From the title, you might think I was talking about some famous hip hop artist. But no, in this case, I’m talking about an extraordinary young man named Ryan Blair, who faced some incredible challenges in his life, and went on to become a successful multimillionaire entrepreneur.

But what struck me most in this interview was how Ryan put as much passion and effort into the process of writing his book as he has his entire life and career. Ryan’s book is called Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur (amazon affiliate link). I’ve read the book cover to cover twice, and it has more good advice and motivation than most of the books penned by fancy executives with silver-spoon backgrounds.…

I met Katie Davis at Blog World Expo a month or so back, and after talking a bit, she wanted to send me a couple of her books that she thought would be appropriate for my kids. I shot a quick little video of each of them just showing off that they have the books. Since that video, we haven’t finished Violette’s book, and Harold liked his book well enough, so I thought I’d give you affiliate links to them, if you want to check them out further for yourself. : )

Here’s Violette talking about The Curse of Addy McMahon:

Here’s Harold talking about Kindergarten Rocks:

If you can’t see the videos, Click Here.…

I really admire Jon Radoff, author of Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Media Games (amazon affiliate link) and serial entrepreneur. He is bold. He says exactly who he is: Swashbuckler, adventurer, slayer of dragons, commando, storyteller, Internet entrepreneur; explorer of rabbit holes. When I met him, I thought, “what a nerd.” And when I met him, I thought that because Jon quite successfully is everything I might have been, had I not been afraid to be a nerd outwardly myself. I’m every bit the D&D geek. I share a lot of similar backstory to Jon. Only, he turned his into a huge passion and built many successful companies based on those passions, including GamerDNA, and others.…

No, this isn’t because I started taking ads on [chrisbrogan.com]. It’s because Tim Sanders just released his great new book, Today We Are Rich: Harnessing the Power of Total Confidence (amazon affiliate link). It’s a book about confidence, and how to stay true to yourself, and how to grow your way through to the kind of world you want to live. These lessons come from Tim’s grandmother, Billye, and are what Tim has applied in his own world. This is, according to Tim, a kind of PREQUEL to his smash book, Love is the Killer App.

Here’s what I have to say about it (and there’s a note in here to Bob Burg, too!):

If you want to work on your own self-improvement, jump in and grab this book.…

I was sent a review copy of my friend Guy Kawasaki’s book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions (amazon affiliate link). It’s a kind of business inspiration book, full of ideas on how to help yourself (and then others) get your mind around doing great things and taking actions to accomplish them. Something must be in the air. This book is exactly the kind of thing that’s on my mind lately, and Julien Smith and I are writing a kind of version of this in our own words at this point, too.

Guy’s done a great job with enchantment. I like it plenty. I think there’s lots of actionable ideas in here, if you’re willing to put in the work.…

I purchased and read Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, The Thank You Economy (amazon affiliate link). What I liked most about the book is that Gary takes on a lot of the “mushy” parts of social media, but not from the side of “this stuff really has metrics to back it up,” but from the side of “screw the metrics; you can see the results in other ways.” Those are my words and not his. But that’s what I kept feeling. I liked the part on the book where he took a very different look at the Old Spice ad campaign and made an observation I didn’t really expect, nor have I heard anyone else ever make.…

Bless Seth Godin. He’s just published the first book by the new Domino Project (which is his project with Amazon), Poke the Box (amazon affiliate link). It’s just over 70 pages, which is super short, but when you get into it, you’ll see why. The idea is punchy. It’s a fast read that you’re then meant to implement. It’s about GO. It’s about DO. It’s about working more than you’re just talking.

The ideas in the book are worth the purchase price. And, because it’s Domino, you can get it in hardcover or Kindle version rather easily.

Truth be told, this is a great GIFT book for people.…

I have two books on customer service for you to check out: Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World(amazon affiliate links all around) by Peter Shankman, and The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide: How to Connect with your Customers to Sell More! by Marsha Collier. Both are friends, so discount me by that.

Both books push for passion. Both books reference some small business and some large business examples for doing customer service in the new world. Both are heavy on evangelizing the new tools and why they matter. As a former customer service person, I think that Marsha Collier’s book does a little bit more to tie these ideas back to a mainstream customer service practice, but I think that both books are very much worth picking up to get a better take.…