Rating: 
Summary: One Of The Great Business Books
Review: "Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive" is Harvey Mackay's classic business book and one of my personal favorites. Each business lesson is only about one and a half pages long, so you don't need a shark's appetite to gobble it down.Some of my favorite Mackay lessons: -- The most important clause in a contract isn't a clause. It's dealing with honest people. -- Mackay's Dad's advice: "It doesn't matter how many pails of milk you spill, just so you don't lose the cow." (Mackay's from Minnesota where business advice is often phrased in terms of cows. Often entrepreneurs make mistakes that cost them money, but that's not as bad as making a mistake that destroys the company. Don't be afraid to be creative and test things to find out what works best. Non-Minnesotans can think goose and golden egg. Mackay says that for the first five years after purchasing a small, struggling envelope manufacturing company with a revenue of $200,000, he "...teetered between bankruptcy and insanity." But, he didn't lose the cow. Today, Mackay Envelope has a revenue of about $85 million, if I recall correctly.) --Know something about your customer as well as your product. Mackay does an excellent job here. He develops the Mackay 66 which is a profile of your customers. It asks such things as: What are your customer's hobbies? Interests? Political and religious orientation? Knowing the customer is important in relating to him or her. Mackay says the same principle is crucial to establishing contacts with influential people. Learn something about the person, so you have an idea of their hobbies, interest, values, etc. Then, you'll know what hot buttons interest them. And, what topics to avoid. For example, many, many, many years ago, when Mackay met Fidel Castro, Mackay asked Fidel how he kept in great shape. Castro, who prided himself on his physical prowess, told Mackay he was an active bowler. (Note to bowlers: Take up jogging. Give up the cigars.) When, Mackay told Castro that he was a champion bowler in college, Castro became excited to have met someone who shared a similar interest. --Believe in yourself. Mackay, an avid sports fan, discusses runners first achieving the four-minute mile. Many people believed that running a four-minute mile was impossible (for me, it is!), but after the first runner achieved it and showed it could be done, many other runners broke the four-minute mile, until doing so was necessary to be competitive. --Never give a speech once. Practice it in front of a test audience. That way you'll find out what jokes bomb and can cut them. Mackay is considered one of the very best public speakers in the world, and he gives some advice about public speaking in this book. Speaking and communication are valuable business skills. Mackay writes: "Learn to use the language. Written and spoken. Anyone who's a word dink has got it made." We word dinks like that! Although I'm not so sure it's fully true for everyone. But, at something over $20,000 per pop for a speech, with a nationally-syndicated small business column, and over eight million books sold, dinking around with words certainly hasn't hurt Mackay. Mackay writes: "Like most salespeople, I've spent a lifetime trying to build a network of customers and friends... . There are two ways to do it: retail and wholesale. Retail means the one-at-a-time kind of contacts that are built up through participation in community and social activities. Wholesale means the recognition, and acceptance, extended by people who don't know you personally but who have heard about you as a speaker, read your articles, or read about your civic activities in the paper." This is the sort of book I like to reread every few years. I highly recommend it to entrepreneurs and people interested in business. Salespeople, negotiators, and avid sports fans will enjoy it the most. Peter Hupalo, Author of "Thinking Like An Entrepreneur."
Rating:
Summary: Fun, Entertaining, and Informative!
Review: "Swim with the Sharks" is definite a fun, entertaining, and informative reading for the entrepeneur. Entrepeneur books fall into the serious class. "Sharks" becomes both serious and
fun. Sharks is part of reference library forever.
Reading the book is a joy. Harvey Mackay's situations and experiences have helped with my
business negotiations and transactions. This book
is definitely in a class by itself.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for those in competetive business situations
Review: ... This book, for me, was a guide in how to conduct myself in this difficult environment in an ethical manner, yet still succeed. I'll never forget reading the maxim, "Don't get mad, DON'T get even". After observing the behavior of those around me, many from the nation's top B schools, I was stunned to read this. They don't teach these types of ethics in MBA school. Anyway, I was dumbfounded when I read this simple rule, but Mackay deftly explains how this will not only help you rationalize your situation, but actually excel in this environment. This is just one example. The book lays out Mackay's extremely wise philosophy. It is important to read this book and learn how to work with the sharks, reduce your anxiety, create win-win situations, and not be eaten.
Rating: 
Summary: Nuts!
Review: A bunch of feel-good stories about the author. The only real meat is his list of questions about his/your customers. The substance of the book is: find out all you can about you customers AND find out how they fit in and see the companies they represent. The only good news is the book has so little substance it took me only an hour to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Manager's text book
Review: A very good book, where all advices are grouped into smart categories like Lessons and Quickies. Some advices do make you think, however others do not seem to belong in the book. Anyway, the book belongs in the foundation of modern management. I do recomment.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Sales Primer
Review: Anyone interested in making sales (Any type of sales) their career, would benefit from reading this book. Much of the text borders on the obvious, however it's strange how often we neglect the obvious. I first read this book (9) years ago. I continue to pick it up to this date as a refresher. Harvey Mackey does an excellent job of making this a "I can't put it down book" Non-avid readers will breese through the pages. Must read!
Rating:
Summary: Must Read
Review: Are you are serious about getting ahead? You have to read this book. Don't listen to the "thubs up" guy if he would have listened to Harvey he would not be in the position he is now "2 years latter". Harvey gives the reader real life examples of how to get ahead in your life. If your looking to get ahead in your job read "Sharkproof" by MacKay. Harvey's writing style is great, you can't put the book down.... I have read all of Harvey's books and have went out and bought more to give to people I have met who want to get more out of their life and their job.... in fact I applied one of Harvey's story's to my own personal life and got a job starting out at 40K per year. I highly, highly recommend ALL of Harvey's books.
Rating:
Summary: Better than most "examples from my life" books
Review: At first I was skeptical of this book as another one of those "here are some stories from my life" books. However, Mackay manages to give relevant examples that can help anyone. In the same tradition as "What they Don't Teach you at Harvard Business School" - this book talks about lessons that you can either learn through other people's examples, or through your own life. Obviously, no book can teach you all the examples or even teach them as effectively as if they were to happen to you, but this book does a good job of being specific enough to be useful while being general enough that it can apply to more than just sales people. The point that Mackay makes is that there are many factors that influence a sale beyond the simple merits of the product/service itself. Many an entrepreneur, including myself, has believed that simply having the best product will make you the automatic leader. This is far from true. Read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Super Quick, Super Stuff
Review: Excellent popular manual for quick rules of thumb to operate in business today. As a speaker I know the value of providing information that is immediately digestible with take-away value. Primary to this work is the Mackay 66, a list of questions/statistics that you should gather about all your prospects and customers in order to really Wow 'em.
Rating:
Summary: Best self-improvement book I have ever read
Review: I am generally very skeptical about inspirational/ "how-to better your life" type of books because most of them teach very practical common sense (and many times seem to be taking their target audience to be naive idiots). Mackay's book is however, different. I heard this book on cassette during the drive from/ to work, and found it to give wonderful advise and examples of negotiations, determination, management and salesmanship. I noted that some of his techniques I have used successfully even before reading this book. His ideas have inspired me to finetune my techniques, as well as learn some other important pointers which I was too complacent to note. With an attractive price, this is without question a BEST BUY.
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