Making It Happen

by Peter Sheahan

There is something you want, isn't there? Is it more success? More money? Greater impact? More control?The question is, do you want it enough to part with your time, money and energy for some insight into how to make it a reality? If so, Making it Happen is the book for you.Peter Sheahan has transformed his own life from managing hotels in his youth to being the founder and CEO of a highly successful consultancy called the Centre for Skills Development, which undertakes large-scale behavioural-change projects. Having shared his thoughts on counter-intuitive business thinking in his book Flip!, he now wants to enable you to take your ideas and make them happen.Are you ready to answer the call? Are you going to leave your current organisation better than when you arrived, or set up a successful company of your own? Is your career going to be worth talking about? What will you tell your children, and your children's children, about your life? Will they be proud? Will they want to retell your story? Will your life be an example of what is possible?The world is full of ideas - everyone has them - but the world does not have enough people who know how to turn their ideas into great results. Peter Sheahan is here to help you to make a difference.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

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.