The Go-Giver

In 2012 I attended a week-long EntreLeadership event where they sent attendees home with a number of books (the “EntreLeadership Library” as they called it). One of those books was The Go-Getter, a short story about a WWI vet who has to overcome a number of obstacles to become successful and accomplish his tasks and work. I enjoyed the short read and naturally thought The Go-Giver was some type of extension of the idea. Well, it wasn’t really. It was a similar format—simple principles told through a simple story. But it was still quite different from The Go-Getter.

The nice thing about this book is that it’s short and easy to read. Even shorter than the book is the actual meat to the book. I didn’t take any notes while reading because it can truly be summed up in a bullet list that’s even part of the book itself. The book called it the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success. The name seems a bit reaching, but can be inspiring nonetheless.

The laws are demonstrated through the main character, Joe’s, last week of the third quarter in a year. He’s trying to meet a sales quota after missing the previous two quarter’s quotas. He spends a week learning these laws and applying them daily. The end of the story has Joe, roughly a year later, as a partner in a worldwide company. The “how he got there” part was slowly being built up through the preceding sections and characters in the book. In short, it had to do with network and selflessness. It's cheesy, but short enough to not bother me.