We are doing a special edition of Full Shelf this week. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Keller-Williams’ MegaCamp 2020 event this week. They gathered over 35,000 real estate agents from all over the world. At Bard Press, we have been fortunate to work with them on The ONE Thing and I have always been impressed with KW’s cultural emphasis on learning and sharing those learnings with each other. They are also big book readers. Here is the list of books I heard them talk about in the sessions I attended this week:
- Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke – The opening speaker for MegaCamp was Keith Cunningham and his message with this recommendation: a good bet can still lead to a bad outcome. So luck matters. And after a loss, you can’t be deterred. You have to make your next bet with the best odds of winning.
- Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz – One agent talked about needing to reset his whole business including a tough set of layoffs. He specifically called out Profit First as a resource that gave him the right perspective to make the changes he needed.
- The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip Heath and Dan Heath – This title came up in a session on luxury home sales and it got nods from several panelists. Their mention connected with how you can construct experiences that can have deeper meanings and create stronger impressions for customers.
- Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business by Gino Wickman and Mark Winters – Every good business needs ideas and execution. In this book, the authors describe how the presence of a visionary and an integrator combine to power businesses to the next level.
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout – Another agent talked about producing a quarterly magazine for her community. Publishing a periodical doesn’t directly convert to sales, but it positions her in the community as a connection point alongside the other local businesses that are highlighted.
- Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony De Mello and Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation by Bruce Tift – Tim Ferris was also a featured speaker at MegaCamp and mentioned both of these titles as resources to do “the inner work.”
- Shift: How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times by Gary Keller with Dave Jenks and Jay Papasan – This book is from the CEO of Keller-Williams and two principals at the company. They wrote the book to help agents when markets go through transitions. If you can sort through the real estate examples, this is an outstanding book for any business owner right now. The message is: markets shift all the time; if you make the changes you need to, you can thrive.
- The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan – Real estate is a contact game – make 20 contacts a day. You hear it over and over when you attend a KW event. Extreme focus is the success habit in almost any pursuit.
