"The future depends on what you do today”
_____________
SUMMARY
Narotam sekhsaria is the founder and the ex-CEO of Ambuja Cements Limited, formerly known as Gujarat Ambuja Cement Limited, a prominent Indian cement-producing company.
In his memoir, he shares about his early childhood and his first job as a cotton trader, and then venturing out into the business world.
The Ambuja Cement was incorporated in 1983 which was a pre- liberalized era with the supremacy of license raj in India.
Although starting a business has never been easy in India due to rigid bureaucracy & corruption at various levels, the license raj made things much worse for young entrepreneurs of that time.
From the amount of scale to the decision of where to set up business was in government hands, besides the heavy taxation and bureaucracy made things much tough & slow.
It was during this time that Narotam started his company, focused on quality & service, and made Abmuja a remarkable success all over the world.
_____________
Conclusion
More than anything I learn about the power of luck & destiny in this book.
I don't have much faith in such things but one cannot deny their existence.
The author became successful as he only mentioned that he was at the right place at the right time and with the right people.
The book is promising for those who want to comprehend how the Indian corporate world works and how destiny periodically can rewrite our whole life.
"When it hurts observe, life is trying to teach you something."
_____________
SUMMARY
The core purpose of the book was the debate between two mindsets - Fixed & growth.
I think by seeing the name you can get a hint of the difference between the two.
The growth mindset is founded on the notion that your basic qualities can be cultivated through endeavors, it believes everything can be learned with the right tutor & environment.
On other hand a fixed mindset people are reluctant to change, they believe in natural talent & luck and see efforts & failure as fruitless rather than as a corridor to mastery.
The entirety of the book is spent on examining these two mindsets fixed & growth and the advantages one can have in life if he/she follows the latter mindset.
The author gives examples of people in sports like Michael Jordan & Tiger woods as people who pursued the growth mindset.
Similarly, the field of arts & drawing which is always considered only for those who have inner talent is proved wrong by the author.
The same is with business & relationships having a growth mindset can solve many of your problems and can give many alternatives perspective to see things.
_____________
Conclusion.
The book was good, the author has beautifully differentiated between the two mindsets and showed how having a growth mindset helps in almost all areas of life.
The only thing I disliked is the monotonous things coming in every time.
The book doesn't show any clear way of building a growth mindset either. It only has multiple and sometimes way too many examples of people with growth mindsets, and the author promotes her workshops.
Examples are respected but a path to build that mindset would have been much better.
"The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are."
If you are curious about understanding how some ideas go viral while others don't pick off, Why some companies became successful while others don't, then this book will provide all your answers.
The book deals with the advertising & marketing perspective of the idea since what is seen is what sells.
The tipping point means the point at which the consumer will start buying your products and will willingly promote them to others. As per the theory of Krugman, the advertisement should be shown at least three times within its purchasing cycle.
The first time when customers see it, it asks "what is it"?
The second time when seeing it, it asks "So what"
The third time they take a decision "is this for me?
So now how do things become viral?
It is done with the help of three types of persons First connector, then Mevon & finally the salesman. You don't have to promote your product to everyone At the start, you just have to focus on these three types of people who are also early adopters.
1) Connects- are one who knows everyone and has a broad contacts
2) Mevon - The word means "The one who stores knowledge" They are specialists in their field or thought leaders.
3) Salesmen-
Mevons gives information about the products, Connectors tell them to everyone & Salesman finally sell them.
_____________
Conclusion
I loved the examples which the author has provided, How not just good but harmful ideas get virl which has to cause any trouble, the reason behind smoking & suicide has also been explained.
The book has perfectly explained how little steps can have huge effects on society. Starting from the sale of Hushpuppies, and Airwalking to the ups and downs in crimes in New York and suicides in Micronesia; all the examples and the supporting research evidence are wonderfully placed.
"IN LIFE EFFORTS MAY FAIL BUT YOU SHOULD NEVER FAIL TO MAKE AN EFFORT"
This has been one of the most anticipated reads of the year. I admire Michael S. Dell so much and wanted to read a book jotted down by him.
For so many years I am using Dell products and am quite delighted with them. I have learned of Michael Dell in my 12th class English book and got excited about his way of entrepreneurship. So long thing short the book is quite valuable for me.
_____________
Summary ✨
The book starts with the chapter "Public to Private". In it, he enunciates about his company's early accomplishments and the wonderful returns it has given to shareholders but by 2012 the PC maker was deteriorating and Dell was having a huge financial loss and they were compelled to take the company private again.
This was just a short intro and the real story started from the 2nd chapter.
He brought an Apple 2 model at the age of 13 years from his own pocket money. He dismantle the entire PC to see how it works the same he did with an IBM computer.
That is how he discovered various pros & cons of P.C and made his computer in his college dorm room and an exhilarating journey of DELL.Inc began from then.
That’s the story of Michael Dell, whose book takes us on a riveting journey from the dorm room at the University of Texas to the boardroom of one of the world’s largest tech companies.
_____________
Conclusion✨
If you ask me what I like in a memoir? It's not how rich or popular the person is or how short or long the book is. It is the simplicity of thoughts & honesty in words that captivates me a lot.
The book is very in-depth comprising all of his life journeys. So many vital business & leadership lessons are there that I can't even count.
A well-crafted autobiography detailing Michael Dell's first five decades, packed with insight, wit, and hard-earned wisdom.
"Think of rising higher. Let it be your only thought. Even if your object is not attained, the thought itself will have raised you."
_____________
Introduction
We all are aware of Tik Tok and its massive dominance across the entire globe.
Even companies like Facebook are now seeing tictok as a big threat to their brand.
Now how many of you are aware of Bytedance & Zhang Yiming, I think hardly of you may. Bytedance is the company that owns TikTok and Yiming is the founder of that company.
The book is about Yiming, who got rejected by all the top investors in China. He started a strange company named Bytedance in a small office and turned it into a billion-dollar company.
_____________
Summary
The book starts with the early days of Yiming. He wasn't a genius or top student but was just an average guy.
He was passionate about reading. He began reading in kindergarten. When he reached four he had started reading various novels and newspapers. Apart from reading he had a great interest in technology and software.
The concept of personalized recommendation was the core behind tik-tok success.
The book clearly shows how recommendation works. It was based on the content profile (what type of content it is)
user profile ( who the person is, your browser history, location, age, gender), and last environment process ( where are you - at home, work, or travel ) Based on the above three criteria the best-suited content was given to you.
_____________
Conclusion
The story of how Bytedance started is very long and I can't explain that in such a summary. But it's worth reading and you will learn a great lesson from it.
However, behind this glamorous story, there are plenty of dark tricks which the company has used to reach the top. Like bribing, distributors & sales to pre-install their app, showing vulgar images & videos to hook users, and most important playing with our psychology and making us hooked to their products. In
deed the name of the book is right in that case "Attention factory".
_____________
CONCLUSION
All the books are focused on different aspects of life and will teach wonderful lifelong lessons. Check out the above books by clicking on their title, and for more such blogs & book reviews please subscribe to my blog & follow my Instagram page