Book Review of “Poke The Box” by Seth Godin
May 13th, 2011 by Diane Conklin under Diane's Book Reviews. No Comments.
This is a small book of only about 85 pages, so it’s a pretty quick read. I’m not a fast reader by any stretch of the imagination, and it doesn’t help my reading speed that I always read with a red pen and yellow highlighter in hand. Even at my speed, I finished the book in about 2 hours.
This little book is all about starting – Seth Godin actually calls it a manifesto about starting.
He talks about this from the perspective that if you start something, then it will get finished. This of course, means that you are taking constant action as well. He doesn’t talk about starting in the typical entrepreneurial way you might think about it – that you start a bunch of projects but never come back to them because you get distracted by the next shiny object. Not at all.
Interestingly enough, one of the reasons he says people don’t start is the fear of failing and the fact that there is risk involved. News flash…there is risk involved in doing anything – to include the choice of not doing anything, not taking any action or risk. Seems to me, that’s the riskiest choice you could possibly make. And, certainly, the more you do, the more chances you take, the more you put yourself out there, the more you will fail (or have challenges).
My take on this is that you only really fail when you stop trying. Quitting is failure. Getting back up and trying something else, moving forward, and continuing on is the way you have success. You don’t fail until you stop.
Another interesting point is the for a lot of us we are just as afraid of the possibility that what we are starting will work as we are that it won’t work. Give some thought to the question of what is it that you are afraid of. And, remember, the cost of doing nothing is much higher than the cost of doing something.
The great thing about being a small business owner or entrepreneur is that we get to choose what’s worth doing and what’s not. We get to decide what to spend time on, what to take the initiative to start and what not to. There is no map you have to follow. Cool, huh?
Along those same lines, since nothing is guaranteed to be safe, Seth advocates that you might as well do something that matters. I concur 100%.
This is a book that will make you think about how you’re doing things in your life and your business. For me, that’s always a good thing.
I hope you’ll join me in starting more things that really matter, more things that can make a really big difference (and I’ll challenge you that this isn’t as hard or as big as it might seem when you remember one change you make in somebody’s life can ripple out to touch thousands and thousands of others. That’s what I call making a real difference) and taking more of an initiative to start things that really, really matter to you…that you feel passionate about.
Let me know if you’re willing to take the challenge with me….
PS – one more thing…if you get this book in hardback, check out the inside of the dustcover – it’s pretty cool, something I’ve never seen before and there’s no explanation for it that I found in the book. I was intrigued.
