MBA998 Must Read: Damn Good Advice by George Lois

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Hey O welcome to the $100 show, the business podcast that gives you more business insights in less time with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and Today's episode is a must Read episode. On our Must Read Episodes, I share with you a book that has greatly influenced me as an entrepreneur, that's helped me in some way and I share with you its insights and its takeaways. Today's Must Read is Damn Good Advice by George Lewis this short book is a collection of pieces of advice from George Lewis. Actually 120 pieces of advice. George Lewis is an advertising legend. He's the creator of Big Idea Advertising. In this short, light hearted and witty book, he shares with you some of his advice, some of the things that he's learned throughout the years in advertising and in life and now. This book is a bit controversial because some of the people that read this book don't really necessarily agree with a lot of his advice. This is why I love this book. It challenges you to think differently, to challenge your own ideas. I'll be sharing you some of his best advice in the book as well as my favorite takeaways from the book. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. George Lewis begins this book with an interesting piece of advice. He also couples it with if you should read this book or not. So the first thing he mentions in the book is there are only four types of person you can be Identify yourself. Number one, very bright and industrious. You are perfect. Number two, very bright, lazy, A damn shame. Number three, stupid and lazy. You'll just sit on your butt so you're awash. And number four, stupid and industrious. And he says, oh, you're dangerous. So he says, if you're number one or two, you'll get a lot out of this book. If you're number three or four, why are you reading this book? So you could see how he sets the tone of this book from the start. And you could see how he's inserting a bit of humor and his personality into it. But the book does continue and have other more in depth, more profound pieces of advice for you to consume. Creating ideas without the work ethic to follow through is inconceivable to me. He says, if you're not burnt out by the end of the day, you're a bum. He says, I'm burnt out every single day doing what I love. I give it all I can so I can get the most out of his actual work. After he charges at night, he's ready for the next day. So this is his kind of philosophy on work and hard work, and that an idea or having ideas is just simply not enough. You need to have the work ethic behind there. You need to actually implement your ideas and see them to life. Some of us, we are great when it comes to ideas, but we don't do anything with them, or we get started with them and we never actually finish them. Your work ethic is really gold. That's what's gonna take you to where you need to. The idea is just a starting point. It's the ignition, but you gotta step on the gas to get anywhere. He also shares some of his advertising, sales, marketing advice. He says, my first commandment when it comes to that is the word comes first, then the visual. So if he's thinking up of any advertising campaign, any sales kind of marketing campaign, he starts with words. He starts with the copy, starts with what he wants to express with words, and then he tries to figure out how the imagery will fit in. But the words shape the ideas that he's trying to communicate to the audience. He says, a big campaign idea can only be expressed with words first and then with imagery. To supplement, he says that when words and imagery work in synergy, that makes a perfect campaign. Some of his advice are direct quotes, like Abraham Lincoln's quote, I'm sorry I could not have written a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time. He says, it's not how short you make it, it's how you make it short. When you write, keep it short, informative, concise and literary. Every single word counts. Think long, but write short. I love that because when you communicate in concise language, there's a lot less room for confusion. When you really think hard about how can I communicate this in the most concise manner, in the shortest manner, you tend to communicate clearly and you cut out all the jargon, you cut out all the fluff, you cut out all the unnecessary words or sentences or paragraphs that you don't need. And this is applicable for written form, blog posts, sales copy, Facebook ads, or even in communication or in a speech. I love this piece of advice. Think long, but write short. He also believes that you shouldn't expect a great idea to pop out of your computer. He says, don't sit at your computer until you grasp your idea fully. Make sure you understand your whole concept, the big concept, completely before you sit down on that computer and implement. He believes that the computer is a distraction from really fully forming the idea before it's ready to be implemented. Again. You may agree or disagree with this, but I kind of like it. I also like this one. He says, creativity is not created. It's there for us to find. It's a discovery. So when you're looking for creative ideas or you want to be creative, you got to look within. There's something that's inside of us. We got to find it. He also says you can find creative ideas around you. Keep your eyes open. Be open to ideas, be open minded. Take a look at your competition and don't always just feel like, ah, they stink. See what you can learn from them or, or you can do differently. Here's one that refers to sales. Always remember you're trying to sell something, so ask for the sale. Often we forget whether it's on our websites or it's on our webinars or it's in person that we have to ask for the sale, that if we're selling something, a product or service or whatever, at some point we have to say, here's how to buy, here's the offer. This is how to check out. People need to be guided to the next step, and in this case, the next step is to buy. He says that a lot of people say they hate advertising, but he says when it's done right, people love it and the cash register rings, meaning that people are happy to pay money, they're happy to buy. People love to buy. They love to shop. But in a way they don't like to be sold to. Advertising really just educates them and informs them why your product, why your service is best for them. Here's a piece of advice I'm not really sure about. He says never listen to music when you're trying to come up with a big idea. He says, especially if you're a music lover. He says it's so easy to get carried away with music to be transported to a different place. He says you can't get transported to a different place. You have to stay where you are so you can solve the problem and communicate an idea. Here's a little advice. Rant. He says most people work at keeping their jobs rather than doing a good job. He says if you're doing the former, you're leading a meaningless life. If you're the latter, keep up the good work.

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Up today's must read. Here's my general takeaway from this book. Damn good advice. Now this was an easy book to read because it was a short book. Short chapters, small pieces of advice, along with some great visuals. I highly recommend the paperback. Now, George Lewis is great at what he does. He is an advertising legend and he's just sharing his advice based on his own life experience and just got to take it as it is and take it with a grain of salt. You don't have to agree with every single thing in every book. It's Great to be challenged. I love when I read a book and it challenges me in the way I think. It makes me think, hey, maybe I'm wrong when it comes to this topic. Or I disagree with him and this is why I disagree with him. It's good to reevaluate your values, your beliefs, and what you believe equals success, what you believe gets you to success. This is his perspective and you have to respect at some level because he's had success at a high level in his area of expertise and he's experienced life. He's older than me, so I feel like books like this allow me to open my mind further and to just be open to the advice of others. There's nothing wrong with listening to advice. You don't have to take everything, whether it's advice from a parent, a mentor, a loved one, whatever, or even feedback from an irate customer. Take it in, filter it, and you can take it on or you can just toss it aside. It's okay. If somebody gave me a bag full of fruits and vegetables, I'm going to take out the fresh ones, the ones that are ripe and the rotten ones. I'm going to toss them away. But I got to take the whole bag first, right? So I can do that. So take the advice and see if you're going to take it on or reject it or, you know, consider it for some other time. Really enjoyed this book. Damn Good Advice by George Lewis. Check it out. There's some really good examples of his advertising work as well in the book illustrated on the pages. I won't mention those specifically because I want you to discover them on your own when you pick up the book. All right, thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, let us know in an itunes rating review. We love getting reviews from you. We read every single one. Let us know what you love about the show. And everybody who leaves us an itunes rating and review enters our weekly random draw to win a lifetime membership to one of our programs. This month we're giving away easy course, a 30 day course on how to build an online course. It's a $500 value, but you can win it for free by just leaving us a rating and review. Enter that weekly draw and you re enter the draw until you win. Tune in on Friday to see who won. It could be you just leave us a rating and review. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. But before I go, I want to leave you with this short tactical piece of advice. Books like this are really great to have on your desk because, hey, some random time when you're waiting for something or you're on hold on a phone call could just pick up the book and read a few pieces of advice while you're waiting. And it gives you a new perspective and it enriches your day. So it's definitely a book you can get through very quickly through these short breaks. All right. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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