Book Review: Building a Business the Buddhist Way

The proud owner of an Ikea Expedit shelving unit jammed to the rafters full of environmental management texts cannot pretend to be too interested in the romance of escaping through a good novel (unless its by Michael Ondaatji). I do however love Geri Larkin's Building a Business the Buddhist Way wherein she councils a well balanced "5 course meal" lifestyle of spirituality, study and learning, making a living, doing good and most importantly family and relationships.

The gist: This book is for beginners who are wondering how to merge business with "right lifestyle" or for those who want to fine tune an existing business. Geri takes us through a myriad of exercises throughout 5 chapters that lead one to an understanding of what path we are meant to choose in life by taking us back to the things we loved and hated doing before we became adults and forgot how to have fun in the fully immersed childhood sense of fun.

My take away message: Build a business plan. Build a business plan. Go back to your business plan frequently and revise. Need help with that? A painless business plan scripting tool awaits over at the Scotia Bank website. No matter that you don't belong to the Scotia Bank or are located half way around the world from the nearest branch. This tool is user friendly and translates to any format. It exists to make  the process easy. And it works! They even provide examples every step of the way to get you thinking about your own direction and particulars.

Book reviews abound this week! Over at Crafting an MBA's book club  Part 2 of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath focuses on "designing sticky products". Please visit Megan at CMBA for tons of business advice and discussion for designers, crafters and makers.

I learned about Where Women Create via The Bright Side Project, which will be next on my list of non-environmental texts to read. A little review here.