A Book Review: Ninja Selling: Subtle Skills. Big Results

In his book Ninja Selling: Subtle Skills. Big Results. Larry Kendall, one of the founding partners of The Group, Inc., a real estate company in Northern Colorado, outlines the principles of a system that guarantees success not only in selling but also in other fields. Kendall believes people can become the best version of themselves, and make their organizations the best as well.

Kendall compares customer-centered, humble, world-class sellers to ninjas, the covert army of emperors in ancient Japan who used ninjutsu or the art of stealth in protecting the empire. They are "quiet, unassuming, talented people who got results without ego."

In order to be a ninja seller, you need to have the right mindset, master the four principles, and use specific selling strategies.

Some Takeaways

• There are four principles in ninja selling:

Principle 1: Personal Mastery.

Principle 2: Stop Selling! Start Solving!

Principle 3: Ninja Business Strategy.

Principle 4: Connect and Communicate.

• There are four quadrants of emotional energy: low positive, high positive, low negative, high negative. To perform well, a seller must stay in the high positive and low positive quadrant.

• At the base of the brain is a group of cells called the Reticular Activating System that operates as the central processing unit of a computer. It only has two pathways: negative and positive. "The quality of my life will be determined, in large part, by the amount of time I spend on the positive pathway of my RAS."

• Solving, serving, and giving value add up to a picture of a true ninja selling.

• The regularity of interaction that is called flow with customers keeps a business alive.

• A successful real estate agent has skills that help customers make good decisions. In this book, these skills are applied with the Ten-Step Buyer Process and the Sixteen-Step Seller Process.

Thoughts...Thoughts...Thoughts...

I got this book on Amazon Kindle because it's only $0.99 and I thought why not give it a try. On the cover, it doesn't say that it's actually all about selling houses. Half of the book was so useful for me; the other half, I couldn't relate to. For sure, aspiring and full-fledged real estate agents can find this book useful.

The idea that brought a greater impact to me is the power of PIE time. Time is categorized into three: productive, indirectly productive, and everything else. The seller, customer, and a contract make the productive time. At an indirectly productive time, the seller works on creating P time by making customer service calls, real estate reviews, and running your three-per-month auto-flow system, for example. Lastly, E Time is for everything else: watching soccer games, sleep, family time, and other activities that do not include the customer, directly or indirectly.

How can I apply PIE time in my life? I see P time as the time to reach my goal. For example, if I want to improve my writing, my P time would be the writing time, the time I let the words flow my mind into the paper. Setting the time and making writing goals are my I time. Anything unrelated to writing is my E time. I have to be conscious about how I spend my time if I want to become a better writer, if not the best.

Discussion Questions

1. Every time you hear the word ninja, what comes to your mind?

2. What is ninja selling?

3. Do you agree with the author that this book can also be applied to other fields?

4. What have you learned from this book?

5. How would you apply the principles in your life?

Further Information

Title: Ninja Selling: Subtle Skills. Big Results

Author: Larry Kendall

Genre: Business and Personal Finance

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press (January, 3, 2017)

Publication Date: January, 3, 2017

Print length: 345 pages

ASIN: B01MTR49WK

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A Book Review: The Giver

 

Lois Lowry, an acclaimed American author of children and young adult books, describes a society of Sameness that holds a dark truth, learned by a twelve-year-old boy who became the key to bring back humanity to their community in the Giver (April 26, 1993, HMH Books). The novel won the John Newbery Medal in 1994 and was turned into a movie in 2012.

After the ruins, the Elders turned off the memories and colors of the past by creating a society governed by rules that ensures order and peace throughout the community. Intensive emotions such as love, desire, and anger are tempered with the precision of language --- say enjoy instead of love; eager instead of frightened.

The community is composed of family units with two children each, a boy and a girl. Every year, children from one to eleven years old are recognized in front of all citizens as they moved up to the next age level respectively, receiving an object that marks a milestone. For instance, children are given a jacket with front buttons at the Ceremonies of Seven; a bicycle at the Ceremonies of Nine; and, an assignment at Ceremonies of Twelve --- nurturer, birthmothers, engineers, doctors, laborers, and other important jobs in the community.

Jonas was chosen to do the most important job, the successor to the Receiver of Memory who holds the memory of the people and for the people including all the joyful and painful ones --- birthdays, music, fun, starvation, animal cruelty, and war. However, some parts were too painful for Jonas to take that the Giver and he devised a plan to give back the memories of the past to the citizens.

Thoughts...Thoughts...Thoughts...

The Giver is the first dystopian novel I read back in 2000 and it still fascinates me after reading it again. I am amazed at the world Lowry created, the rules, the way of living, and the things they give up just to avoid pain of love, loss, and being human as a whole. To be human is to feel love and pain; rejecting this truth brings more harm than good.

As I read along, I enjoyed getting to know the characters that are memorable. The community with its own unique, bland culture is fascinating. The ending left me hanging though and I was curious as to what happened to Jonas, Gabriel, and the citizens when they remembered the memories.

The Giver is an easy read but enjoyable. You get transported to a world so different from what we know. Our society is far from perfect but with love, life is more meaningful.

Discussion Questions

1. How important are the rules in the community described in The Giver?

2. How do they deal with people who break the rules?

3. How important are the rules in our life nowadays?

4. What is the best way to deal with people who break the rules?

5. What do you think about the precision of language?

6. Every citizen has a role in the story. In the present time, how does a person find his or her role in the society?

7. Which character did you identify with and why?

8. What is the impact of The Giver on you?

9. What do you think about the ending?

10. What could've happened to the community after the citizens retrieved the memories of the past?

Further Information

Title: The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1)

Author: Lois Lowry

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian Novel, Science Fiction

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers; Reprint, Media Tie In edition (April 26, 1993)

Publication Date: April 26, 1993

Print length: 99 pages

ASIN: B003MC5N28

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A Book Review: Seeing Green: Don't Let Envy Color Your Joy

    Tilly Dillehay, a pastor's wife, mother, and homemaker offers a Christian perspective on understanding and overcoming envy in Seeing Green: Don't Let Envy Color Your Joy (September 4, 2018, Harvest House Publishers). She was a former journalist, and newspaper and lifestyle magazine editor. She facilitates the Green Workshop that touches on envy for women in local churches. In this Christian literature, with courage and honesty, Dillehay tells her struggles with envy that clouds her relationships and her love for music.

    She starts with defining glory as " the shining joy, beauty, intelligence, power, and goodness of God himself." What we have is a borrowed glory like the light of the moon borrowed from the sun. Disconnected from the source, an envious person feels bad about other people’s looks, wealth, achievements, and relationships.

    To manage this emotion, Dillehay provides scriptures that explain what the Bible says our physical body, charm or influence, intellect, money, creativity, competence and control, and relationships, the seven sources of envy. Love, diligence, humility, and transparency are the four virtues we need to have to avoid being eaten up by envy.

Other Takeaways

• All glory belongs to God; our glory is borrowed from Him. We are conduits of His glory.
• Inequality does exist and we need to accept that some people have more while others have less.
• Each of us has God-given talents which we are accountable for.
• Being able to gaze at God's glory without harm and worship it, being like Christ and sinless, having eternal wealth, having dominion over creation are the four kinds of glory Christians will possess in the future.

• True happiness is in Christ.

Thoughts...Thoughts...Thoughts...

    Even though this is Christian literature, we can still glean lessons from it about envy and its effects on us, which is experienced by all, one way or the other.

    The goal of the book is to change the perspective of the reader on envy, and it did. I am used to comparing myself with others, those who have more and better things, thinking that I am an inferior, making me overlook the skills and talents that I have. This book makes me appreciate the borrowed glory I have and the opportunity to share it with others. Glory, as a borrowed thing, must be celebrated by enjoying our talents, skills, wealth, beauty, relationship, and intelligence, not something to be shown off to put others down or to be insecure about when others who have more display what they have.

    Although the personal stories and other people's anecdotes are too long before going to the point, I appreciate the discussion questions at the end of every chapter that helped me understand the book's theme.

Discussion Questions

1. Has this book changed the way you think about envy?

2. Was the author successful in making her message across by including her own story?

3. When do you feel envious of others?

4. Why is it hard to accept the truth that we are envious of others?

5. How would you deal with envy?

Further Information

Title: Seeing Green: Don't Let Envy Color Your Joy

Author: Tilly Dillehay

Genre: Christian Literatur

Publisher: Harvest House Publishers (September 4, 2018)

Publication Date: September 4, 2018

Print length: 208 pages

ASIN:   B07GRK2GPJ

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A Book Review: Hopeless

    Hopeless by Colleen Hoover explores the resolution of the past trauma of a teenage girl who fell in love with a reputed bad boy.

    Even though she's rumored to be a promiscuous girl,  the seventeen-year-old Texan continues to just make out with boys to make rumors stay as rumors, enjoying the numbness she felt from their kisses and touches. None of the boys she made out with gave her butterflies in the stomach until she met Holder, the hopeless boy whom she fell in love with and became her boyfriend.

    From the moment she met him at the grocery store,  she saw the different sides of him including his short temper. Holder went ballistic when Sky couldn't say who gave her the bracelet she wore one day; for a month, they didn't talk. She only remembered it when she came by Holder's house after they patched things up.  Her painful past unraveled as she found herself in the room of Holder's twin sister, Lesslie.  They were best of friends from childhood. It was Lesslie who gave her the bracelet.

    Sky didn't only find out who she really was but also the dark past involving her adoptive mother and biological father. Facing her past led to her father's tragic ending and her hopeful new beginning with the family she knew and Holder.

What I Love/ What I Didn't Love

    I loved how Hoover painted the scenes and the story as a whole with specific descriptions of the places, characters and their thoughts and feelings, and events. The dialogs made me feel the intensity of the character's emotions. The twists toward the end tore down the guesses I made in the beginning,  which made reading Hopeless an even more surprising experience. 

    The double meaning of  Holder's tattoo is a little awkward for me. Tattoos are permanent and having the word hopeless tattooed on one arm is too negative for me.  After he found Hope, and after everything went well, Holder was not hopeless anymore, I hope so.  It would've been nice if the word "hope" is tattooed on one arm, and "less" on the other,  or hope and less are separated by a star. In this way, the tattoo would imply the two important people in his life. The star also refers to the sky that Holder thought about whenever he was sad.

Discussion Questions

1. Hopeless is the combination of the two important people in Holder's life, Hope and Less. How do you relate this title to the larger theme in the novel?

2. Holder has a short temper. What do you think shaped this side of him? What made Sky continue to spend time with him despite his personality?

3. The novel touches on sensitive topics of self-harm and sexual abuse. Describe how these affect Sky, Holder, and their respective family.

4. What does Hopeless tell us about secrets and lies?

5.In the end, Sky learned who she was. What future do you think is in store for her?

Quotes

Further Information

Title: Hopeless

Author: Colleen Hoover

Genre: Romance

Publisher: Colleen Hoover (December 18, 2012)

Publication Date: December 18, 2012

Print length: 418 pages

ASIN:   B00AQ3K8IU

A Book Review: The Sweetest Revenge

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Title: The Sweetest Revenge

Author: Jennifer Ransom

Genre: Romance

Publisher: Jennifer Ransom; 1st edition (September 7, 2014)

Publication Date: September 7, 2014

Print length: 155 pages

ASIN:   B00NE8IWGE

    In Sweetest Revenge,  Jennifer Ransom, a writer and an editor who loves romance novels, attempts to weave a story about a woman's vengeance on her cheating husband.  The world seemed to be against her as she lost her marriage after becoming two times bigger than she was on her wedding day fifteen years ago, and as she lost her job after not performing well at work due to her broken foot.  

    It all started when Kimberly Williams appeared in their town as a visiting professor at the university where Amy worked as a director of communications. She managed to organize Kimberly's art exhibit without meeting her, however, her husband attended without her knowledge. Literally sick to her stomach,  she went home alone.

    Jimmy started to come home late from that time he met Kimberly, blaming it on his hectic schedule at work.  Amy accepted that they had grown apart because she had changed into somebody Jimmy didn't fell in love with fifteen years ago.

    Just before spring break, Amy was excited to go home after a meeting. To her surprise,  she saw  Jimmy with Kimberly in their marital bed. Amy jolted out of the house, to the park. Jimmy called her many times but she was adamant. 

    Amidst the trouble, as the director of communications, Amy attended the funeral of the mother of their big sponsor, Mr. Keith Richmond.  Amy with her coworker approached him to say their sympathy after the service. A tear fell in Amy's eyes which Mr. Richmond saw. He held her hand gently and looked her in the eye.

    Amy filed a divorce. After two months,  everything was finalized and Amy was single again. It was not easy for her though,  for she loved Jimmy and the house they built together.

    One day, while she was setting the house to be sold, she tripped on her cat and broke her foot.  For many months afterward, she was walking with a cane, affecting her work. Due to her poor performance, her supervisor fired her. Seeking justice, Amy filed a case against the university for wrongful termination.

    When she met with the president of the university, she was shocked to find out that they wanted her to come back with a higher salary and more benefits. Shocked, she asked the president why they suddenly wanted to have her back. The president explained that what the supervisor did was wrong, and they fired her; and, they want her back as requested by their major sponsor, Mr. Keith Richmond.

    As Amy started working in her new job, she got a call from Keith one day inviting her to dinner. They fell in love overnight. Then, Keith asked her to work for him, leaving her job at the university. Amy got angry because she didn't want to be under his command; she wanted to keep her current job.

    After their big fight, Amy didn't see Keith for a while; she was devastated.  Jimmy came to see her and was shocked to see that she transformed into what she was before,  but Amy said she's in love with somebody else. For her, she already had her sweetest revenge.

    It was a bad idea to read this after reading Paulo Coelho's Adultery.  Coelho's novel is well-written that made me experience a wide range of emotions, making me understand what the character was going through, whereas, Ransom's failed to let me experience the transformation of the character from the time she got divorced to the time she got her life back.  Aside from being ridden with cliches and plot holes, the story was more of a telling than showing.

    This is the first novel by Ransom that I read and I would never grab another one.