Tom Hopkins classic on selling never goes out of fashion. I was surprised by how timeless this book truly is.
“How to Master the Art of Selling” is written in an engaging voice that made me feel like I’m in a conversation, but unlike modern literature, it was with a conviction and clarity that is all-encompassing. Tom Hopkins has become an industry standard by providing valuable insights and actionable strategies to enhance sales skills and salesmanship. His book covers fundamental principles like finding clients, building rapport with your customers, identifying customer needs, handling objections and rejections, and effectively communicating with both buyers and sellers. Hopkins emphasizes the importance of building relationships, optimism, and using ethical sales practices. The book also focuses on improving sales presentation skills and setting achievable sales goals. Overall, “How to Master the Art of Selling” offers a comprehensive guide to sales success, combining practical techniques with a positive mindset and ethical approach. To my astonishment, I read the edition published in 1980, I found this book packed with commonplace selling techniques tried and trusted to this day. It goes to show how far ahead Hopkins was of his time.
If you enjoy old-fashioned, vintage nostalgia that is still applicable and true today, then this book is for you. If you don’t want to invest more than an hour into something half-a-century old, then watch this classic recording instead:
This is my personal shortlist of classic and modern Air Force literature. Titles are selected by Air Force history, ongoing conflicts, and their relevancy to the future of aerial warfare, as well as leadership lessons, strategy, and tactics in aviation. Titles are ordered by their original publication date.
Ballistic Books is a series to present literature of interest. Each edition is dedicated to a specific topic. I found it challenging to discover and distinguish good from great literature. With this series, I aim to mitigate that challenge.
(2021) The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell
“In Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion.
In Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?” Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.” I read this book when it was first released. It still ranks high on my list of favorite books.
(2021) Call-Sign KLUSO: An American Fighter Pilot in Mr. Reagan’s Air Force by Rick Tollini
“Eagle pilot Rick “Kluso” Tollini’s life has embodied childhood dreams and the reality of what the American experience could produce. In his memoir, Call Sign KLUSO, Rick puts the fraught minutes above the Iraqi desert that made him an ace into the context of a full life; exploring how he came to be flying a F-15C in Desert Storm, and how that day became a pivotal moment in his life.
Rick’s first experience of flying was in a Piper PA-18 over 1960s’ California as a small boy, and his love of flying through his teenage years was fostered by his pilot father, eventually blossoming into a decision to join the Air Force as a pilot in his late twenties. Having trained to fly jets he was assigned to fly the F-15 Eagle with the “Dirty Dozen,” the 12th Tactical Fighter Squadron, at Kadena AB, Japan before returning Stateside to the 58th Tactical Fighter Squadron “The Gorillas.” Throughout training, Reagan’s fighter pilots expected to face the Soviet Union, but Rick’s first combat deployment was Desert Storm. He recounts the planning, the preparation, and the missions, the life of a fighter pilot in a combat zone and the reality of combat. Rick’s aerial victory was one of 16 accumulated by the Gorillas, the most by any squadron during Desert Storm.
Returning from the combat skies of Iraq, Rick continued a successful fulfilling Air Force career until, struggling to make sense of his life, he turned to Buddhism. His practice led him to leave the Air Force, to find a new vocation, and to finally come to terms with shooting down that MiG-25 Foxbat in the desert all those years before. Most importantly, he came to a deeper understanding of the importance of our shared humanity.”
(2019) Top Gun: An American Story by Dan Pedersen
“When American fighter jets were being downed at an unprecedented rate during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy turned to a young lieutenant commander, Dan Pedersen, to figure out a way to reverse their dark fortune. On a shoestring budget and with little support, Pedersen picked eight of the finest pilots to help train a new generation to bend jets like the F-4 Phantom to their will and learn how to dogfight all over again.
What resulted was nothing short of a revolution — one that took young American pilots from the crucible of combat training in the California desert to the blistering skies of Vietnam, in the process raising America’s Navy combat kill ratio from two enemy planes downed for every American plane lost to more than 22 to 1. Topgun emerged not only as an icon of America’s military dominance immortalized by Hollywood but as a vital institution that would shape the nation’s military strategy for generations to come.
Pedersen takes readers on a colorful and thrilling ride — from Miramar to Area 51 to the decks of aircraft carriers in war and peace-through a historic moment in air warfare. He helped establish a legacy that was built by him and his “Original Eight” — the best of the best — and carried on for six decades by some of America’s greatest leaders. Topgun is a heartfelt and personal testimony to patriotism, sacrifice, and American innovation and daring.”
(2019 Tomcat Fury: A Combat History of the F-14 by Mike Guardia
“For more than three decades, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the US Navy’s premier carrier-based, multi-role fighter jet. From its harrowing combat missions over Libya to its appearance on the silver screen in movies like Top Gun and Executive Decision, the F-14 has become an icon of American air power. Now, for the first time in a single volume, Tomcat Fury explores the illustrious combat history of the F-14: from the Gulf of Sidra…to the Iran-Iraq War…to the skies over Afghanistan in the Global War on Terror.”
(2017) Desert Storm Air War: The Aerial Campaign against Saddam’s Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War by Jim Corrigan
“The air campaign that opened the Gulf War in January 1991 was one of the most stunning in history. For five weeks, American and other Coalition aircraft pounded enemy targets with 88,000 tons of bombs. Sorties—more than 100,000 of them—were launched from bases in Saudi Arabia, from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and even from bases in the United States. The skies over Iraq and Kuwait were filled with a dizzying array of new and improved weapons—Tomahawk and Hellfire missiles, stealth aircraft, and laser-guided smart bombs—and the results were impressive. The Coalition swiftly established air superiority and laid the foundation for the successful five-day ground campaign that followed. The results were also highly visible as the American people watched the bombings unfold in grainy green video-game-like footage broadcast on CNN and the nightly news.
The overwhelming success of the Desert Storm air campaign has made it influential ever since, from the “shock and awe” bombing during the Iraq War in 2003 to more recent drone operations, but the apparent ease with which the campaign was won has masked the difficulty—and the true achievement—of executing such a vast and complex operation.
Using government reports, scholarly studies, and original interviews, Jim Corrigan reconstructs events through the eyes of not only the strategists who planned it, but also the pilots who flew the missions.”
(2012) Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat by Dan Hampton
“First into a war zone, flying behind enemy lines to purposely draw fire, the wild weasels are elite fighter squadrons with the most dangerous job in the Air Force
One of the greatest aviation memoirs ever written, Viper Pilot is an Air Force legend’s thrilling eyewitness account of modern air warfare. For twenty years, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hampton was a leading member of the Wild Weasels, logging 608 combat hours in the world’s most iconic fighter jet: the F-16 “Fighting Falcon,” or “Viper.” He spearheaded the 2003 invasion of Iraq, leading the first flight of fighters over the border en route to strike Baghdad. Earlier, on 9/11, Hampton’s father was inside the Pentagon when it was attacked; with his dad’s fate unknown, Hampton was scrambled into American skies and given the unprecedented orders to shoot down any unidentified aircraft.
Viper Pilot is an unforgettable look into the closed world of fighter pilots and modern air combat.”
(2002) Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram
“John Boyd may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military history. Some remember him as the greatest U.S. fighter pilot ever — the man who, in simulated air-to-air combat, defeated every challenger in less than forty seconds. Some recall him as the father of our country’s most legendary fighter aircraft — the F-15 and F-16. Still others think of Boyd as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu. They know only half the story.
Boyd, more than any other person, saved fighter aviation from the predations of the Strategic Air Command. His manual of fighter tactics changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights. He discovered a physical theory that forever altered the way fighter planes were designed. Later in life, he developed a theory of military strategy that has been adopted throughout the world and even applied to business models for maximizing efficiency. And in one of the most startling and unknown stories of modern military history, the Air Force fighter pilot taught the U.S. Marine Corps how to fight war on the ground. His ideas led to America’s swift and decisive victory in the Gulf War and foretold the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
On a personal level, Boyd rarely met a general he couldn’t offend. He was loud, abrasive, and profane. A man of daring, ferocious passion and intractable stubbornness, he was that most American of heroes — a rebel who cared not for his reputation or fortune but for his country. He was a true patriot, a man who made a career of challenging the shortsighted and self-serving Pentagon bureaucracy. America owes Boyd and his disciples — the six men known as the “Acolytes” — a great debt.
Robert Coram finally brings to light the remarkable story of a man who polarized all who knew him, but who left a legacy that will influence the military — and all of America — for decades to come”
(2001) The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security by Grant Tedrick Hammond
“The ideas of US Air Force Colonel John Boyd have transformed American military policy and practice. A first-rate fighter pilot and a self-taught scholar, he wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat; spearheaded the design of both of the Air Force’s premier fighters, the F-15 and the F-16; and shaped the tactics that saved lives during the Vietnam War and the strategies that won the Gulf War. Many of America’s best-known military and political leaders consulted Boyd on matters of technology, strategy, and theory.
In The Mind of War, Grant T. Hammond offers the first complete portrait of John Boyd, his groundbreaking ideas, and his enduring legacy. Based on extensive interviews with Boyd and those who knew him as well as on a close analysis of Boyd’s briefings, this intellectual biography brings the work of an extraordinary thinker to a broader public. The paperback will retain the original publication date as it is the same book but different format.”
(1999) Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden
“On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily-armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded. Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden’s minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written—a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle.”
(1995) Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing (Tom Clancy’s Military Reference) by Tom Clancy
“Tom Clancy’s explorations of America’s armed forces reveal exclusive, never-before-seen information on the people and technology that protect our nation. Here, the acclaimed author takes to the skies with the U.S. Air Force’s elite: the Fighter Wing. With his compelling style and unerring eye for detail, Clancy captures the thrill of takeoff, the drama of the dogfight, and the relentless dangers our fighter pilots face every day of their lives- showing readers what it really means to be the best of the best. This is the ultimate insider’s look at an Air Force combat wing-the planes, the technology, and the people…with Tom Clancy behind the stick.”
(1994) Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich
“From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, Skunk Works is the true story of America’s most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation’s brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works is a drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds. Here are up-close portraits of the maverick band of scientists and engineers who made the Skunk Works so renowned. Filled with telling personal anecdotes and high adventure, with narratives from the CIA and from Air Force pilots who flew the many classified, risky missions, this book is a riveting portrait of the most spectacular aviation triumphs of the twentieth century.”
(1992) Cleared Hot! The Diary of a Marine Combat Pilot in Vietnam by Col. Bob Stoffey
“Many pilots never made it out of ‘Nam. This one did. Highly decorated Col. Bob Stoffey– a Marine Corps pilot for over twenty-five years, who served multiple tours in Vietnam– has seen and done it all. Cleared Hot! is his story– a fast-paced, high-casualty flight into heart-stopping danger.
Full of vivid detail, this combat diary uncovers the real heroes of the Vietnam War, the behind-the-scenes Marine Corps pilots who helped our boys return home…then went back for more.”
Selling an idea, a product, or a service is a tall order for most people. The skills required to make a sale are not unique but the result of practice and commitment, according to Ryan Serhant. I read his 2018 edition of “Sell it like Serhant” to learn more about his approach to sales.
Ryan Serhant accumulated a pretty substantial following on his social media accounts. Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York might be the reason for his numbers, but as I learn more about Ryan’s approach to everything makes me wonder if his Bravo deal simply accelerated the inevitable.
The writing style is average self-aggrandizing with little to no surprising nuances. At times, it seems to be ghostwritten based on dictated bullet points. And, there is nothing wrong with that. Many writers do that. Some are better than others. This book levels on the latter end of that scale.
Nevertheless, I found practical lessons in this book that are easily applicable to everyday life. While none of Ryan’s ideas or habits are really out of the ordinary, it is his passion and dedication that set him apart. In fact, if I learned one thing from his book, then it is this: work for your career, not your job. Too often, we find ourselves focused on the next step, the next chapter, the move that will make a difference. This makes us miss out on seeing the bigger picture. Ryan’s approach is centered around four principles. These “tenets” as he calls them are his anchor, guide, and fuel no matter the situation.
Your Why = Why do you do what you do?
Your Work = What do you do every day to expand your business?
Your Wall = What are you running from?
Your Win = What are you doing this for?
Now, I’m not going to deliberate each principle. You can read the book to get more details on them. But I found “Your Wall” intimately intriguing. Ryan’s Wall is a fear that he would waste his potential. He “runs” from wasting away so to speak. What’s interesting about this view is the conscious reflection on previous decisions and situations. It’s something I noticed that sets apart good from great leaders. These leaders draw a line and will not allow to ever cross it again. It’s a form of integrity that I deeply respect. Ryan makes it clear that in order to move forward you need to know what are moving from away.
Attention to detail, especially communication, is another wonderful character trait that stands out in the book. Ryan writes:
“As salespeople, we must be careful listeners, because clients are always sending messages about what they need and how they want to conduct business. […] Never forget that while you’re a salesperson, you are also in the service business—and sometimes that means being flexible and playing by someone else’s rules.”
Knowing your why, work, wall, and win is amazing, but being overly focused on them to the detriment of mindful presence during client conversations renders your effort null. Accepting that while you can have goals, passion, and a focus on your success – when the chips are down someone else dictates if your bet was good. Since this one involves ego, I’d argue it’s hardest to stomach. Most of us will reach a point where pride clouds our judgment. Leaders like Ryan push through and allow the other side to cry havoc.
“The secret to your success will be revealed in hindsight. You won’t recognize it until you’ve already lived it.”
It’s a line that reminded me of Steve Jobs Stanford speech: “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
The takeaway from Ryan Serhant’s “Sell it like Serhant” is this: work hard to connect with people. Build authentic relationships. And the rest will come as you go.
A brief review of the 2020 book “No Filter – The Inside Story of Instagram” by Sarah Frier.
Instagram adds no value to my life. It is mediocre technology with a bouquet of products that are poorly managed, mostly copied, and barely maintained. All of this is reflected in Sarah Frier’s take on Instagram. In her book, which supposedly tells the inside story of Instagram, she is largely focused on the people behind the app. She draws a clear and concerning picture of regular people with no better intellect or skill than you or me coming into a position of power, by luck and location more or less, only to then pursue a strategy of pure narcissism and ambiguity.
Frier calls this out specifically during Twitter’s attempt to purchase Instagram when it couldn’t even present a counteroffer because Facebook swept in with a one billion* dollar offer. Instagram’s 13 employees, a handful from the startup Gowalla, which was acquired by Facebook without keeping some folks, should have gotten an equal and fair share, but all except Systrom and Krieger were left with Facebook stock and vesting schedules instead. And while the acquisition didn’t immediately turn Instagram into a Facebook clone, it arguably sucked the life out of the startup, its people, and its users in exchange for ruthless growth. Inevitably, Instagram became the success it once was because of Facebook.
I found Frier’s account fair and balanced, slightly favoring Instagram and its early employees. The plethora of regulatory issues Instagram faced over the years is largely missing. Reading more about Instagram violating the privacy rights of teenagers or its tendency to build addictive features designed to target teenagers would have added a much-needed edge to this book. Would I recommend “No Filter”? Probably as a summer afternoon read for anyone interested in Instagram’s founders’ personalities. It does reveal insights into the narcissistic tendencies of both employees and users, which perhaps create an interesting psychological angle for some people. Altogether, “No Filter” is a good book with solid research and adequate writing worth reading when you are waiting for your next haircut.
*It was never 1 billion dollars. It was around $300 million in cash and 23 million in Facebook stock. Put together this came out to about $715 million.
Writing this review didn’t come easy. I spent five years helping to mitigate and solve Facebook’s most thorny problems. When the book was published, I perceived it to be an attack on Facebook orchestrated by the New York Times, a stock-listed company and direct competitor in the attention and advertising market. Today, I know that my perception then was compromised by Meta’s relentless, internal corporate propaganda.
Similar to Chaos Monkeys, An Ugly Truth tells a story that is limited to available information at the time. The book claims to have had unprecedented access to internal, executive leadership directly reporting to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. It is focused on the time period roughly between 2015 and 2020; arguably it was Facebook’s most challenging time. Despite a constant flow of news reporting about Facebook’s shortcomings, the book, for the most part of it, remains focused on the executive leadership decisions that got the company into hot waters in the first place. Across 14 chapters, well-structured and perfectly written, the authors build a case of desperation: in an increasingly competitive market environment, Facebook needs to innovate and increase its user statistics to beat earnings to satisfy shareholders. Yet, the pursuit of significance infiltrated the better judgment of Facebook’s executive leadership team and eventually led to drowning out the rational voices, the protective and concerned opinions of genuine leadership staff over the self-serving voices of staff only interested to progress at any cost.
To illustrate this point, the authors tell the story of former Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, who persistently called out data privacy and security shortcomings:
Worst of all, Stamos told them (Zuckerberg and Sandberg), was that despite firing dozens of employees over the last eighteen months for abusing their access, Facebook was doing nothing to solve or prevent what was clearly a systemic problem. In a chart, Stamos highlighted how nearly every month, engineers had exploited the tools designed to give them easy access to data for building new products to violate the privacy of Facebook users and infiltrate their lives. If the public knew about these transgressions, they would be outraged […]
His calls, however, often went unanswered, or, worse invited other executive leadership threatened by Stamos’ findings to take hostile measures.
By December, Stamos, losing patience, drafted a memo suggesting that Facebook reorganize its security team so that instead of sitting on their own, members were embedded across the various parts of the company. […] Facebook had decided to take his advice, but rather than organizing the new security team under Stamos, Facebook’s longtime vice president of engineering, Pedro Canahuati, was assuming control of all security functions. […] The decision felt spiteful to Stamos: he advised Zuckerberg to cut engineers off from access to user data. No team had been more affected by the decision than Canahuati’s, and as a result, the vice president of engineering told colleagues that he harbored a grudge against Stamos. Now he would be taking control of an expanded department at Stamos’s expense.
Many more of those stories would never be told. Engineers and other employees, much smaller fish than Stamos, who raised ethical concerns of security and integrity were routinely silenced, ignored, and “managed out” – Facebook’s preferred method of dealing with staff refusing to drink the kool-aid and toe the line. Throughout the book, the authors maintain a neutral voice yet it becomes very clear how difficult the decisions were for executive leadership. It seemed as though leading Facebook is the real-world equivalent of Kobayashi Maru – an everyday, no-win scenario. Certainly, I can sympathize with the pressure Mark, Sheryl, and others must have felt during those times.
Take the case of Donald John Trump, the 45th President of the United States. His Facebook Page has a reach of 34 million followers (at the time of this writing). On January 6, 2021, his account actively instigated his millions of followers to view Vice President Mike Pence as the reason for his lost bid for reelection. History went on to witness the attack on the United States Capitol. Democracy and our liberties were under attack on that day. And how did Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg respond on behalf of Facebook? First, silence. Second, indecision. Shall Trump remain on the platform? Are we going to suspend his account temporarily? Indefinitely? Eventually, Facebook’s leadership punted the decision to the puppet regime of the Oversight Board, who returned the decision power due to a lack of existing policies that would govern such a situation. When everybody was avoiding the headlights, Facebook’s executive leadership acted like a deer. Yes, Zuckerberg’s philosophy on speech has evolved over time. Trump challenged this evolution.
Throughout Facebook’s seventeen-year history, the social network’s massive gains have repeatedly come at the expense of consumer privacy and safety and the integrity of democratic systems. […] And the platform is built upon a fundamental, possibly irreconcilable dichotomy: its purported mission is to advance society by connecting people while also profiting off them. It is Facebook’s dilemma and its ugly truth.
The book contains many more interesting stories. There were a wealth of internal leaks to desperately influence and return Facebook’s leadership back to its original course. There were the infamous Brett Kavanaugh hearings, which highlighted the political affiliations and ideologies of Facebook’s executive leader Joel Kaplan, who weathered the sexual harassment allegations against Brett Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey-Ford despite an outrage of Facebook’s female employees. Myanmar saw horrific human rights abuses enabled by and perpetrated through the platform. The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and Bay Area representative since 1987, Nancy Pelosi was humiliated when Facebook fumbled to remove a deepfake video about a speech of hers that was manipulated to make it sound slurred. And the list goes on and on and on and on.
The book is worth reading. The detail and minutiae afforded to report accurately and convincingly are rich and slow-burning. That being said, Facebook has been dying since 2015. Users leave the platform and delete Facebook. While Instagram and WhatsApp pull the company’s advertising revenue for the time being with stronger performances abroad, it is clear that the five years of the executive leadership of Facebook covered in this book point towards an undefiable conclusion: it failed.
NPR’s Terry Gross interviewed the authors Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang on Fresh Air. It further demonstrates the dichotomy of writing about the leadership at one of the most influential and controversial corporations in the world. You can listen to the full episode here.
