My Impressions: The New Elite

When I read this book, I felt like it was a sequel to The Millionaire Next Door. 

This book:

The New Elite: Inside the Minds of the Truly Wealthy

What I felt was the Prequel:

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy

There was a brief history lesson on the rich, wealth creation, and how that dynamic has shifted over the past few hundred years.  This helps provide a benchmark of how the wealthy are different than what we envision them as. from even just a few decades ago. 

Findings from this book seem a bit more complex and in depth than compared with The Millionaire Next Door.  However, the results seem to be similar – We all can be rich if we just work smart, work hard, and have a bit of luck.  Own it, and make it happen.  Probably a lot easier said than done though!

Good thing about this book is, it isn’t a how to get rich book.  What I liked is it sheds a different light on selling, marketing, and advertising.  The proposed newer system seems more in line with the newer consumer mindset.  To see this unfold over the past 10 years with eCommerce and social media taking off has been interesting. 

Instead of focusing on just the successes, a lot of depth looks into the psycho-dynamics that go into different types of rich people.  Instead of reading those generalized articles online on “The 10 habits Rich People Have” or always quoting Bill Gates / Warren Buffet…etc.  This book captures a wider group of people in their study and then extrapolates the different clusters of the rich-mindset. 

The two take-aways for me were:

• There is a new niche market of very rich people that is exponentially increasing in size.  Sell to them.
• Many more are becoming like them.  Join them.  

My Impressions: 養生食療寶典

I’m into acupuncture.  My godfather’s brother is into acupuncture (licensed and practiced in Taiwan).  Dude found a set of acupuncture books written by Dr. Wei Chieh Young here:

http://www.drweichiehyoung.com/shop/8gq4f8elutzp7eyhzm7zy5hzw0idlb

I was asked to buy a set for them, and I thought why not buy a set for myself?

Their books are very expensive, listed on their shop here: http://www.drweichiehyoung.com/shop/

I started with the thinnest, least technical, and cheapest book: 養生食療寶典

The concept of this book is to focus on what we ingest – to view dietary habits as a way to control and maintain our body.  I agree with this concept whole heartedly and believe we are to a large degree what we eat.  By the different types of food we consume, our body will be affected in different ways.  It seems reasonable that we can consume foods specific to our sickness and try to remedy them.

However, in execution, I do not think the book delivered.

Doesn’t matter what you were trying to cure: headache, stomach ache, fever, cold, and pains in whatever area…  It seemed it was the same information repeated over and over again.  All these tips, I would consider as “common sense” in Chinese culture.  Turn to any page in the book, and it follows the same outline:

• Don’t eat too oily or too greasy
• Don’t consume too much caffeine
• Don’t consume too much alcohol
• Don’t drink too much concentrated tea
• Don’t drink cold beverages
• Eat meat in moderation
• Don’t binge on anything, eat everything in moderation
• Eat a well-balanced diet

Is common sense common?  Is common sense right?  Who cares?  Literally, I felt like I was reading the same page 90 times with a different title until the end of the book. 

In addition…  All these concepts have been passed on for generations.  In Asian culture, nobody seems to contest them, or challenge them.  We just accept it as normal wisdom and find fault in ourselves when we don’t follow and have problems with our body. 

Maybe there is truth to this common knowledge, maybe there is not, but there is no new information.  No new research.  Given the doctor’s credibility and access, I would’ve liked to see data on putting this list of common sense (or other diets) to the test. 

On an individual level, my friends and I are constantly testing with our own bodies, trying to be on the front line of diet and health.  E.g. Warrior’s diet of one meal a day, eliminating carbs, vegans, removing sugar, blah blah blah.  I “hopefully wished” to see “some” innovation in this book. 

If I wanted to read the same remedy for every kind of perceived illness, I could’ve photocopied my bullet point outline above, 90 times.

So, if you want to know what diet cures what sickness in this book, just copy my outline above, and apply it when your body is not in its happy mood. 

You’re welcome.  I just saved you 12 bucks and 2 hours of reading. 

Hopefully the more expensive acupuncture books in the set won’t be such a letdown.  

My Impressions: The Price Advantage

As a pricing analyst in a strategic pricing group, this is one of the “textbooks” our team reads.  Having already read a few books and took courses on pricing, I kind of thought what else is there to learn?  What could I possibly not already know?!?!

The Price Advantage

This isn’t the most mind-blowing pricing book I have read.  However, I do think among all the pricing books I’ve came across, this one focuses most on execution and being practical.  The importance of price is emphasized many times through charts and case studies and calculations. 

In the “real world,” good data is really hard to come by.  The accuracy tradeoff of data on costs, pricing, discounts, promotions, rebates… compared to how confident you are in making a pricing move makes the matter very tricky.  For most, it is much easier to choose inaction instead of taking the risk and potentially owning the results of a wrong decision (or a right decision with an unfavorable outcome).  Real pricing decisions come with real risks.  Own it like a big boy, buddy.  

The analogy of benefits gained by actively managing price being compared to acquiring another company that is 25 to 50 percent of the original organization’s revenue shows how strong a difference pricing can make and how often it is overlooked.  Pricing is the single most influential lever a company management can manage. 

What I liked most about the book is that instead of providing beautiful strategies build on clouds that never seem to work in real life, there are plenty of examples to see how the strategies here work in the real life.  Instead of focusing solely on customer reactions, the book also shows competition reactions and how that complicates pricing strategies.

The concept of a Value Equivalence Line in action was very valuable. 

For example, it may seem intuitive to lower price for a product at the end of its product life cycle.  Reasons are to clear inventory, fire-sale, and introduce the new version.  Strategically, that could be a very wrong move.  Read the book and have your mind blown. 

It takes a very forward thinking leader with titanium balls to push this through and own price.  But compared with all the stupid shit companies and leaders often do…  The potential rewards are far greater from having a solid pricing team.  

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