Pilot Your Life: How to Create the Career You Want

Some of the jokes in the beginning of chapters are very funny. This is not a book for just one read through. Some chapters are all about how to start off in business, while others seem not applicable until in upper management. Although very interesting, much of the book was only applicable to those that either do not know how to start off their career, or how to become a successful manager. If you are in sales, however, I strongly recommend this book. This book almost made me want to go into sales.

I have to admit that I am biased as I have known Ron Shaw my entire life but setting this aside this book contains some wonderful recipes for life and business success. Ron's entrepreneurial story of survival in building a mid sized US business offers far more practical insights and executable strategies than several recent books written by Fortune 10 business executives. Not that the later are not intersting, it is just hard to translate stories from a Company that never faced a capital crisis into reality for most of us in today's economy. Also you get a great sense of the importance of community in this book. Finally, this is also not a parochial story as the author was amongst the first executives to embrace Japan in a business setting. I get the sense that the people who founded Google read the hardcover version in 2001-2002. Well worth the read for all of us.