branding

Read anything good lately?

Reading. We all learn how to - and spend years doing so too. So why is it that we’re finding it more and more difficult to do the most obvious thing possible to learn from people around us.

Some years ago, I was privileged enough to spend some time around a group of businessmen who took it on themselves to mentor a group of young entreprenuers.

The lessons were many. Parables and stories were the weapons of choice when it came to peeling away the layers of misconception and we-know-what’s-right that we all bore.

But one of the most common topics that were reinforced to us over and over again was the need to read.

Leaders Read & Readers Lead

Constantly. Everything. About everything. From everyone.

To just keep on reading till there wasn’t anything let to read …and then to start all over again.

There was one story in particular that one of them told us that stuck with me.

In Malaysia, books aren’t as cheap as you would expect. While a book in the United States by thinkers like Seth Godin or Tom Peters could be in the USD20 or so range, books here (especially business related ones) tend to start at Ringgit Malaysia or RM50 onwards. Big difference when you do a dollar for dollar comparison.

Now what this does is make it even more challenging to decide on what to get and then commit to getting it.

However, the reasoning given by this *now* retired mentor of mine was this: I’d be paying a mere RM50 (that’s about USD20 to USD30) for a book. That much was true. But I wasn’t paying for just a bunch of pages with words on it. I was paying for the privilege to acquire and learn from a man/woman’s experience.

Effectively I was buying someone’s lifetime of knowledge and very quickly learning from them!

Now when you think about it in those terms, isn’t it much more relevant?

It helps if you love to read. But even if you don’t it is something that any professional - and more so a public relations or branding professional - must do. We have to stay on the cutting edge of everything - business, politics, technology, society, luxury goods and fashion … the list is endless.

How else can we truly have an informed opinion and a seat at the table when it comes time to explore, advance, enhance and extend the messages and the knowledge of our clients and our own firms?

Check out the list of 100 books that every PR person should read on this blog. It’s a work in progress and it’s a start. But then again - you’ve already taken the first step by reading this blog.

So what do you think? How important is reading more then just blogs, magazines or newspapers? Are books still relevant?

© 2008 Journeys Through The Line.