Okay, I'll fess up. When I first received a copy of Ryan Allis' book Zero To One Million, I took one look at the cover and groaned. Here was a photo of a very young looking guy smiling smugly. Surely this was going to be yet another me-too book on starting a business. Or worse, a glorified commercial for Allis' company iContact.
Boy, was I wrong.
If I had to recommend one book on start ups, it would be Guy Kawasaki's classic Art Of The Start. If I had to recommend two, the second would be Ryan Allis' Zero To One Million. Yep, it is THAT good. So good that I'll be talking about it all of this week.
What I love about this book is how gutsy it is. Allis isn't afraid to give solid, concrete numbers and strategies based on his own experience with building multiple companies to over a million a year in sales (at the ripe ol' age of 23). Love it, hate it, agree or disagree, the numbers are there.
For example: He advises to use your target key word 5 times on your homepage. No airy fairy number there. A solid 5 times.
I expect that this book is going to instigate discussion and force some "experts" to put their own numbers on the line.
And that is a very good thing for those of us working on our own start ups.