Book review: Mastering the Inner World of Business

Chenkai Zhu

March 19, 2011

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 Contents

Foreword by Marshall Goldsmith

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Being an Entrepreneur

1. Take out the trash

2. Go ahead- Be different

3. Be do have

4. Put your ego to sleep

5. To move mountains you must first move people

6. Speak only half as much as you listen

7. Get to know you top advisor- you

8. Be accountable

9. Build the business you’ve imagined

10. Remember- The coolest wealth is your health

11. Walk beween the raindrops, but stomp in the puddles

12. Give yourself a standing O

13. Growing strong

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Foreword

In foreword part, Marshall Goldsmith said that we are living in a new era- one of

rapid change, uncertainty, and global competition. This book is a guide that to help

people cope with their inner mind. This book is filled with great stories of successful

entrepreneurs, also combined some useful practices for readers to try.

Acknowledgments

In this part, author noticed some people involved in the birth of this book, author

thanks for their helping and engaging.

Introduction: Being an Entrepreneur

The inner world of an entrepreneur is diversity. The major topic of this book is

focus on the entrepreneur’s mind. Guide us to be a successful entrepreneur. The book

helps the reader with distinctive challenges that entrepreneurs face:

1. Deal with our fears, as an entrepreneur; we have to face our fears more often

than the average employee.

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 2. Remain innovative, which is very important.

3. Cope with loneliness; an entrepreneur is always a silent warrior. We need to

learn how to deal with it.

4. Confront overwhelming busy-ness, an entrepreneur faces stress from outside and

inside.

5. Discover the meaning of success: sometimes profits don’t mean success. We

need to find out what’s the real success for us.

6. Climb up from despair, how to wake up after a big lose maybe the biggest part of

business.

7. And last but not least, know yourself.

Chapter 1 Take out the trash

Katherine’s story

Katherine is a successful businesswoman, Fred was her perfect partner, but he was

died. Katherine doesn’t believe she can run a business herself. Without Fred, facing

mind boggling dilemmas every day leave her conflicted, exhausted, drained, and

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depleted of alternatives. She selected new partner for her business. But the new partners

also bring more trash to her. “Trash” is the pile up of unwanted, not useful connections

to past experiences. It may stop someone from becoming unbelievably successful in

his/her career. Katherine’s trash is that she doesn’t believe in herself, a lot of people

have too much ego, but there still some people lack of confidence. Katherine thought

past successes are all belong to Fred, she didn’t evaluate herself in a reasonable level.

After the story, author provided 4 practices for readers to use:

Practice 1: Use the 5,000 year old business tool- meditation. Meditation involves

getting quiet, clam down the inner noise, getting inner peace.

Practice 2: Let go, bring yourself into the present moment, you’ll release

frustration and old beliefs and clear your mind to allow for new and better solutions.

Practice 3: Rid yourself of your response to blame. The beauty of a making a

mistake is that we can learn and grow from it.

Practice 4: Watch your should-haves, could-haves, and would-haves. Decide what

should do after knowing these concepts.

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Chapter 2 Go ahead – Be different!

Andrew’s story

After 20 years of working his way up the corporate ladder in a food

manufacturing company, Andrew felt restless with the daily life, so he turned to become

a self-employed, but he got a failure result. He didn’t like who he was, he hid behind a

mask and couldn’t show his true self to the world, he try to learn everything from Bill

Gates, play a role to manage the company, and obviously it doesn’t work. Andrew’s

problem is he didn’t manage the business with authenticity, authentic leadership is the

real power of the entrepreneur, and only it can lasts long.

Author gave 4 practices to readers; readers can use these ways to release their own

inner leadership.

Practice 1: Stripped naked, be true to yourself, don’t tell lies to yourself,

entrepreneur should first authentic to him/her.

Practice 2: Becoming you, after known the truth of the inner mind, entrepreneur

should give up the mask and show up a real self.

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 Practice 3: Know your purpose; think about why people would run a business,

entrepreneur should not do business just for other’s admired.

Practice 4: Leading from the heart, we should know that passion is the resource of

business.

Chapter 3 Be do have

In this chapter, author gave us two concepts, one is “DO HAVE BE”, another one

is “BE DO HAVE”. Kiera’s story explained the differences of the two concepts. Kiera

is a college students with too much work to do, she felt can’t relax herself. Actually she

did much more works than she should do. Because she is a follower of “DO HAVE

BE”-- “If I do what is needed to reach my goals, then I’ll have what I want, and then I’ll

be it.” But she even didn’t know who she wants to be. Author recommended the “Be do

have” concept, people need to know the goal first. Than do some works for the unique

goal.

To strength the concept, author introduced 4 practices for readers:

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 Practice 1: Clarify your goal. This is a simple step but is the base of the future

work.

Practice 2: Fake it till you make it. Always imagine the day that you reach your

goal, that would helps you defend all the upsets during the way.

Practice 3: Shift the paradigm, shift the top goal to a lot of simple goals for

everyday, it makes the goal looks easier.

Practice 4: Enjoy the ride, maybe the best thing is not reaching the goal, the

journey should be the best gift for you.

Chapter 4 Put your ego to sleep

Dipak’s story

Dipak is a owner of a successful web development company, his ego is a big

matter for his business, his ego helped him became a successful businessman, but also

damaged the career in a short time. Ego is the false sense of self, we should balance it in

a healthy level, and the balancing element should be the humility. If you come from an

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over inflated ego, when you lose, you feel less than or worthless. We should

acknowledge and include others in our success.

There are 5 practices for readers to balancing their ego.

Pracitce 1: When you’re fighting the good fight, stop, we should stop unlimited

fight, especially for feeding our ego.

Practice 2: If they don’t love you, if doesn’t matter, someone spent too much time

on get other’s attractions. We don’t need to be the “Choosen One” every minute.

Practice 3: See things with new eyes, always change old view for others, people

should not stay one place all the time, and we should keep track of them.

Practice 4: Say goodbye to your old friend, old friends always notice you your

past glory. That really makes you feel unstoppable all the time.

Practice 5: Differentiate heart-felt from mind-felt. Listen to your inner voice, it

always tells you the truth.

Chapter 5 To move mountains you must first move people

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 This chapter is about communication, business is a art of how to communicate

with others, effective communication brings success, we should look inside the other’s

words, and give the right feedback is important. There are four types of communication:

the includer, the helper, the thinker, and the driver, people should know what type I am,

and be an authentic communicater.

Author provided a 5-step practice for readers to use:

1. To get your message across,

2. Seek to understand before being understood

3. Make attitude your figure of speech

4. Remember: If you win, you really lose

5. You must trust before you can be trusted.

A short summary for this chapter is communication impacts alignment and

success, is also a key to a company’s growth. Building a win-win atmosphere is a good

basement for a successful communication.

Chapter 6 Speak only half as much as you listen

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 Mark’s story

Mark was frustrated with his boss’ lack of consideration for others. Mark always

try to analyze the meaning in boss’ words, it is really do a bad in their relationship.

Actually, listening includes three senses: hearing, seeing, and intuition. When we are

listening other’s words, we should be present. Especially listen for what isn’t being said.

And limit our distractions.

Five practices provided by author about the “intense listening”:

Practice 1: Listen with your ears and your heart, follow the speaker’s heart, try to

feel the situation he/she motioned.

Practice 2: When you have the urge, bite your tongue

Practice 3: Listen for what isn’t being said, sometimes speakers unable to speak

out some points, maybe he/she will give out the ideas by other ways, we should track

them.

Practice 4: Fight distractions, it is not just showing respect to speaker, but also

make sure we don’t wasting time.

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 Practice 5: Listen on-purpose, listening with questions maybe the best way to

makes a lecture a happy story.

Chapter 7 Get to know your top advisor- you

Elliot, he started the company 5 years ago, and grew to 2.5 million in annual

revenues. But he faced a failure with his company, but he learned a lot from the

experience. Failure is not something to be shameful of, but something to hold. It is our

biggest teacher. Human tendency is to push quickly through failure and pain, so failure

of any size is your ally, not your enemy, you should embrace it.

Author gave a 5-step practice to guiding us how to learn something from failure:

1. When you fall down, stay there awhile

2. Write it down

3. Find the higher meaning

4. When it is time, get back up

5. Celebrate the gift from failure

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 By this process, we could get a lot from a “happy” failure.

Chapter 8 Be accountable

Dropping out of college, David cut his teeth in business working for his father’s

friend, Alan. But after it, David found it is difficult to be accountable in business world.

But only when you are accountable, you own the outcome, whether it’s good or bad. So

we should do our promise, because we can’t hold others accountable, until we hold

ourselves accountable first. We need do our best, then test it to make sure, like the

Romans built arches.

This chapter combined 4 practices:

Practice 1: Keep your word, the most important to be accountable. If we could not

keep our promise, how we can expect others should keep their words?

Practice 2: Throw your cap over the wall. After given word, we have to follow

through on it.

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 Practice 3: Construct an Arch, and then stand under it.

Practice 4: Being Accountable

Chapter 9 Build the business you’ve imagined

Inecitably when you set a monumental goal, one that will make a big difference in

your life if attained. In a lot of cases, entrepreneur wanted to create a business, but the

result is almost the different item.

We should get crystal clear on our goal for our business, include the date we want

to achieve it by, we should write it down. Then visualize our goal, feel how it will be

when we achieve the goal. Create an action plan to rach our goal. We shouldn’t do it

alone, we need others helping us success.

The 5-step process below is recommended by author:

1. Set the goal, then strap yourself in

2. Believe it

3. Watch for signs

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 4. Find a mentor or coach

5. Come back to your intention

Chapter 10 Remember-The coolest wealth is your health

This is a short chapter that reminds us to care about our health; the health is the

basement of any success. We should search a balance of work, play, fitness. Pause in

the busy situation. Retrain our eating; find our unique way to release endorphins, the

happy hormones.

Author gave an entrepreneur fitness quiz and some following steps to keep

healthy:

1. Take the entrepreneurial fitness quiz

2. Begin to change our life after the quiz

3. Remember pause in busy

4. Retrain our eating

5. If nothing else we can do, just dance

6. Make fitness the key to our kingdom

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Chapter 11 Walk between the raindrops, but stomp in the puddles

In this chapter, author told readers to listen to our inner voice by a short story. Eve,

a petite woman who opened her own business, always keep listen to her inner voice, it

made her really success in the business world. Author told us our inner voice speaks

loudest when we are sleeping, and during the daytime, we should take time each day to

get quiet and listen to our inner voice.

Author guiding us by below ways:

1. Stop: stop what we are doing

Breathe: take some deep breaths

Relax: focus on our shoulders and neck, relax them

Now: means getting present-coming into the moment listen to inner voice

2. In the silence, listen closely

3. Trust ourselves first.

Chapter 12 Give yourself a standing O

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 In this chapter, author told us work is more than doing tasks and making money,

satisfying work comes from knowing our MO- modus opreandi. It means model to do

the tasks. We should appreciate ourselves often with a standing O. Put our ego to sleep

and don’t acknowledge ourselves in front of others.

Starbucks got it right with the MO. They sell coffee, and they sell some food, not

much food, and now always the right kind of food.

Author told us to find out our MO first, and separate appreciation from our ego,

bask in our own glory, then get back to work. This the practice contents in this chapter.

Chapter 13 Growing strong

Last chapter is growing strong. There is a JJ’s story, an entrepreneur who became

successful, sold his company, and made a decision that would impact the rest of his life.

The exit is an important part of the business, we should think about it during the entire

business period. We should find and cut our pictures that represent what we want to go,

what we want to do, who we want to be. Post these pictures or gather them into a box,

put them in daily view. We should have our own standards (values), and rely on them.

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Use the standards to get what our most desire and help us with decisions that involve

integrity.

Author recommended an easy 5-step practice for readers to use:

1. Vision board

2. Know your rights

3. Indentify standards you live by

4. Live your standards

5. Go back home in times of questions

Personal comments

When first pick up the book, I guess it should be a original business book, but
after went through it, I found I made a mistake, this book is easy to read, combine the
truth of the business world to some real story. Made me feel familiar with the situation
that author mentioned. This book is also an excellent “tool book” for entrepreneur, we
are in a new era, which keep changing all the time. How to keep our inner mind
peaceful is so important for us. This book taught me a lot of useful ways to release
pressure, listen to my inner voice, and keep balance the ego and so on. I think if an
entrepreneur faces some problems that stopped their forward step; this book must be a
perfect guide.
Thanks for my professor, also the editor of this book, CJ Rhoads introducing this
interesting book to me. I think you and the author Nanci Raphael really tought me a lot.
 

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