, and then it becomes passive.

Here are some home-based passive income streams you may want to consider:

1. eBay. Find a wholesaler you can work with and set up your own eBay store. You can buy wholesale and let the distribution company do the physical product handling and shipping. On eBay, there's a market for nearly every product you can imagine.

2. Google Adsense. With Google Adsense, you can set up ads on your website and automatically generate income from people who click on the links in the ads.

3. Affiliate programs. Sign up for affiliate programs for products other people create. You advertise the products on your website and through email campaigns. Most of these programs pay you commissions based on your sales.

4. CafePress. CafePress.com is a website that sets you up an online shop of your own, selling personalized mouse pads, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other items with graphics you create. The graphics can be a picture, cute saying, or whatever you desire. It costs you nothing to get started.

5. Artwork. If you're a photographer, you can submit your photos to websites that sell images as stock pictures for various publications. You'll receive royalties every time your picture is sold.

6. Blogging. If you're passionate about something, blog about it. There are always people out there who share your passion or want to learn about something new. Put some ads on the site related to your blog and you can generate a nice passive income.

Generating passive income is all about "setting it and forgetting it." Once you get the income stream set up and automated, it can involve very little further work. You may not get rich through your passive income streams, but setting these up can make a real difference in your finances.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

Conflict happens when two opposing parties have different views, interests, or goals, which seem incompatible with one another. Conflict usually occurs at the height of a stressful situation when everything seems to bubble over.

Typically, it's not just related to the one event that triggered the outward showing of the conflict in the first place. For many of us, we bottle our emotions and keep them inside until we fill up with the little bits and pieces that really cause the quarrel.

Resolution can only occur when we're able to work together to figure out what triggered the conflict in the first place. In order for the problem to be solved, we must agree on the root of the problem.

There are dozens of conflict resolution strategies, but unfortunately, no one strategy will work for every situation. The best thing to do is to pick a few and try them out to see how it works in your particular situation.

Some of these strategies may seem silly at first, but that's okay. The funny feelings will pass and you'll be impressed at how effective they are in resolving conflicts.

To realize the best effect from conflict resolution strategies, everyone should first agree to observe a few ground rules:

• Avoid Universal Statements. Every, all, never and always are big no-no's in conflict resolution. Can you honestly say something always happens? No! So don't say it.

• No Personal Attacks. Try using "I" statements instead of "you" statements. Make sure you let the person know you feel. For instance, "When you throw your clothes on the floor, it makes me feel like I'm the maid cleaning up after you."

• Listen. When one person speaks, the other person should listen with an open heart. Rather than plan your rebuttal while the other person is talking, be sure to actually listen to what they're saying and understand their feelings.

• Get a Moderator if Needed. If you're still having issues, ask a friend or someone close to both of you to come over and moderate so they can keep you on track. Nothing hinders conflict resolution more than repeatedly getting sidetracked with petty details.

With the ground rules in place, let's consider conflict resolution strategies:

1. Role-playing. Create a mock setting, such as a flower shop or a restaurant. The first person is the one taking the order and listening while the customer explains the situation. The person taking the order must listen and then repeat back the order to make sure they understand.

• After the two parties have gone through the entire exercise, the roles are reversed. There are no comebacks to the previous arguments stated; only another order is placed and taken.

1. Knee to knee. I wouldn't recommend this with a coworker in an office setting since it's a bit of a personal space issue, but sitting knee to knee is a great strategy for conflict resolution.

• Scoot two chairs close together, have a seat and start talking about the issue. Knee to knee forces you to pay attention to each other, which is one of the biggest rules in resolution.

• Remember, the most recent events may or may not be the actual issue, so dig a little deeper.

1. Cool down. Sometimes just stepping out of the situation allows both people to cool down. One of the biggest problems with conflicts is many times, the person feels like they are being attacked, instead of focusing on the problem or situation.

• By taking time to cool down, both parties can come back together and attack the situation instead of each other.

• Designate an appropriate length of time to cool down. Don't just walk away for an undetermined amount of time. Set a timer for 20 minutes, go do something else, then come back and start resolving the issue at hand. Remember to listen and get a moderator if needed.

These three techniques are great strategies for conflict resolution. If one technique doesn't work, simply try something else. Once you've worked through a few issues, you'll begin to develop your likes and dislikes for certain strategies and find out which ones suit your style.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement, conflict resolution

Why did Ray Kroc's plan for McDonald's thrive when all the other burger joints failed? How can we apply his lessons to Krispy Kreme? How did Walt Disney's most dismal day as a young cartoonist radically change his career direction? When Estée Lauder was a child in Queens, New York, the average American spent $8 a year on toiletries. How did she spot an opportunity in high-priced cosmetics? Why did she pound on the doors of Saks? How did Thomas Watson, Jr., decide to roll the dice and put all of IBM's chips on computing, when his father thought it could be a losing idea?

Todd Buchholz's excellent book uncovers the secrets behind the success of the great CEOs through their lives and personal stories. Readers are taught about these CEOs' biggest challenges and failures, and how they successfully rode the waves of demographic and technological change.

This book blends the lives and the business challenges of the featured CEOs in order to expose their strengths and the circumstances they had to overcome. It features CEOs who relied on more dependable, more human drives. Drives that took them on fascinating rides. Extraordinarily fresh and deeply thoughtful, "Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office" is a truly enjoyable and fun—yet serious and realistic—look at what we still have to learn and absorb from these former CEOs.

Here is an excerpt from the book regarding Thomas Watson, Senior and Junior, and what they did for IBM – plus some lasting lessons from their experience, as determined by Buchholz.

Let us start with a Freudian word-association test. Say “IBM.” You’ll think of “White shirts, dark suits, square jaws, straitlaced, and sober.” Indeed, Thomas J. Watson Sr. and his son Thomas Jr. molded the most straitlaced, most competitive sales force in history. The two Watsons built IBM into a powerhouse but nearly beat each other to a pulp in the process. Tom Jr. called their arguments “savage, primal, and unstoppable.” He said, “It amazes me that two people could torture each other to the degree Dad and I did and not call it quits.” And yet when his dad died and Tom Jr. had to face the office alone, he said that he was the most frightened man in America. To the outside world, IBM was the very face of efficiency, grace, and rectitude. But behind the slick, perfectly straight horizontal lines of the big blue IBM logo were towering waves of passion, hatred, and warfare. Tom Sr. acted like an egomaniacal narcissist; his son, a dyslexic depressive. The Watsons revolutionized more than data. They taught us how to build sales forces, how to hang on to wavering customers, and, most dramatically, how to “bet the company” on one big gamble. The two Watsons could be visionaries, teetotalers, hustlers, and bruisers. All at once. All in one family. Here are some lasting lessons from IBM that apply today : - Listen to the customer. Tommy realized that IBM should not be a company devoted to cardboard, but a company devoted to information and data processing. If the forces of technology were burying cardboard, so be it. He threw the throttle into overdrive and raced IBM to the front lines, hiring twenty thousand new employees and tripling the number of R&D employees to 9 percent of the workforce. - Hook them while they’re young. Since the 1980s, Apple Computer has done a wonderful job hooking young people, first with the Macintosh and more recently with the iPod. IBM has not. However, years before Apple’s success, Tommy led IBM into classrooms. His motive was twofold. First, IBM needed to hire more computer scientists. If he could encourage the study of computers, IBM would have a bigger list of recruits. Second, IBM would always need more customers for its computers. To this day, when you anxiously pick up a number 2 pencil, you can blame IBM for your jitters. - Make yourself obsolete. It is better to make yourself obsolete than to wait for your competitors to do it for you. Tommy Watson eclipsed his father and wrote his way into this book because he knew when to take a gamble. And, of course, he won. By the mid 1960s, IBM had grabbed an overwhelming market share for computers in the US and even enjoyed a 75 percent share in West Germany, Italy, and France.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement, marketing, sales