A solid how-to book offering an alternative method for building a client list.
Real estate business owners Lascsak and Plumb make YouTube their primary marketing tool in this nonfiction business guide.
This business book tells the story of how two Dallas-based real estate agents achieved millions in sales in their first years on the job without pursuing traditional lead-generating strategies, instead building a clientele from the global audience for their YouTube videos. In the book’s first section, the authors lay out the case for YouTube’s value as a prospecting tool, backing up anecdotes from their business history with statistics and theory to explain how a video that takes an hour to produce can generate results months or years later. The second section outlines, in meticulous detail, the mechanics of establishing a YouTube channel, populating it with content, and optimizing the channel for both subscribers and search engines. In an acknowledgement of the constantly changing nature of online platforms, the book’s final chapter addresses how the pair changed their process in response to YouTube’s evolution. Lascsak, the primary author, is a strong storyteller who understands how to build an argument without overselling it—despite a few mentions of the pair’s consulting services, the book feels more like a user manual than a sales pitch. The story of the authors’ evolution into vloggers is well told, with an appropriate level of persuasive detail—they were convinced video was worth a try after discovering that a nearby suburb was searched for almost 10 times more often on YouTube than on Google. The book does a particularly good job of illustrating how providing the content that users are searching for is more effective, both financially and in terms of customer satisfaction, than traditional advertising that imposes itself without the user’s consent (“We didn’t have to chase clients, because our videos brought clients to us”) as well as being more satisfying for the creators than cold-calling or mailing postcards. The book is equally effective at demonstrating how the same principles can be applied to any industry that requires client prospecting.
A solid how-to book offering an alternative method for building a client list.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781544538105
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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