Coconut Headphones

Let’s say you were stranded on a desert island, per our previous scenario, have your positioning book in hand so you can properly straighten out the product you’re trying to sell with your burgeoning lead-gen business, you’ve SEO’d (is that a verb?) your lead-gen site with the help of your SEO reference book, and you’re having trouble getting to sleep at night due to wild monkeys screeching as they bang coconuts together.  What business biography would be really beneficial?

Well, if you want to get some sleep, don’t get McDonald’s: Behind the Arches – for a business book, it actually is quite a bit of a page-turner.

The big takeaway I got from this book, probably the best business biography I’ve ever read, was the part of the story where Ray Kroc gave a significant percentage of company stock to a bank in exchange for financing – his compatriots were really incensed at this and could not believe he gave out so much stock for what they felt was a respectable but not a huge investment.  He explained to them that by aligning the success of the company with the success of the bank’s investment, the bank had a huge incentive to involve other banks and help McDonald’s to go public.  Ray Kroc was proven correct, and the rest is history.

From an online marketing perspective, aligning your success with the success of others is a self-reinforcing recipe for success.

If you could have only one business biography book with you on the island, what would it be?