Koka Sexton dot Com » Book Reviews

SOCOM Sales Redesign

Koka Sexton — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:02:41 +0000

Tweaking my websites and blogs is actually really fun for me. I love finding a new theme and getting into the code to make it my own. Since my online sales tips blog hasn’t had a real refresh since February 08, I spent some time making it look a bit more clean. I used the same theme as HyperLocal Edge since it seems to be my new favorite.

SOCOM Sales started off as a way for me to blog about my journey as a sales person and has morphed into a blog that covers a bunch of different topics. I was getting such a great responce to the site through comments and emails that I even wrote a Channel Sales Playbook to explain how to run a channel sales team. The e-book is free and there are plans to put together a more detailed and expansive e-book covering channel sales in a very simple format.

SOCOM Sales was my first professional applicationof using social media. Besides having a blog with over 300 posts on sales tips and selling skills, I manage a Twitter profile called Sales tools that has grown to a following over 1000.

Most of that growth has been in the past month. I was happy with the followers before but I figured since I am currently out of work I would spend more time building my sales tools network and using social media to fill my time looking for a new place to work. Getting to know more of my sales tools network has been fun and I have met some very professional sales people through Twitter I never would have known before.

I put together a Facebook page for the site as well. Really I just wanted another Facebook page to test my skills on. Since this is in a different niche that the HyperLocal marketing site, there will be a seperate set of tabs and information that will be broadcast on the SOCOM Sales Facebook page. I need to do some more customization to the fan page but I am gad that I have gotten a few fans already even though a few of them are collegues of mine from work.

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Strength Finder 2.0

Koka Sexton — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:32:13 +0000

I love to take tests. I am not always happy with the results but I never mind taking a test just to see how well I can do in any given subject. Recently I was told about a book called Strengths Finder 2.0 which allows the owner of the book to go online with a special code to take a test to see where your personal strengths are.

by sam&onny

I ordered the book from Amazon and couldn’t wait to get into the book and see what it could say about ME.

The entire book is based around the results of the online test you need to take. Each chapter is an explination of one of the talent traits that identify people.

DO YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO WHAT YOU DO BEST EVERY DAY?

Chances are, you don’t. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.

To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, Strengths Finder, in the 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists and ignited a global conversation, while Strengths Finder helped millions to discover their top five talents.

In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you’ll use it as a reference for decades.

Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself — and the world around you — forever.

The test took about 20-30 minutes and IS timed. If you don’t answer the question in about 60 seconds, it moves on to the next question without asking. That kind of sucked since I missed a couple of the questions but in reality if I had to take that long to answer the question, the answer I would have given really would have been a ‘best guess’ and not exactly relevant.

Out of the 34 themes a person can fall into, the test identifies your top 5. I think that most of us actually can be identified by more than 5 and could possibly identify with all of them in some way but I guess that’s why they point out a persons top 5.

Here are my top 5 strengths.

Achiever
Maximizer
Relator
Focus
Self-Assurance

So what do all of these mean? You can order your own book and find out or you can see my personal strength break down here.

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Problogger Book Review

Koka Sexton — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:11:31 +0000

After all the excitement of ordering the Problogger Book then the fiasco of getting a damaged copy from Amazon, I finally got a replacement. I wont lie, I read the book before sending it back since I had 30 days to return it and the new copy was being shipped 2-day since Amazon is that great at Customer Service.

I’ll start with saying the book is what I should have expected. A begginers guide to blogging. Most of the information was a refresher for me like the chapter “Setting up your blog”. For the information they covered in the book about marketing, blog networks and how to find a niche, Chris and Darren did a great job of the 10,000 foot viewpoint.

I will say that this book is worth the money. I’m not a problogger and having a book as a reference for the fundamentals is great to have around. Even Dr.’s have reference books reminding them how to do their jobs.

The Problogger book is a quick read and between the book and the websites Chris and Darren run, there is more than enough information for any blogger to chew on.

Have you read the book? What are your thoughts?

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The 4-Hour Work Week

Koka Sexton — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:39:14 +0000

I just finished one of the best books of the year. The 4-Hour work Week is written by Timothy Ferriss and is an entertaining and educational look at how a person can live their dreams and make a ton of dough in the process.

Timothy goes through a four step process of liberation and automation that is designed to make your life effective and not just efficient. Explaining how technology that is supposed to make your life easier really can without the hassle. There were many parts of the book that I took to heart like the chapter on elimination (Step 2) that goes over the numerous tasks most people do on a daily basis that need to be removed. I never would have thought that checking email on a regular basis was a bad thing but understanding the enormous amount of time taken by responding to every message as it comes in instead of focusing on the most important tasks made a whole lot of sense.

If you are an employee or an employer and you have not taken the time to pick up this book and read the first chapter, you are doing yourself a major disservice. The 4-Hour work Week is a book anyone looking to add value to their lives should read.

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The 4 hour work week: Book review

Koka Sexton — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 03:26:34 +0000

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Lone Survivor – Book review

Koka Sexton — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:21:33 +0000

I got a new book this weekend and wanted to share. Lone Survivor is a story that is a testament to the true warrior spirit.

On a clear night in late June 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALs left their base in northern Afghanistan for the mountainous Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less then twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs remained alive. This is the story of fire team leader Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of Operation Redwing, and the desperate battle in the mountains that led, ultimately, to the largest loss of life in Navy SEAL history. But it is also, more than anything, the story of his teammates, who fought ferociously beside him until he was the last one left-blasted unconscious by a rocket grenade, blown over a cliff, but still armed and still breathing. Over the next four days, badly injured and presumed dead, Luttrell fought off six al Qaeda assassins who were sent to finish him, then crawled for seven miles through the mountains before he was taken in by a Pashtun tribe, who risked everything to protect him from the encircling Taliban killers.A six-foot-five-inch Texan, Leading Petty Officer Luttrell takes us, blow-by-blow, through the brutal training of America’s warrior elite and the relentless rites of passage required by the Navy SEALs. He transports us to a monstrous battle fought in the desolate peaks of Afghanistan, where the beleaguered American team plummeted headlong a thousand feet down a mountain as they fought back through flying shale and rocks. In this rich , moving chronicle of courage, honor, and patriotism, Marcus Luttrell delivers one of the most powerful narratives ever written about modern warfare-and a tribute to his teammates, who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

If you’re looking for a true story that showcases both American heroism and Afghani humanity, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 (Little, Brown, $24.99), written with Patrick Robinson, may be the book for you. In June of 2005, Luttrell led a four-man team of Navy SEALs into the mountains of Afghanistan on a mission to kill a Taliban leader thought to be allied with Osama bin Laden. On foot, the team encountered two adult men and a teenage boy. A debate broke out as to whether the SEALs should summarily execute the trio to keep them from alerting the Taliban. Luttrell himself was called upon to make the decision. He was torn between considerations of morality and his survival instinct, and he points out that “any government that thinks war is somehow fair and subject to rules like a baseball game probably should not get into one. Because nothing’s fair in war, and occasionally the wrong people do get killed.”

Luttrell opted to spare the Afghanis’ lives. About an hour later, the Taliban launched an attack that claimed nearly a hundred of their own men but also the lives of all the SEALs except Luttrell, who was left wounded.

Not long after that, the Taliban shot down an American rescue helicopter, killing all 16 men on board. Luttrell is sure that the three Afghanis he let go turned around and betrayed the SEALs.

But if nothing is fair in war, neither is anything foreordained. Luttrell was found by other Afghanis, one of whom claimed to be his village’s doctor. Once again, Luttrell had to rely on his instincts. “There was something about him,” Luttrell writes. “By now I’d seen a whole lot of Taliban warriors, and he looked nothing like any of them. There was no arrogance, no hatred in his eyes.” Luttrell trusted the man and his colleagues, who took him back to their village, where the law of hospitality — “strictly nonnegotiable” — took hold. “They were committed to defend me against the Taliban,” Luttrell writes, “until there was no one left alive.”

The law held, and Luttrell survived, returned home and received the Navy Cross for combat heroism from President Bush.

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The Tipping Point – A book to read

Koka Sexton — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 17:01:25 +0000

The Tipping Point is written by Malcolm Gladwell a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine. More than a book, this is a way of looking at the world around you. From the seemingly meaningless tasks we perform on a daily basis we can change the world around us. I know. It sounds too good to be true, but as the book so eloquently illustrates over and over again, that is exactly how the world can be changed. Its not about one major event that shifts the events around us, its about the culmination of all the small things that when done consistently, they ‘tip’. The concept was first brought around with epidemic research and the spreading of disease, but the same study can be applied for just about anything as the writer explains.Gladwell goes into great detail on events around the world and how small changes in environment made big differences. While reading the book I was analyzing the world around me an seeing how all of the concepts he was discuss were actually true. By looking at some of the people around me and events in my own life, I saw how little tasks added up to the big picture. Artists do not become masters overnight, it takes a lot of work building the platform for their success and at some point ‘the tipping point’ they become known by the entire world for their works. This point is broken up between groups of people that set the fire and lay the path.

Mavens are the information leaders. They are trusted experts in a particular field, who seek to pass his or her knowledge on to others. Gizmodo is an example of a gadget maven. Gizmodo knows the items in the market and makes a point to learn everything they can about it and then shares that information with the public through his website.

Connectors are the people that bring groups of people together. These are usually excentric people that have connections across many different subcultures and easily are able to get people in touch with eachother based on whatever is needed. A great example given in the book was Paul Revere. Two men set off that night to warn the people that the British were about to invade, but Paul Revere was made famous because he was the ultimate connector and was able to spread the word to so many more people and get the militias ready.

Salesmen are the people that can get you to make the decision. Great salesmen are charismatic and extremely trusted by their contacts. They are able to make people that are on the fence about a topic, take action in their favor.

All of us know people that fit these characteristics. You are even one of these, but which one? After reading the book you will understand more about the people and events around you that will force you to see the world in a new way. I was skeptical at first myself, but even weeks after finishing the book, I see how Gladwell hit the nail on the head with the concepts he described.

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The Tipping Point – a book review

Koka Sexton — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:53:04 +0000

While on my trip I read a couple books. I got his book as a recomendation from a friend who really liked the ideas it contained.

Gladwell goes into great detail on events around the world and how small changes in environment made big differences. While reading the book I was analyzing the world around me an seeing how all of the concepts he was discuss were actually true. By looking at some of the people around me and events in my own life, I saw how little tasks added up to the big picture. Artists do not become masters overnight, it takes a lot of work building the platform for their success and at some point ‘the tipping point’ they become known by the entire world for their works. This point is broken up between groups of people that set the fire and lay the path.

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Book report: Leadership Lessons of the Navy Seals

Koka Sexton — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 04:07:49 +0000

Leadership Lessons of the Navy Seals is great for your collection of business books. Written by two brothers that led separate lives professionally, but parallel on many of the same levels. One was a commander of a Navy Seals team and the other was a successful business man.

Managers in a company may know how to read reports and analyze spreadsheets, but how good are that at leading their people to win. The brothers write about the lessons learned in war and how the discipline can be used in both professions. Mangers that lead by example are easily followed and respected. The results that a team of 4 highly trained men can produce on the battlefield can be duplicated in the office and this book does a great job of showing the correlation.

I have gone back to this book several times as a reference. Maybe because I can understand both sides of the spectrum. Either way, I see how this book has become successful to managers and business people. If you work in a business that needs some good ideas of how to ‘rally the troops’ to achieve amazing results, this book could do the trick.

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Good reading: My War by cbftw

Koka Sexton — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:24:34 +0000

This may be a book that I seal in plastic and make required reading from my future generations. Colby Buzzell was a member of a Striker Brigade in Iraq and entered the war about mid-tour for me and was in some of the most dangerous places in the country dealing with everything from pissed of Iraqis to Al-Qaeda.

I started reading his blog when I got home and was still trying to make sense of the war myself. I had a small blog overseas, but I was more known for my letters home that got media attention. Colby’s play by play writing from his daily experiences were captivating to readers and other soldiers alike.

I had written him an email expressing my appreciation for his accounts when I first got home and in small replies I found out that we had somewhat similar paths. After reading the book, I couldn’t help myself from thinking ‘No f’n way!’ about some of the details. Colby is the real deal. His account of the war as an enlisted soldier is outstanding from dealing with the fear, conflict and reality of the situations he was in.

If you are interested in hearing a real, non censored version of an infantryman’s personal experiences in war, this is the book to get. Until I get my book published.