Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business
August 3rd, 2010 | 
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- ISBN13: 9781591843146
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Product Description
“What we have to offer can be boiled down to one concept: the power of zero. We get more done with less of just about everything, from our people to our workplaces to our vendors. Zilch is what drives us to be more innovative, more passionate, more creative. So stop whining about your budget cuts and start asking yourself what you’d do if you had zilch. You’ll be surprised just how powerful that is.”
After years of being told to emulate the corpo… More >>
Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business
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I know the lessons in this book from personal experience. My business partners and I built our present company having no money and were unwilling to give away all our equity to raise money. So, we have scratched, scraped, and done the things Nancy Lublin wisely advocates you do in this time of slashed budgets, decreased revenues, and carefully hoarded profits.
The book has 11 chapters with each focusing on a key lesson of getting by with zilch (which doesn’t mean exactly zero dollars, but zero to spare and lot less than you were used to when things were fat, dumb, and happy just a few short years ago).
Each chapter is full of ideas and suggestions. For example, the first chapter is about doing more even though you have less cash to throw at people to paper over your problems. The ideas are sound: Get all levels of your company involved in realizing your company’s vision and purpose. Rearrange your physical workspace so that it is more fun and stimulating for your staff. Make your staff more valuable and capable by investing in their skills development. Give out fancier titles (banks have know this forever). Help people set and achieve goals and make a big deal out of those achievements. Happy staff = a happy workplace. Be willing to thank your staff for the work they do. There are a lot more. You see how much more you can do without spending more money?
Lublin helps you with ideas about your brand, the people you hire for work OUTSIDE your company, being smarter about what you ask for, doing more for customers, getting more out of your board, your staff, and your company’s story. She also points out valuable things you should consider about your finances. Heck, she even discusses barter! And you can always be more innovative.
Good book. I love her positive tone. She also illustrates her ideas with stories from her own experience or from interviews she has with successful folks you will want to emulate. She is concise with lots of good ideas rather than trying to fluff out one or two ideas into a whole book. Nothing here is rocket science or something you would never have thought of in a million years, but when you are under pressure (like you probably are now) it is nice to have someone think through what you could do so your job is to find the ones that are most relevant for you. Much easier than thinking them up on your own. And for the low low price of the book!
I think you can profit from this book.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book has TONS of great stories about rockin not for profit leaders. My favorite is about George who was hired for his passion despite his lack of specific skills and taught himself HTML, SEO, and web design, working around the clock to eventually become the Chief Technology Officer at [...]. Nancy shows that when you hire smart people, empower and challenge them, you unleash their brilliance to work for your cause. The question is if you are a strong enough leader to pass meaningful responsibilities and power on to your staff, step back, and let them launch. We young professionals are hungry for you to do this, and it will cost the organization nothing.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book spoke to me in so many ways. As co-founder of a nonprofit and as someone who’s been in the nonprofit world for over 10 years, I get incredibly sick of hearing about how much we have to learn from the for-profit world. Not that there isn’t some truth to that, but we have a lot to teach for-profits, too! This book brilliantly proves just that, and with a healthy dose of humility, warmth, and humor.
Rating: 5 / 5
Nancy Lublin comes with a good resume having started a worthy charity called Dress for Success. Dress for Success supplies outfits for women who are looking for work who would not otherwise be able to afford them.
Nancy uses examples of how non-profit charities can do a lot with almost nothing. And it is amazing if you think about it. Many companies want to get people to be more engaged on the job and think this means they need to pay more. Charities get engagement and they do not even pay.
Staff are inspired to work for a great company. Ideally with a noble purpose. I have seen this. Poorly run companies have to pay more to keep people generally.
She is an advocate of social media. Because it is new, it tends to be the most cost effective way to market things. I have seen the power of social media in non-profit fundraising.
She believes in brand as a way to extend reach. Good brand is an intangible that has great value but really does not cost much (or can cost a lot depending how you do it).
She believes in creating ambassadors. Malcolm Gladwell would call these Mavens and Connectors. Basically be awesome so people do your selling for you and refer people to you.
I found the part on the founder has to leave the company sometimes interesting.
At the end of each chapter are a list of questions to spur thought.
The book is well written and easy to read. The stories she intersperses keep it interesting and at times funny.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’m not usually a business-book reader, but the Nancy Lublin ‘brand name’ caught my eye, so I opened up Zilch and took a peek…three hours later, I was still engrossed. This is the liveliest, smartest, straight-shootingest, spunkiest collection of useful tidbits and wise observations I’ve read about *any* subject in years. From telling anecdotes (you won’t forget the one about LBJ and the NASA janitor) to genuinely interesting how-to prompts (’11 questions to get you started,’ e.g.) to catchy mnemonics (the Tote Bag Principle!) to big-picture insights (the power of bartering), this book will change your life. Or at least the way you operate professionally…and for all us type-A types, isn’t that the same thing? Can’t wait for Lublin’s next book (Nada?)–and am most enthusiastically recommending this one.
Rating: 5 / 5