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Your Network Is Your Net Worth: Unlock The Hidden Power Of Connections For Wealth, Success, And Happiness In The Digital Age (2013)

by Porter Gale(Favorite Author)

3.56 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

145168875X (ISBN13: 9781451688757)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Atria Books

review 1: I started off not liking this book, but by the time I finished it I'd mostly come around. For me, it was too self-helpy and basic; the insights that were meaningful to me could probably have fit in a magazine article. For people who are completely unfamiliar with the mechanics of networking, though, it's a pretty good primer. And the personal anecdotes add up to at least the hazy outline of a moderately interesting professional life. I suppose any book that advertises "for Wealth, Success and Happiness" on the cover is likely to disappoint on some level.Also advertised on the cover: Foreword by Guy Kawasaki (which turns out to be 200 words that offer little indication that he has any enthusiasm for the book-- Enchantment, indeed).Okay, backpedaling off my momentary cynicis... morem, it's a decent 250-page book that would have made a really compelling 5-page article on Fast Co. But, I get it, authors have to make a living.
review 2: When you start to accumulate a lot of reviews on Goodreads, and almost none of them are two or one star, one of two things is happening...either you are doing a good job at prescreening books, or there's some grade inflation happening. I was worried about the latter, that is, until I read the first 70 pages of this book.The difficult task here is offering up a review that is both honest and charitable. On the positive side, there were a couple of sentences I wrote down that could prove helpful in my efforts to reinvigorate network management and development at work. Second, I think the concept of a book about reintroducing businesspeople to the power of relationships in business (and how to build those relationships over time, not just when you are out of a job) is valuable. It is for these reasons that this book is not one star.But there are so many negatives...and I refused to finish this book, it was so bad (stopped at page 70 but skimmed through other chapters). First, the book lacks meaningful structure and fails to stay on point from the beginning. You are expecting to read a book about networking and its importance, yet the first 50 pages seem to be more about how to motivate yourself to "be a better you" and "follow your passion" (see Cal Newport's "So Good They Can't Ignore You" for a complete debunking of the "follow your passion" meme). And nearly all the advice is well worn, platitudinal, and just unoriginal. Further, it seems to be just one piece of "you should do this" and "oh yeah, and do that" after another. I didn't even find the author's real life examples to be very compelling, nor did I think they convincingly made whatever point she was apparently attempting to make. Beyond that, there just seems to be a lot of marketing babble that has very little value. It reminded me of my college marketing course - an exercise in putting fancy names on common sense concepts. That is not a condemnation of marketing, which is an important aspect of business, but of how it is sometimes treated.In the interest of charity, I'll stop there. I'm sure Ms. Gale is a talented individual given her role in marketing at Virgin America. Unfortunately, I don't think that competence travels well to writing, at least at this point. less

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