Lifemax Lending Library: Technology As Leverage
Welcome to the Lifemax Lending Library
I have always been a TV junkie. Despite my parents’ best attempts to cure their curious child’s boredom with books, I opted for Saturday morning cartoons instead. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I made the commitment to enrich my life by reading at least a few pages of a non-fiction book EVERY DAY, and now there’s no turning back.Shortly after joining the Lifemax Home Office team, I suggested the concept of a Lifemax Lending Library. I’ve acquired so many excellent books over the years, and wanted to share them with the Lifemax family. Within a couple days, our Director of IT, Jonathan Ducos, had created a virtual library (complete with online check-in and check-out capabilities) for our team to use. Since then, we’ve not only shared books internally, but we are putting the top business concepts into practice with regularity! How empowering it is to absorb the knowledge from an author’s decades of experience within a few short hours of solid reading time.
Sharing the Wealth
Keeping these books to ourselves would be selfish, so we have decided to share a few of our very favorite snippets with you via this newly created blog category aptly named, “Lifemax Lending Library” (creative, I know). We promise to source and attribute all material appropriately, and our hope is that these teasers will inspire you to grab the book (audiobooks, CDs, Kindlebooks, and the like are equally encouraged; however, there is an unparalleled feeling of satisfaction when you can scribble in the margins!) and read it for yourself.
Don’t Trust Me; Trust the Trust Agents
As this is the first Lifemax Lending Library post, we have selected a book titled, “Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust” by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Today’s selection comes from chapter 4, page 139.Brogan and Smith tackle a variety of tech subjects in this book, all centered around using the Web for business success. In this excerpt, the focus is on the benefits of being an early (technology) adopter:
Most people wait for technology to become common before they start taking advantage of it, but this is the kind of thing you should stop doing. Becoming an early adopter of technology sometimes means paying more, or putting effort into understanding a certain tool before there’s a manual for it, but it also means you’re there at the beginning, which leaves you in a better position than others when the technology is common, even connecting you with more business opportunities.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?! As our entire company moves into its fifth month of Team Office adoption, we can’t help but consider this fairly recent technology shift we have taken together. What was difficult for some and a breath of fresh air for others still presented one over-arching challenge for all: CHANGE. Change, especially when it comes to technology, is difficult. Let’s just call a spade a spade. Unless you’ve just finished reading a self-help book, no one wakes up in the morning and says, “Ooh! Today is the day I want to experience a rocking shift to the way I am accustomed to doing things!” Get real. But what this passage reminds us of is the BENEFITS to moving through the tougher parts of change and into the success that only comes when we embrace technology for its possibilities. As Brogan and Smith continue:
The real secret of the most successful people on the Web is that they are always trying new things… Early adopters always know more about what’s coming up, and that leads to advantage, over and over again. The company that doesn’t see how it should innovate will always lose over the one that knows how, because it leverages that information to dominate its marketplace. And so should you.
This is not to say we don’t still empathize with the growing pains technology change presents; believe me, we do. With thousands of hard-working distributors working to overcome tech challenges, your small-but-mighty Home Office team members continue to collaborate with leading software provider, Xennsoft, to define these challenges and solve them as quickly as possible. In the meantime, go out and grab yourself a copy of “Trust Agents” and join us in learning how to not only survive, but thrive, in the World Wide Web.And since I just finished the last page of the book today, I’m off to find a new read…Happy reading!Jenni “Lifemax Librarian and Other Titles, Too” SmithTrust Agents, Copyright 2009 by Chris Brogan and Julien SmithPublished by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New JerseyWith special thanks to @JennSelke, PhD for turning me on to this little goldmine.
