All Employees Are Marketers

All Employees Are Marketers by Richard Parkes Cordock

From Amazon: All Employees are Marketers: Real-life, Proven, Employee-driven Strategies to Get More Customers... Get More Referrals... Get More Revenues... and Get More Profits! 

This book has been sitting on my kindle for quite some time now. I'm pretty sure that it was free when I got it. As of this writing, it is $1.93. I wouldn't pay that much for it. 

I shouldn't say that. It's not a bad book. It's pretty well written and the author probably put a fair amount of work into it. It also had hardly any unnecessary exclamation marks (a common problem I've noticed in free/cheap ebooks) which I appreciate. Had I paid two dollars for it, I wouldn't have felt ripped off, per sey. I would have felt exactly the same way I feel about it now - Underwhelmed. 

There is nothing about it that is particularly groundbreaking. It all seems like common sense. Every employee should be concerned with customer happiness, retention and acquisition, whether or not they their job title says they should be. The customer pays their salary, directly or indirectly. Not only that, if you have a good product and happy employees, they will tell people about it, bringing in more customers. 

I know, right? Earth shattering revelations.  You also get some good examples, including personal anecdotes, of companies that get this right. 

...and that's it. There's no talk of how exactly you're supposed make this happen. That's the problem. The reason you don't see this taking place at more companies isn't because owners and managers don't know it. It's 'an easier said than done' kind of thing. 

On a scale from Totally Awesome to Horrifically Awful I'd give All Employees Are Marketers a Meh. If you're looking for solutions, you won't find them here. 

The Zero Hour Work Week

I just finished reading The Zero Hour Work Week, a free ebook by Jonathan Mead. I downloaded it, I'm going to say about 6 months ago, and since then it's been on my hard drive gathering digital dust. I'd like to say that I've just been too busy to read it, but that would be a lie.

Basically, it's a book about how, if you're doing something you really love and are passionate about, and people will pay you for it, work isn't really work at all. Leading to a Zero hour work week. It's not a new concept, but it is an interesting one. The book is well written and filled with personal stories from people who are, right now, being "paid to exist", so to speak.

For me, the book was less about new information (there really weren't an new bits of advice or knowledge that I didn't already know), and more about inspiration. A kick in the pants to maybe start doing more to get myself out of my miserable, dead end job.

All in all, it's an interesting read and not long, complicated or time consuming. On a scale from Totally Awesome to Horrifically Awful, I'd give it a Totally Worthwhile. You can download it too, if you'd like by following this link.