I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s powerful book tribes and have come away with a number of takeaways and am going to go through five of those with you here.

This is not intended to be a book review but more a way to help you improve and make your business more profitable.

I definitely recommend you spend the measly $17 to pick up a copy of this book and read it because it’s well worth this small investment.  Your business as well as your profits will thank you.

You can highlight the key points which jump out at you like I have or jot down notes of those passages which resonate with you.

Going back and reviewing these periodically once a month or once every other month is the best way for the material to sink in, in a lasting fashion.

I say this because you’ve probably seen the statistics from various scientific studies which show the average reader only comprehends 40 to 50% of what is read and only retains 10% of that info after two weeks time.

This means on the 15th day after you read the book you only remember 5% of it. Those are bad odds and you want to take steps to put the odds back in your favor.

“Leaders are readers” after all.

Reading in and of itself is good for your brain and overall health.  But as a businessperson you want to get more out of it.

So here are my five takeaways:

1.  A tribe is a group of people which requires only two things: a shared interest, and a way to communicate.  The strongest tribes in the world are led by a fascinating leader who’s passionate about the belief/cause the tribe is all about and gathered for.

2.  Tribes used to be local but now because of the Internet they’re global.  Because of the Internet they are much easier to organize and can move more swiftly than at any time in history.

3.  A small, committed, highly dedicated and fanatical or evangelical tribe is 10 to 100 times more effective than a tribe 10 times its size which is merely lukewarm

4.  An individual author, artist, or even businessman needs only 1,000 true fans in the tribe to be fantastically successful and wealthy.

5.  Initiative/innovation is the key and most needed component in today’s world.  Unfortunately, people despise change and fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo.  The reason innovators are so valuable is because they’re so rare.

As a bonus, one other take away I got from the book was that leaders lead from the front and there will be many naysayers who tell you it’s impossible or that it can’t be done.

When you look at the most successful and wealthy people in our society people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Oprah Winfrey the common thread they each have is challenging the status quo and doing what everyone around them said was impossible.

The key is they had faith in what they were doing and ACTUALLY WENT OUT AND DID IT.

The negative Betties all around them just talked about how it was impossible all while they were doing nothing or continuing to be mediocre.

So which group do you want to be a part of?  Which of these two groups has and is living the life you want to live?

Let me know by leaving a quick comment.

Originally posted 2009-01-08 14:12:48. Republished by Old Post Promoter

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