“You Call The Shots” by Cameron Johnson – The actual book review

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Alright, so just the other day I posted a bit of a background on Cameron Johnson and his latest book which was published about this time last year, “You Call The Shots”. Now, the following will be my actual thoughts about the book and some different great take aways that you can get from reading the book. The main content of the book is a series of different tips for your entrepreneurial success. Here they are:

1. Put Yourself Out There
2. Start Small
3. Make Your Money Work For You
4. Look Close to Home for Great Ideas
5. Balance Work with Life
6. Surround Yourself with Great People
7. Make Yourself Your Brand
8. Don’t Be Afraid to Negotiate
9. Make Your Own Tough Decisions
10. Adapt or Die
11. Find Great Mentors
12. Seek Out New Knowledge Every Day
13. Use the Power of the Press
14. Stick To Your Guns
15. Get Experience on the Ground
16. Never Underestimate The Value of Your Customers
17. Creatively Build on Your Experience
18. Remember What It’s Really All About
19. Be the Entrepreneur You Want To Be

With each of the above listed chapters, Cameron goes into some good descriptions on the different point made and shares stories from his person successes that help to prove how powerful or helpful each tip can be. Although these stories are what makes the book thick, it is also what helps illustrate the necessity of each action to take and how you can benefit from it.

Some of the take aways that I would hope that anyone would get from reading the book include the following

• Adapt or Die – Cameron makes the great point that if you do not continuously adapt your business, it will die. This is especially true for young entrepreneurs and more importantly student entrepreneurs. As a young or student entrepreneur, sometimes it is hard for us to keep up with all of the big businesses because of lack of resources, funding, time, or staff. You need to put yourself as the business owner in a different mindset and really think creatively and work to do whatever it takes to adapt your business and to make it to the top. Just because your are a small business starting out or a young entrepreneur does not mean that you can’t get what you want.
• Surround Yourself with Great People – This is an obvious one to many, but an important enough tip to reiterate here again – it’s not what you know but who you know. If there is something that you do not know enough about to comfortably make a decision on the topic, surround yourself with subject matter experts (SEMs) for that topic. Having many different SEMs on board with you will help you adapt your business and also to find even more great people to surround yourself with. If there is something you can not do, don’t know how to do, or are just confused about, start finding the people who can do it. Partner up with them to make your dream a reality.
• Make Yourself Your Own Brand – This is probably one of the most important lessons a young entrepreneur can learn. Just because you are starting a business does not mean that you should not be personally associated with your business. You are not separate from your business as an entrepreneur! As soon as you launch your business, you become your own brand and should act accordingly. The use of personalized business cards that you can get for cheap will help you in the right direction for this!

If you are looking for a book to read about entrepreneurship that is inspiring and insightful, then I would definitely recommend checking out “You Call The Shots.”

Have you read “You Call The Shots”? What did you think?

You can also check out Cameron’s blog for the occasional update!

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