Customer Reviews

The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea

5 star:		(187)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

OK. You know what a go-getter is. Maybe you are one. What is a go-giver? This book is one of those business parables that presents its ideas in the guise of a story. Business stories usually have a protagonist who is in real trouble, meets a wildly successful but mysterious guru who will share the Secret of the Universe with our hero. The hero will at first reject the simplicity of the idea, but will try it out and find that the idea works. The guru will them reveal the rest of the mystery and the hero solves his problem, finds great success, and the story ends happily. Why they all have to be along these lines, I do not know and this one only differs in the details. I mean, it is a pleasant story, but it is fiction. For me, business principles are always more convincing when presented with actual business case studies and even then they tend to be qualified in their applicability.

In any case, this book has five key principles based on the notion that your success comes from working with other folks and rather than trying to and take from the world and get all you can while giving as little back as you can, the truth is just the opposite. You give as much as you can and you will get more back. Remember the story of casting your bread upon the water?

Here are the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success (which are restated at the back of the book):

1) The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.
2) The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
3) The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first.
4) The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
5) The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

The story nicely demonstrates what is meant by these principles and fleshes out the ideas in an attractive way. I think the principles are sound and if they interest you then you should get a copy of the book and dig into it.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

When I received a copy of The Go-Giver, I set aside the last forty-five minutes of the day to start reading the book. Good plan, right?

However, my intent to quit reading at a reasonable hour and get to bed at my usual time disappeared. Within a few minutes, I knew that The Go-Giver had all the suspense of a top-line mystery novel. I couldn't stop until I had read the entire book.

Thanks to Bob Burg and John David Mann for this stimulating parable, filled with enriching thoughts. Everyone who reads this book will re-examine his or her approach to business and customers.That alone will be a "powerful business idea," as the subtitle says.

The Complete Communicator: Change Your Communication-change Your Life!

While I'm not usually a business parable kind of guy I found myself connecting with this one more than any I have read. In fact, it may be the FIRST one I have completed through to the end. Page-by-page I was touched by the story.

Books that cause a paradigm shift are far and few between but Burg and Mann have given the world just such a book. In a hectic, crazy, get it all done as fast as you can kind of world it delivers just the right message for solid, sustainable success. Not monetary success, although that may be the result, but human being success. The kind of success that has been written about in many other parables through history. This parable will take its place among the rest of them. Read it, experience it, practice it and touch the world in ways that are uncommon in all the craziness.

I admit it: I love a good story. But "good," to me, means more than entertaining. And it means more than presenting a good lesson, moral or otherwise. "Good," in my world, means that something needs to shift inside me. The story has to affect me in a way that rings true deep within.

And that's exactly what the "Go-Giver" does. I read it in a single sitting, as I see some of the other reviewers have, because it's impossible to put down. It's not because you want to know what's happening to the protagonist; it's because you feel something changing inside yourself and you want that change to keep happening.

Some of the other reviewers have pointed out that the basic premise of the book is to use your network of contacts to give rather than get, providing more value than customers expect. True enough. But that is only the tip of the iceberg of what the book delivers. It is a metaphysical romp that shows what happens when we let go of fear and control and find ourselves in a place we never expected to be with no immediate way out. It shows the Law of Attraction at work, and how our vibrations can and do raise not only when we're doing what we love, but when we stop designing and pushing and prodding life to be as we demand.

So, yes, the Go-Giver is a tale well-told. And it is will likely go down as a classic in the business field because its values make sense and are known to work. But further, it has a soul that makes it a book about the business of life, not just boardrooms.

My husband and I have already committed to using the 5 laws in 2008. But more, the book has made me more self-aware of when I am trying too hard to be strategic or large-and-in-charge. I know from experience that that is when my own story derails; now I have a guide that reminds me of the value of sharing what I love and never worrying about what will come next.

I plan to give the "Go-giver" to friends, family and colleagues. For yes, the protagonist does become rich in the end, but only because he has discovered that true wealth comes from within, and what is within each of us is always what is reflected without. It's not something that we can plan; it's something that we naturally are.

So, to me, "The Go-Giver" is not a good book. It's GREAT. Luminous. True. Engaging. Transformative. I'm delighted that it's in hard-cover, because I plan to keep it for decades.

Robin L. Silverman
Author of "The Ten Gifts" and "Something Wonderful is About to Happen."

More and more, I see new books in print that would have made good magazine articles. The author has a decent message that honestly doesn't take too many pages to express. Today, publishers feel comfortable putting those words between two hard covers and charging a lot more than the price of a magazine for the message. Focusing one's life on giving rather than getting is one such message in my opinion. It is useful as a general proposition to read that "[y]our compensation is directly proportional to how many lives you touch." So rock stars make more many than school teachers. While this is so I'm not sure it's healthy. Still, it is useful to know. The parable presented here is an agreeable read. Yet what's tough to swallow is that the man who is taught the five secrets of success presented by the author is immediately rewarded with riches. What could have been presented as a nice zen like way to live that almost certainly will be calming and emotionally rewarding is presented as a road to riches.

If you want a quick read with lessons to jump your business results, this is the one. Joe, the main character, learns how to pay it forward in a business environment. Of the five laws of success discovered, The Law of Value, The Law of Compensation, The Law of Influence, The Law of Authenticity, and The Law of Receptivity, for anyone trying to do business in Social Networking 2.0 right now, The Law of Influence offers a straight path to success: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first. Particularly a good philosophy for introverts since the focus is - on others. The Go-Giver will undoubtedly rank as a classic alongside Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World.

Dear Bob and John,

I could not wait to get up today and write to you about your new book, "The Go-Giver!" First you have to know that once I started reading it, I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN! The story of Joe and true-life examples you gave throughout the book, not only kept my attention, they made me want to jump inside the pages and be a part of the story.

When you said, "Heidi, you will recognize yourself in the Go-giver," you were spot on. I identified with many of the challenges Joe faced in his career. The book really made me reflect on where I am in life and where I'd like to be. For that I thank you. In fact, I plan to start working on each of the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success beginning today. So Bob and John thank you for writing such a wonderful, easy to read, and most importantly easy to implement book of life's lessons. You can be sure I will tell everyone I know about it! And cannot wait to buy several copies for my own family and friends. Everyone needs this book!

This `little red book', with it's seemingly simple (yet powerful) parable, provides a special road map for true and lasting success-in business and in life. Many books have been written about the `art' and rewards of giving, yet, none have shown and exposed the differences between the Go-Getter and the Go-Giver in such a memorable way. Everyone can learn something from this book (even people who think they have given and not gotten back). People can achieve success and even monetary success with hard and honest work. However, to achieve "stratospheric" success takes some special understandings of the "laws" presented in this book. It needs a seal that says, 'Open Only If You Desire Stratospheric Success!' Those that open it and don't understand it may not be deserving yet...read it again!

I admit, I can be cynical at times, and often overly-sugary fables tend to make the eyeballs roll out of my head. At the beginning of "The Go-Giver," I was bracing for that same scenario. However, after reading the book I must say--as neat and tidy as the storyline is--I was immediately able to see how the events in the book could fit into my own circumstances. This simplicity is the true value of the book. It takes the expressions "What goes around comes around", "You reap what you sew" and "pay it forward" and weaves them into a story that is a quick, compact read. Personally I would have liked a bit more character development, but then again, this is about going, giving, and getting on with (an enriched) life. There are no deeply hidden meanings or overly-metaphoric ramblings and there doesn't need to be. We as readers will easily find ways to map our own unique circumstances into the framework of the story. I also thought I had the ending figured out, but I enjoyed the slight and unexpected twist even more. Everyone in sales --both veterans and rookies-- deserves to read this book.

Not since "Who moved my cheese" has a short fable been so powerful!!

Bob Burg & John Mann have crafted an easy to read, however easier to implement concept that all sales people & business professionals should read.

This book reminds us to focus on meeting the needs of others in both our personal & professional lives. This is something that many of us know, but few of us incorporate on a regular basis.

The Go-Giver is at the Top of our list for "must reads" in 2008.

Kim & Steve Melia
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