Funny story, a buddy of mine recommended this book but he actually recommended the wrong book. He meant to recommend Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff, instead I stumbled onto this gem. I’m not mad at him, I’ve got 39 more book to go this year and I’m only reporting on the business focused books here. I actually do read more fiction than non and I’m probably averaging 2 books a week this year. I just finished the Novelization of the newest Star Wars movie and I’m on book 10 of the Wheel of Time fantasy series. My friends ask how I find the time to read, but I’m actually shocked at how easy it was to create and maintain the habit of carving out time to read. First I listen to at least half of the books on Audible @ 125% or 150% speed depending on the narration. I find that the faster speed doesn’t degrade the information and in fact I find that I have to pay more attention to the narrator so I retain more of the knowledge. I also learned to speed back in college. I don’t speed read Fiction, I like to slow down and enjoy those books, but i definitely speed read business books, speaking of books, let’s talk about this one.

52 Weeks of Book Reviews. Week # 13 – How to Say It Right the First Time, Every Time by Mike Weinberg by Bill McGowan

This isn’t a sales book, it’s a communication book, which if you think about it is pretty much about sales. The author is well established and the entire book seems to be an ad for his consulting services, I’m not actually mad at him about that. I appreciate his balance of knowledge, but not too much that we don’t need some professional assistance. The knowledge given in the book is pretty basic, I think it’s designed to take us from blissful ignorance about our communication styles to a place where we are aware of what we don’t know. It’s like communication 101 for real world applications.

Bill McGowan drops a few names here and there of clients and I’m fairly impressed. The art of communication has changed in the last 2-3 decades but I’m not sure that is because the tried and true methods were false, I think the topics we speak about and the world we live in has changed. I speed read books and want people to talk as fast as my audible account. The mind still picks up on the nuances and gets the gist of what you are saying, if it’s vital information say so.

I had a college professor who had a belt buckle that said “Bull Shit” on it. We asked him why, and he said it’s the key to any great English paper. Start with a ton of Bull Shit and refine it down until you’ve got what you want to say. In today’s world we want you to refine more and more and get to the essence faster. We read faster than we speak so when conducting complicated business transactions we either want to be left alone to read ourselves or we want a customer service agent to summarize everything quickly. I have no idea what the Apple Agreement says. No one does, I bet the guys that wrote it only summarize it as a party trick.  Did you ever try to send out a meaningful message via Twitter? Sometimes it takes me 5 minutes just to get my message down to 140 characters, but I’ve done it every single time. The point is, we could all be more specific in our communication, not just the words we choose, but the way we say it and the message we convey with out bodies.

This is a good book to open your eyes to that world. It’s not going to change your world, but it’ll open your eyes and make you aware.