What are you reading this summer? Here are pages the OWC team bookworms are turning this month, spanning subjects from fun fiction to personal development and philosophy. Please share your picks, so we can add to our stack.
Tracy Williams
Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard by Bo Seo (Publisher: Penguin Press, Publication Date: June 7, 2022, Price: $22.80)
I was a high school and collegiate debater, and at the time, my debate scholarship and hard-won trophies often felt like a full-time job that was costing me 10 times the tuition value. So, I was excited to read Bo Seo’s story of success at the very top. Seo was the #1 debater in Australia, then at Harvard, and he won at the highest levels globally. He believes the relevance of debate is more important than ever, because listening to both sides of any story is hard these days. After all, aren’t we all too polarized to have a good argument? But as Seo points out, the first critical step in debate is to refine a topic of a debate starting with a narrow proposition where we can argue for the affirmative and the negative side. Leaders must understand both sides in order to create reasonable solutions. There are different forms of collegiate debate, all competitive beyond explanation because they’re conducted by supple young minds interested in the world … and in winning. Winning in debate isn’t about being right, it’s about making salient and provable points that support your argument. Debate team energy creates different pathways for understanding an issue and approaches to solving problems. It isn’t about knowing the most, it’s about formulating the right questions, then understanding that wherever there is an affirmative case to be made there must also be a negative case. Debate changes minds. In my own case, I now realize it was actually worth 10 times the cost of tuition.
Sam Short
Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind by Andy Dunn (Publisher: Currency, Publication Date: May 10, 2022, Price: $19.50)
Dunn writes this memoir to erase the stigma of mental health that feels inescapable in the world of business – especially for entrepreneurs. Although 72% of entrepreneurs have reported mental health concerns, very few dare to open up about this issue, which is the dark side of success. The importance of taking care of yourself is the real secret to success. Over the past few years, corporate leaders and business owners have made a change to prioritize their employee’s mental health. Workers are now choosing jobs based on the corporate culture and work-life balance. The boundary of a work-life balance is easily erased for entrepreneurs and career-driven individuals, but how can you truly be successful if you aren’t taking care of your mental health? Dunn outlines how he got his start and what it took to get there – mainly long hours, lack of sleep and nonexistent work-life balance. Dunn tells us of the roller-coaster ride of his company, his relationships, how it all fell apart and his work to put it back together, which he did while struggling to keep the secret of his bipolar disorder.
Phyllis Wade
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
(Publisher: Scribner, Publication Date: September 28, 2021, Price: $18.00)
Cloud Cuckoo Land is a novel told in three stories from 15th century Constantinople to present-day Idaho to a spaceship hurtling across space decades in the future. The story follows the lives of Anna and Omeir, who live in the 15th century; Zeno and Seymour who live in contemporary times; and Konstance who lives in the future all connected through a lost Greek play called “Cloud Cuckoo Land.” The characters are all well written, engaging and loveable and the story itself is a kind of puzzle which makes for a really satisfying ending when all the pieces start to fit. While the story can be dark at times, I walked away with an overall feeling of optimism and hope. If only we humans can keep alive our connections to each other through time and place, maybe all is not lost. This novel is so beautifully written and so absorbing that you can’t stop reading it and yet you dread the thought of finishing.
Yakira Muhammad
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
(Publisher: HarperCollins, 3rd Edition, Publication Date: January 28, 2014, Price: $14.00)
After hearing CEOs reference “Crossing the Chasm,” I wanted to learn what this phrase meant in layman’s terms. In the third edition, Geoffrey A. Moore points to the gap in the technology adoption cycle for high-tech consumer markets as the chasm that must be crossed. He strategically starts off with a name that we all know so well – Mark Zuckerberg. All innovators want their products to sell and become as big as Facebook or Apple; however, many fail to achieve this. The key is the technology adoption cycle which consists of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. The vast gap or “chasm” is between the early adopters and the early majority. Early adopters are eager to try out new products while the early majority waits longer to see if the product increases productivity. Your job is to cross this gap to reach a larger market segment. This gives me a much better perspective in how we serve our clients to help them cross the chasm and grow.
Wes Robinson
Grit by Angela Duckworth (Publisher: Scribner, Publication Date: August 21, 2018, Price: $9.99)
Are you hiring the smartest person in the room? You may not get the results you are looking for. Hire for “grit!” Grit combines passion and persistence to deliver better results. I believe that PR people are some of the grittiest people you will ever meet. We don’t let any obstacle get in our way of delivering results – media declines, client delays or challenging deadlines are only speed bumps to PR executives. The book does a great job of highlighting that anyone with a little bit of talent can create skills with enough effort. And those skills, combined with more effort, can create achievement. Data from the military to the spelling bee is used to show how you can improve grit over time. I am a living grit testimony to this – early in my career, my writing was lacking, and I worked hard, took classes, attended webinars and did a lot of writing to become an award-winning writer from the Public Relations Society of America. It is one of my most treasured awards because it was only achieved after years of hard work and persistence.
Paulo Acuña
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (Publisher: Random House, Publication Date: January 2, 2007, Price: $19.00)
The journey to the next great idea seems like an onerous and impossible task amid a corporate world that is overworked, burned out and anxious. Why are some ideas good while others deemed “bad?” Curiosity is made to be nurtured and explored, but communicating your ideas well is crucial, because some good ideas get lost in translation. The authors spotlight the elements you need to make your idea stand out: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion and real stories. My favorite element of this book were the real-world examples, from the outlandish to the emotionally charged. It’s never too late to feed your brain before your next lightbulb moment.
Ryan Negrette
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
(Publisher: Beacon Press, Publication Date: June 1, 2006, Price: $11.99)
I was truly unprepared for how powerful this book was going to be when it was first assigned to me back in college. The story of Frankl’s life is shocking, but also encouraging through his message of hope at the end. The first half follows his personal testimony as a Jewish Holocaust survivor and making it through the horrors of four different Nazi concentration camps. There is no detail spared here. From this, the second half takes a stylistic turn and becomes a guide, where he uses his story to show why life has meaning despite the pain that comes with it. He wrestles with deep tensions and heavy questions that we should all ask ourselves. For those looking to live a meaningful life, Frankl offers an answer that you need to hear more about.
Tiffany Rodriguez
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant (Publisher: Viking, Publication Date: February 2, 2021, Price $16.75)
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant digs into the territory of cognitive errors, biases, prejudices, and mental blind spots that can hold us back from developing an interest in learning new things and seeing others’ perspectives. It can be comforting to lean on what we know in today’s continuously changing landscape, but we must be able to unlearn, rethink and relearn to succeed in our complex, dynamic world. In “Think Again,” Grant gives us permission to doubt ourselves and pushes us to reconsider, rethink, reevaluate and reimagine our beliefs, thoughts and identities, so we can ultimately find more success and happiness in life. This book is a wake-up call to shake off our “Groundhog Day” mentality to find a new way of thinking and strengthen our cognitive and problem-solving skills to find new solutions to old problems and revisit old solutions to new problems.
IN THE NEWS
OWC secures Wall Street Journal feature for CompoSecure
OWC secured a feature in The Wall Street Journal for our client CompoSecure, a leading provider of premium financial payment cards and cryptocurrency storage and security solutions. The article was featured in the “Future of Everything” section and covered the future of cryptocurrency and payment cards. Read the full article here.
EY announces the greater Los Angeles winners for 2022 Entrepreneur Of The Year™
OWC was a proud sponsor of this year’s EY Entrepreneur Of The Year awards. The team also attended the first gala since 2019 on June 16th at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. Ten winners were selected by an independent judging panel comprised of award alumni, leading CEOs, investors and other regional business leaders. Click here for the full announcement.
OWC secures coverage for Arculus on Cointelegraph
OWC was able to secure two separate articles for Arculus, a leading crypto security and cold storage wallet solution, on CoinTelegraph. Both articles focused on the urgent need for hardware wallets to ensure self-custody of cryptocurrency. Click here and here to view the latest coverage.
OWC welcomes Ryan Negrette
Ryan Negrette joins OWC as our latest intern. He is originally from San Jose, but has recently relocated to the Los Angeles area to pursue a professional career in public relations. Negrette assists OWC in their work with clients by supporting client-projects with team members. He graduated Cum Laude from Azusa Pacific University, where he double majored in Public Relations and Honors Humanities. He competed as a NCAA DII Cross Country and Track and Field athlete, and brings his hard-work ethic and determination everywhere he goes.
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