Making It Happen

by Peter Sheahan

Turning your good ideas into great results!Do you find yourself asking what's next? You have a ton of great ideas but you are unsure how to make them work. What's next? You have started your business but it is not making the money you'd hoped it would. What's next? This book is what's next. The world is not short of ideas, but it is short of people who know how to carry them out. If there is something more that you want - money, influence, impact - then this book will guide you through the five competencies you need to master to make it happen. You know you are ready! It is time to answer the call - the call to take control of your own life, to make a difference, to start your business, launch your charity, get promoted. It is time to take the good ideas in your head and make them a reality. Peter Sheahan has a reputation for making it happen fast. By 30, he had established two international multimillion-dollar consulting practices and authored five books, including the bestsellers Generation Y and Flip. Let him share with you the strategies that make Google, BMW and Goldman Sachs his clients.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Chinara Ahmadova · Rating 4 out of 5]

I consider this book one of the most spot-on books in marketing and sales theme. From great real life examples to his life experience; the author shows that through the power of packaging, positioning the offer, influencing the buyer, acceleration and reinvention, you can actually make all your dream ideas come to reality.

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and motivational. Got a few points out of it.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by this. I expected it to be very similar to Flip, but it was quite different. For one, his style was more toned down and I didn't feel like I had to image him giving a speech to make the text work. (Though there was one laugh out loud moment that I instantly imagined him delivering). For another thing, the content was more structured and more broadly applicable. It was about selling, not just some pie-in-the-sky ideas about how to change your business. I think I'm not so good at selling, so many of the ideas were good ones for me to chew on.

Ultimately, though, the issue I have with this type of book is that it's nice to read and I feel like it all makes sense, but if I'm not putting it into practice then it kind of gets lost. Most of that is up to me to...make happen...so it's not the book's fault. As far as the book goes, I thought it was a very enjoyable read and did have some good thoughts, especially for those people who are trying to promote themselves in some way.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

College is an interesting place.

I spent 4 years learning stuff like this and then I come out of it and lose it all. It's not because I'm forgetting the information though, it's just that when you're sitting in class and your professor is drawing dependency charts and talking about crashing projects all while managing resources and man-hours through complicated excel spreadsheets, you tend to lose a grip on the practical applications of what you're learning.

This book brought me back to what I had learned in college, but provided much needed refresher and context as to why projects are managed in one way or another. It did this in a very approachable way that provided you with not only the how, but the why as well, which helps you remember the ideas.

If you don't like business-book narrative (think the one minute manager), then this book is not for you. If you want an easy read to get a better grasp on the more technical project management jargon and methodologies then I would recommend it.

[Robert Bogue · Rating 3 out of 5]

With a title of Making It Happen you might expect that the book is all about execution. How do you get the idea converted into action? At some level this is true, it’s about making ideas happen. However, at another level, it’s not. It’s less about execution and more about converting the good idea into something that you can sell. This is a marketing book. However, it’s not a marketing book in the same sense as Guerrilla Marketing, or The New Rules of Marketing and PR. It’s a marketing book in terms of how do you market your product through understanding and focusing. Making It Happen drives this further to talk about how to leverage your market offering once you get it refined.

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[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

READ AUG 2012

Good resource for anyone looking to exercise their initiative muscle. Sheahan provides a good model for anyone looking to turn their ideas into actionable solutions.

Best quotes; "make sure your offer engages at least three of the human drives" (p. 165); "you feel most alive when you are in pursuit of someting, not in possession of it" (p. 266); "drive your stake deep, but don't get caught in the hole that you dig" (p. 273).

[Fiona McEachran · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some amazing gems of wisdom in this book, and for those it is worth reading. There are some parts, especially in the middle, where I started to dose off, but I kept going and was glad I did.

[Christine Tan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hate the tone of the book, hate how repetitive it is, and also I felt what I read most in the first few chapters (the only chapters I read) are what was already obvious (to me anyway). Hence, a waste of time and money for me.

[Genevieve Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I needed a push to start selling my business services and this book gave me structure and confidence to get on with this part of my business.