D’Arcy’s Book Club – The Dream

The Dream Gurbaksh “G” Chahal Amazon.ca Amazon.com Chapters was “down for maintenance”, so no link for them!

If Gurbaksh (his friends call him “G”, and since he’d *obviously* want to be my friend after meeting me, I’ll refer to him that way from here on) seems familiar to you, it may be due to his recent stint on FOX’s Secret Millionaire show. I bring this up for one very important reason: DON’T BASE YOUR VIEW OF THE BOOK ON THAT SHOW!

I re-watched the episode on YouTube tonight and to be honest he comes off like a douche at first, with his letter G on everything and his overuse of “bam”. Keep in mind that its a FOX show, and while mind-numbingly entertaining, their style of production is always on the extreme dramatic-effect side of the spectrum.

But reading his book is nothing like what you see on the show. Here we have a story of hope, desire, drive, and determination. This book chronicles his life from his parents coming to America from India through his adolescence and into his professional career…which, btw, started at 16, and the guy is only turning 28 this year.

During the height of the dot-com craze, G began a web advertising company in his bedroom…at 16. He grew the company and eventually it got bought, he made $40 million (on paper) on the deal. That eventually led him to start Blue Lithium, another web ad company, which he sold to Yahoo! for $300 million dollars.

The book is his story, but not just recounting the happenings. G talks about the lessons he learned in just over a decade of entrepreneurship. It’s also an interesting look at the unique struggles minorities must face in the business world and a warning of the realities of doing business.

Dealing with family issues and concerns, being hounded by a former employer who launched lawsuits against him, having to overcome other’s concerns about his age, and just the work involved in starting and selling two successful companies make this book an interesting and worthwhile read for anyone who is thinking about getting into business, currently in a business venture, or who is feeling stuck in their current job. G’s story is one of empowerment and freedom: empowerment by having an amazing attitude and freedom that comes from hard work and taking ownership of your own life.

I’m giving this book a 4.5 out of 5 for a rating because of its conversational narrative and the amount of valuable business wisdom it contains. Why not 5/5? Well…ok, there is *one* part of the book that you’ll roll your eyes at and think “this guy is kind of a douche”. It’s when he’s talking about, after he left the company that bought his first company, how he bought one car after the other: a Lamborghini, then a Ferrari, then something else, eventually settling on a Bentley…we get it G: you’ve owned a lot of cars. ;)

Rating: 4.5/5

D’Arcy’s Book Club – When All You Have Is Hope

 

Welcome to another instalment of my book review blog posts! It’s only the middle of January and I’ve already blazed through the second book of 2010! Before we get to the review, I wanted to mention that if anyone has recommendations for books I should flip through, please send them my way! Alright, on to the meat of this post…

 

When All You Have is Hope Frank O’Dea (For more information about Frank, check out this ‘About’ page on his website which includes a great interview on CBC’s The Hour) Links To Purchase At: Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Amazon.com

The caption on the cover of the book reads:

That was me, the guy begging money for a bottle of wine and a fifty-cent bed in a flophouse. I was thirty years away from being named an Officer of the Order of Canada, twenty years away from marriage and fatherhood, ten years away from earning my first million dollars, and a week away from deciding that I must change or die.

In italicized print under the title and author’s name is:

Co-founder of Second Cup

Unfortunately, as much as the author (Frank O’Dea) and publisher tried to make clear what this book was about, I’m sure many readers (including myself) focussed on that small bit of text at the bottom. In a world where corporate-world authors like Trump focus on their businesses successes, maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to assume this book would be the same: Frank picked himself up, co-founded a successful coffee chain, and the book would be almost entirely based on his experiences in setting up and running Second Cup.

Well let me state emphatically dear reader that this is *not* what this book is about. In fact his time with Second Cup takes only 32 pages of the 222 page book. I’ll admit that, having bought this book in the business section, I was a little bewildered at the course the narrative took. In fact after finishing it and digesting what I had read, I felt it was a disservice to Frank to have his Second Cup involvement feature so prominently on the cover, and why this was even in the business section to begin with.

This book is not the story of a businessman, it’s the story of a man who ran businesses among other aspects of his life. Those looking for insight into how to run a successful business from the ground up would do better to look elsewhere, that’s not what’s trying to be communicated.

The book spans three distinct time periods in Frank’s life. Pages 1 – 74 detail his childhood, his adolescence and entering adulthood. He walks us through life changing events involving his family, sexual abuse, and alcoholism that eventually brought him to live on the streets.

Pages 75 – 168 cover the business years, and not just at Second Cup. Frank was involved with many different businesses and political endeavours while dealing with leaving the company he co-founded, having his parents pass away, finding and holding on to love, and dealing with feelings and issues anchored in his past but revived in new experiences.

Pages 169 – 222 move into a new phase of Frank’s life: charity work, global causes, realizing the importance of being involved and giving back. In a speech he gave to the graduating class of Royal Roads University, he said “It’s not the money you make that matters most. It’s the difference you make.”; a fitting quote that speaks to the entirety of the book.

There were times reading the book that I was frustrated. During the course of his life Frank was sexually abused four times, yet I seemed to have more of an emotional response reading about them then was communicated through the book. Perhaps that’s due to what Frank was feeling as he lived through an alcohol-induced fog for so much of his life though, numbed to the severity of what was happening to him. It’s interesting to note that the more emotionally charged areas of the book seem to come after he became sober and dealing with his business partners and family.

Not all books we read to gather experience need to be topical, focussed on experiences in business or finance, telling stories from the boardroom and the sales floor. Business is a means for us to live, its a facet of our lives but it should never become our lives. Business is a means to an end, a payoff whether it be monetary or whether that business is in charity work for the betterment of street kids. Frank O’Dea’s story speaks to that, but it also speaks to something else. He entitled the book “When all you have is hope”, but I think a more apt title is “When you realize you have power.” Frank turned his life around on his own. He even admits that the moment he realized that he had to get off the street it wasn’t any big, emotional, spiritual experience. It was matter of fact. It was practical. And then, he acted on that.

That’s what I loved about this book. It’s not a rags to riches story. It’s a rags to riches to realization to giving back & finding happiness story. And really, its one that any of us could claim as our own if we wanted to.

As a Biography: 4/5

As a Business Book: 1.5/5

D’Arcy’s Book Club and 1st 2010 Review: The No Asshole Rule

That’s right, Oprah isn’t the only hottie to have their own book club! One thing that I didn’t get a chance to do as much of last year was read. I have a pile of books sitting on my night table, but with our daughter being born in July I haven’t had a chance to plow through them. Now that life has settled into a schedule, I want to get back into these tomes of business and technology wisdom. What better way to help ensure I do that then by creating a semi-fictitious book club! I say semi-fictitious because, while you probably won’t see my book club logo on any book jackets at your local store, I am hoping that people will comment and share their thoughts on the books I post about. I’m aiming for at least 2 books a month (which is actually pretty aggressive). Let me know if there’s any books you recommend as well. Ok, so on to our first review:

The No Asshole Rule Robert I. Sutton PHD Links To Purchase At: Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Amazon.com

We all can look back on our careers and point to at least one person (and probably more) that we would label an asshole. If the language is a little too blue for you, feel free to substitute jerk. Dr. Sutton, in The No Asshole Rule (TNAR), explains what a workplace asshole is and what they do, describes the damage (both interpersonally but also financially and reputation wise for an organization), strategies to implement your own NAR, helps the reader realize if they in fact are an asshole, and tips for those having to survive working with assholes.

The book itself is an easy read; it clocks in at under 200 pages. For myself I found it more of a review. Maybe that’s telling that I’ve worked with assholes in the past or that I have built up my own defence system against asshole behaviour. Still, Sutton presents a great amount of knowledge and insight gleamed from years as a professor and pulling in commentary and statistics from business people and researchers.

Assholes exist, and they suck the life out of people wherever they go. They’re energy vampires, preying on those they see as vulnerable and beneath them. The book encourages readers to try and implement a No Asshole Rule in their organizations. The rationale is that if you get rid of the negative drains on your employee’s energy and remove aspects of fear and negativity in the workplace, productivity and overall health of the organization will increase.

This sounds like a no-brainer, common sense type of thing. The problem is that, while many of us may recognize assholeic behaviour, we rarely act to squash the behaviour or we work in an atmosphere that encourages it. For those that are experiencing this for the first time, or are trying to cope in an environment plagued with assholes, this book offers some great insight and guidance. For managers and leaders, its an important read that challenges us to evaluate what we really value: money and production or treating people with dignity and respect.

But there were parts of the book that I found really frustrating. Chapter 5 is called “Tips for Surviving Nasty People and Workplaces”. This chapter is basically telling people who are stuck working in toxic situations how to weather the storms and come out with some semblance of mental health and emotional stability. I was uneasy reading this as it’s somewhat akin to telling a drug addict: Look, heroin is really bad for you…but if you’re going to shoot up, here’s some clean needles. Ideally everybody should have enough self respect to not put up with asshole behaviour. Of course, ideally we wouldn’t have assholes to begin with. I guess I have my own standards of who I will/won’t work for and the environments that I require to maintain employment.

The hardcover of the book is available now, and it appears that a paperback is going to be available in March or May of this year. If you’ve read the book please leave a comment and tell us what your take of it is.

D’Arcy’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5