Cult Status
As Phillip Seymour Hoffman once quipped, you can view anything as a “cult” and some might claim that a “cult” is a religion with no political power, or is it?
Media luminary Tim Duggan takes us on an insightful journey down the rabbit hole of what constitutes a “cult” company and analysis what exactly constitutes and contributes to its status. Especially during current COVID-19 times, the strong identification a customer has with a company is more important than ever and companies emerging in this day and age, seem to have those evolving relationships firmly on their radar.
Duggan breaks the achievement of cult status down into common denominators comprised of seven dedicated steps / chapters, with each being embedded into anecdotes and framed with interviews, from which Duggan extracts and exemplifies fundamental learnings that the reader is tasked to implement in their respective business or project.
While it is interesting to see that to some extent there is a formula to achieving cult status, Duggan also does not miss to point out that there is a “je ne sais quoi” factor, which amplifies what a charismatic leader can achieves, part of which can be attributed to leadership emanating from the middle, not the front or back, i.e. the community a community has managed to build feels included and related to. The proof is in the pudding as the phenomenon explains why e.g. a lot of crowdfunded start-ups manage to often find an enthusiastic array of investors that become part of the journey and thereby a resource of liquidity that can be tapped into whenever needed.
An interesting tome no matter if you are trying your hand as an entrepreneur looking for guidance in a principled and creative manner or if your viewpoint is that of a consumer.
We're All Going To Die
Stefen Hunt
The power of letting go can be immensely liberating and what greater fear could be let go off than the inevitability of death?
Instead of indulging in trivial distractions, Stefen Hunt has made the credo and personal epiphany “We’re All Going to Die” his maxim when it comes to the mundane trials that determine our lives and often cause anxiety and dread – an outlook that be empowering as it can help to reshape your perspective on life.
Based on a poem as the genesis and cataclysm for this book, Stefen Hunt’s book explores and tackles the deciphering the meaning of life from a child’s viewpoint. Drawing and illustrations accompany the eloquent prose, which puts the reader at their centre as they prompt questions to carefully question things one perceives to be set in stone, with the omnipresent and underlying question if you’d live your life in the same way if you knew the reaper was going to come a-knockin’ tomorrow.
A life-affirming book that serves as a reminder that it can be forgiven to fear the dark, but one should not feel afraid and paralysed by the light.
