I thought it might be nice to organize the books that Katie and I own or have talked about here on Aridni.  I’ve started to put together the Aridni Library -click here to check it out- there are still some books that need to go in.  And I’d like to get them linked up to relevant posts later on.

So this is a starting point for that process.  I hope it will become a helpful resource for you as it gets developed more and more.  Pretty soon we’re going to need to get a librarian on staff!!

I recently finished reading ‘The Art of Deception - Controlling the Human Element of Security’ which is a book written by Kevin Mitnick. In case you haven’t heard of Mitnick before, he is the most famous social engineer ever.

Social Engineering is basically using the social skills of influence and persuasion to get whatever the the persuader wants. It relies heavily on the reliance and exploitation of basic human trust. It’s quite similar to being a conman, only usually it’s done against a company rather than an individual.

Mitnick talks about various workarounds in security systems that can be bypassed by anyone using the correct lexicon who sounds like they know what they are talking about. He explains different methods of attack and ways to get a hold of information using different scenarios.

A good portion of the book is about shielding your company from attacks from social engineers and possible policies that you might want to employ. This portion of the book is done very well and I would recommend checking it out, espicially if you have never heard of social engineering before.

The net worth is struggling to maintain itself these days, and to be honest, I’m not thinking about money to the point of obsession like I used to. Instead, I’m experiencing the things that I haven’t been able to do since college:

learning how to cook
writing a book

My husband is doing something he’s always wanted to do:

earning a master’s degree

While my co-personal finance bloggers experience rapid growth this year, we’re setting different goals for ourselves that involve personal development and enrichment. I work part time until May, which is the coolest feeling I have ever experiencing about work. Working 9 to 5+++ was the most miserable experience I have ever had.

Now I don’t have to worry about what the boss thinks or if I’ll lose my job or how to spend my messily vacation days. I have total freedom for myself, which no one else in my office experiences. Sure I get paid less. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves what matters most: lots of money or lots of freedom.

I read a fantastic book that illustrated the way I was feeling:
The Anti 9-to-5 : Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube

I suggest that anyone feeling frustrated with work take a glance. It has some fantastic strategies for reflecting on what makes you happiest and determining how to obtain the best situation for your working self. The fact that it’s targeted to women is something pretty much only relevant in the title. The rest is easily male or female.

Nearly every modern business and finance book quotes the theory of Napoleon Hill. His most popular book is “Think and Grow Rich” and naturally, I had to snag the book to see Napoleon Hill’s wisdom for myself.

The most important thing illustrated so far is that money doesn’t make happiness. Money is only a piece of your happiness formula.

The 12 things which constitute happiness:

1. a positive mental attitude
2. sound physical health
3. harmony in human relationships
4. freedom from fear
5. the hope of future achievement
6. the capacity for applied faith
7. willingness to share one’s blessings with others
8. to be engaged in the labor of love
9. an open mind on all subjects toward all people
10. complete self discipline
11. wisdom with which to understand people
12. financial security

It turns out your people-pleasing work ethic may not get you ahead. You’re not taking any risks to make the company—and you—any better. Kate White, author of Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do is already teaching me a few useful strategies… and I just started the book.

This subsection really stood out in my mind:

Never Appear at the Mercy of Your Time

Because it’s important to a good girl to be perceived as a hard worker, she never minds (in fact she likes it) if someone catches her looking a little frantic: riffling through papers, dashing down the hall with her hair flying, lugging home a huge pile of work on Friday afternoon. Begin in overdrive, she believes, shows everyone that she not only has lots to do but is getting it done.

Though it’s import to be perceived as energetic, acting frazzled or short on time actually creates the impression that you aren’t under control, and that calamity is waiting just around the corner to ambush you. It makes bosses reluctant to turn more responsibility over to you and it makes co-workers and subordinates as anxious as passengers on a bumpy 747.

Anyone else seen him/herself doing this same thing in the past?

The National Realtors Association keeps an up-to-date database of recommended books on real estate and personal finance. Check out their Weekly Book Scan for some good reads, many of which you may never have heard of before.

Last night, I picked up “The Everything Homebuying Book” at my local library. As a real estate agent, I expected this book to be as dry and mundane as my real estate courses were. But the book was surprisingly to the point with tidbits scattered throughout.

The book covers everything from buying a fixer upper to selecting your town (with consideration to taxes, schools, and community programs) and determining the perfect home and finance strategy. The only thing the book lacked from my opinion was sample paperwork. What does a deed look like? How about a buy/sell agreement or rental contract when I rent out a bedroom?

We have an article on Aridni that might be useful to you, too.

And when you’re thinking of buying a home, this book may be invaluable to you… especially if you can get it for free at your local library, too!

Last week, I found myself critiquing and tisk, tisking the coffee selections at an organic grocery store. I don ‘t even drink coffee!

But I was in the progress of reading, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. I picked up the book to learn about fast-growing startups and found myself picking up a few tips on the best roast and coolest coffee house colors from the Starbucks point of view. So what did I learn (besides the perfect foam spread) from “one of the most amazing business stories in decades”?

There is no more precious a commodity than the relationship of trust and confidence a company has with its employees. If people believe management is not fairly sharing the rewards, they will feel alienated. Once they start distrusting management, the company ’s future is compromised.

In daily life, you get so much pressure from friends and family and colleagues, urging you to take the easy way, to follow the prevailing wisdom, that it can be difficult not to simply accept the status quo and do what ’s expected of you. But when you really believe in yourself, in your dream you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No greater achievement happens by luck.

To any entrepreneur, I would offer this advice: once you’ve figured out what you want to do, find someone who has done it before. Find not just talented executives but even more experienced entrepreneurs and business people who can guide you. They know where to look for the mines in the minefield. If they have thought and acted boldly in their own careers, and proven successful, they can help you do the same.

One of the most fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure.

Success is not an entitlement. We have to earn it every day. Just because Starbucks has achieved all its goals in the past didn’t mean that we were immune to mistakes. We had to be in a mode of constant renewal and recognize that the future of our company was not based on what we achieved yesterday. We had to preserver, even when our near-term targets seem out of reach.

So would I recommend this book? I ‘m not sure. The first hundred pages were great; I couldn’t stop reading. Of course, I also don’t know if I’ve ever been in an actual Starbucks, so I was seeing the business as more than a conglomerate giant that is consuming America and the world. I saw the company from the personal and passionate vantage point of the CEO. I enjoyed wearing the rosy glasses. And I enjoyed the constant reflections the stuff you and I can gain from in our own lives.

But then the book started to drag on. I didn’t see so much reflection, just a lot of bragging. The rest of the book took me weeks to finish, and I didn’t get much out of it. The last two chapters wrapped up in the typical “we ‘ll keep working to be the best and live happily ever after”. I wasn’t reading Disney, though!

As the cold weather starts to set in, I thought we could all use a few chuckles today. I’m currently reading “The Warren Buffet Way” and got a kick out of this paragraph (pg 89):

Buying an underwear maker [Fruit of the Loom] creates lots of opportunities for corny jokes, and Buffet, an accomplished punster, made the most of it. At the 2002 shareholders meeting, when asked the obvious question, he teased the audience with a half answer: “When I wear underwear at all, which I rarely do…” Leaving the crowd to decide for themselves whether it’s boxers or briefs for Buffett. He pointed out why there’s “a favorable bottom line” in underwear: “It’s an elastic market.” Finally, he deadpanned, Charlie Munger had given him an additional reason to buy the company:

“For years Charlie has been telling me, ‘Warren, we have to get into women’s underwear.’ Charlie is 78. It’s now or never.”

A lot of people ask Todd and me what Aridni stands for. Guy Kawaski, author of the blog, “How to Change the World“, has an explanation for crazy entity names that don’t necessarily mean anything at all…

A remarkable name for your organization, product, or service is like pornography: It’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Here’s some great entrepreneurial creativity from The Book of Business Anecdotes:

When F. W. Woolworth opened his first store, a merchant on the same street tried to fight the new competition. He hung out a big sign: “Doing business in this same spot for over fifty years.”

The next day Woolworth also put out a sign. It read: “Established a week ago: no old stock.”

My boss is angry again today. I don’t know why he’s mad, but instead of helping him along, I am finding myself snapping right back just a little.

Anger raises everyone’s metabolism and decreases enthusiasm. My coworkers and I need to hear his anger sometimes to keep us focused—though the cost this degrading attitude places on my office? I’m not always sure that the aggressive, football player, cream your butt kind of attitude works outside of the playing field.

We hold little control over the attitude of others; we have control over ourselves, though. You can’t make people around you better so much as you can make yourself a better person.

Marshall Goldsmith addresses management through anger in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. His book, a bestseller, holds a lot of tips on how to improve yourself, specifically in the office environment. He writes, “We save a special place in our minds for our chronically angry colleagues. No matter what else they do, we brand them as easily combustible. When we talk about them, the first words out of people’s mouths are, ‘I hear he has a temper.’”

I don’t think that you can make aggressively angry people change. You can only change how you respond to their attitude. If you keep your mouth shut, no one can know how you feel, and that’s a good thing. Once you can appreciate the ability to resist a crude comment, the benefits start to roll in. Goldsmith points out that you won’t embarrass yourself. You won’t create enemies. And best of all, you can resist better in the future.