Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends
By Tim Sanders
Woody Nash, a friend from New Jersey, turned me on to this book back in 2003. There are a handful of books that I often comment on in my talks, and this is one that I most frequently refer to. When I first read this great book, I thought, “Here’s an author that isn’t an MBA-toting, look-at-me-I-went-to-Wharton-and-interned-on-Wall Street type.” I liked that. A lot.
Tim Sanders, former director of Yahoo's in-house think tank, believes love is the crucial element in the search for personal and professional success. In Love Is the Killer App, he explains why. Sander's advice is to be a "lovecat," which, despite the cutesy moniker, is his sincere and surprisingly practical prescription for advancement both inside and outside the office.
It starts with amassing as much usable knowledge as possible, which he explains can be done by religiously carving out time to read and then poring through as many cutting-edge books in your field as possible. It follows with an emphasis on networking to the extreme. Sanders offers concrete suggestions, from compiling a super list of contacts to ensuring all are regularly stored in a readily accessible format. And he concludes by advocating a true mindset of compassion, which he says involves sharing this knowledge with those contacts and ultimately helping anyone who in one way or another may ultimately help you.
Through identifiable anecdotes and specific recommendations, the book promotes an undeniably feasible yet decidedly offbeat program that has worked for the author and could prove equally favorable for others who apply it. I’ve been using his system for years.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts from Sanders’ book:
- Here, then, is my definition of love business: the act of
intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles with your
bizpartners. What are our intangibles? They are our knowledge, our
network, and our compassion. These are the keys to true bizlove.
- If you don’t build a brand, you risk being commoditized—in other
words, you risk becoming a human switch, someone who performs a
function that has yet to be automated, but probably will be at some
future date.
- Be distinct or be extinct.
- There’s no such thing as a commodity—only a person who thinks like one.
- Don’t be fooled. Lovecats are not soft and vulnerable. We are
glowing, powerful, and respected by our peers. And we are careful about
whom we love.
- Our business stronghold is no longer grounded in a physical
workplace. Today it is based in our fellow humans: If you build a
stronghold centered on the caring people who support you rather than on
the company itself, you’ll have something to fall back on if things go
awry. Although the rules of business have changed over the years,
people haven’t.
- To create that stronghold, you have to put in some real work. By
that I mean: Accumulate enough knowledge that you can share it with
others—so you can enable them to profit from your knowledge as much as
you do.
- When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it
is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation
of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.
- The purpose of collecting contacts is to give them away—to match them with other contacts.
- Bizlove means never having to say, “You owe me.”
- Eventually, we are all going to build our own personal Internets
and enjoy the same increasing returns provided by the existing Internet.
- The bigger it gets, the bigger it gets. The same is true for your
network. Through the powerful word-of-mouse, love springs eternal in
the connected world.
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Between Love Is the Killer App and Endless Referrals (by Bob Burg), I think that anyone who wants to become a networking black belt and a love ninja can do so. As Burt Bacharach says, “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love.”
Kevin's December Book Reviews continues...
Keywords
Love Is the Killer App, How to Win Business and Influence Friends, Tim Sanders, Uh-Oh, Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door, Robert Fulghum, contact list, contacts, Will Rogers
