The Four Intelligences of the Business Mind--Book Cover
The Four Intelligences of the Business Mind–Book Cover
The Four Intelligences of the Business Mind: How to Rewire Your Brain and Your Business for Success, by Valeh Nazemoff (CA Technologies, 2014), reviewed by Shel Horowitz, primary author, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

According to the Nazemoff, any successful business needs to concentrate on four different types of intelligence.

The first is financial intelligence, which most people already think about when they think about business.

But we also have to think about customer intelligence, data intelligence, mastermind intelligence. Mastermind is really what we normally think of as brainstorming. It’s the idea that a group of people can be smarter than any one individual.

In data intelligence, she suggests marrying the “9 Cs”—Collaborate, Consolidate, Communicate, Collect, Connect, Coordinate, Change, Converse, and Convert—to the classic 5Ws and an H that every beginning journalist learns to ask: Who, What, Where, When, Why, How.

Combining these, we get what she calls neuro-economics. And sometimes, small incremental changes that create a big result.

To me, the most interesting chapter was on customer intelligence. She talks about how to develop a customer profile, personas, and markets. and how to use this information to create communities. But she also shed some fascinating light on data. Specifically, the importance of determining whether your data is good. And I love her statement that success is not about how much data you have, but whether you have the right data.

These intelligences have implications in decision-making; Nazemoff talks about using them to determine who is responsible to make the decision, who is accountable, who gets consulted, and who simply gets informed.

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“Everything will be all right in the end. If it is not all right, then it is not yet the end.”

—Sonny (Dev Patel), in “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”

What a delight! The more you’ve traveled in developing countries, the more you will relate to this charming and yet deeply socially conscious movie (I have not been to India, but I found that my experiences in Latin America—and particularly Mexico—made it very easy to relate to the characters and their adventures.)

First off, it’s an excellent window on India—not the glitzy and modern upper-class Mumbai or Delhi of so many Bollywood movies, but the noisy, colorful, aromatic and yes, gritty reality of the working classes and poor of a less touristed Indian city (Jaipur). Yes, pretty much every one has a mobile phone, the hotel owner has a computer (a very ancient one), and three of the characters work at an Internet customer service company. Yet feels like an India pretty much unaffected by rapid technological change, and I found that quite charming.

Second, it’s another terrific performance by Dev Patel (you’ll recognize him; he played the lead in “Slumdog Millionaire”), this time as the eternally optimistic keeper of the decrepit rusk of a hotel that he’s trying to reinvent as “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly & Beautiful.”

We get to follow his first group of guests, a diverse bunch of aging Brits with a big range of reasons for making the trip. Some wholeheartedly embrace the adventure, one hides from it, and one enters the tableaux as an anti-black, anti-Indian racist who only crossed continents to get a faster and much less expensive hip replacement. Love interests and friendships spring up all over the place, including one traveler’s search for his long-lost male lover from 40 years earlier.

Besides the exotic travel and romantic comedy aspects, the movie addresses many issues at play in both India and the West: untouchability, arranged marriages versus love relationships, the economic collapse, same-sex relationships, racism, poverty, the place of secrets versus sharing in a relationship, cultural immersion versus tourism, family dynamics, and rose-colored-glasses optimism versus “business reality.”

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Reviewed by Shel Horowitz

A very good basic introduction to the most important social network platforms–and some truly extraordinary content about how and why to use video to achieve massive conversion rates. A nice Q&A section answers several common beginner questions, very sensibly.

Clearly written, and delightfully formatted for easy on-screen reading.

Shama also walks her talk. In the six or eight months since I first saw her name, I’m running into her everywhere: on Facebook, Twitter, as a teleseminar guest with various other expert marketers…all using the no-cost social media techniques she describes in this e-book.

I’d recommend this highly for those just starting out in social media, as a way to jump-start your education. And if you’re experienced but haven’t done video marketing yet, or have not found it effective, that short section will be more than worth the price.

Shel Horowitz, author of Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World and six other books

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