If Duncan Bannatyne can do it, so can you! Or so he’d like you to believe. With a title like “Anyone can do it” I was expecting a blueprint for succeeding in business but instead got more of an autobiograhy of DB’s life, from his tough upbringing to helping children out in Romania.
I’m not saying it’s a bad book, as quite the opposite. DB’s story is both engaging and interesting. The book also vaguely backs up his on screen character of being a bit of an arrogant cock, but none the less he does a lot of good charity work and is loyal to the ones who are loyal back. He’s had his fair share of ups and downs and on the face of it he totally deserves the wealth he’s accumulated over the years.
The book opens with the line “Making 100 million is so easy anyone can do it” and the book seems to be one long contradiction to it. I still prefer the Felix Dennis book by far, as that is a proper “how to succeed” book interlaced with personal examples rather then one long story that tries to suggest what it’s getting at through it’s chapter names.
Read it. It only took me a few days to plough through which is a record by my standards!
Humble Pie
For Christmas I got a copy of Gordon Ramsay’s Humble Pie from Emma. I’m a massive Gordon Ramsay fan so I was really looking forward to finding out more about the man himself. It’s a really short book. Even though it’s some 270 pages the print is huge and only takes up about 2/3rds of each pages printable size.
It’s always great reading about someone who came from such a horrible background and who went on to do really well for them self. A lot of people think Gordon Ramsay is just a loud mouth arrogant prick and in some respects he is, but he demands the best from the people who work for him and forcing them to work to his high standards is what has led to his food and restaurants being such a huge success. He has also rewarded the ones who stuck by and put up with him though as all the head chefs in his restaurants now are people who have worked under him for a long time.
I especially love watching his Kitchen Nightmares show. Nearly all the problems are painfully obvious, but more often then not the owners are just to stubborn to see it. Ramsay does his best to drill the message home sometimes with varying degrees of success. He rightfully says a lot of the time you need balls and it’s true. You need balls to face up to your problems, which 99% of the time, the owners don’t want to do. So they end up running away from their problems and trying to fix them buy putting their energy into the wrong solution, like putting up prices or inflating their menus.
As the saying goes “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!”