My take:

The Success Effect by John Eckberg is a great compilation of transcribed interviews from 47 different people, some of which are highlighted below.  What I enjoyed the most about this book is that after reading these 47 great interviews I personally learned how to conduct better interviews.  The Success Effect is a great resource for bloggers wishing to take their interview skills to the next level.  Case in point: when John asks P. Diddy, “if you were me, what question should I be asking right now?” is one question I’ve already begun working into my own interviews.

So should only bloggers and journalists be intersted in this read? Heck no!  The book gives insight into the mind of John’s subjects on both deep and sometimes comical levels (what is your favorite condiment?).  Read more about this below.  I recommend The Success Effect.

Here’s how The Success Effect came about (From the Author):

I realized one day about eight years ago that many valuable insights from people I had interviewed as a reporter were not making it into my stories because of space limitations in the paper or because they were off-topic. I got into the habit of tossing the tapes into a desk drawer. One day I looked and found 30 or more tapes in there: conversations with a diverse crew, too, from Kellogg lecturer Deepak Chopra to a strangely gracious Donald Trump, from guitarist Jeff Skunk Baxter of The Doobie Brothers to the thoughts of performance experts like Doug Hall, consultants like Tom Kelley of IDEO, industrialists like Dan DiMicco of Nucor. Lots of people talked about leadership, initiative and management.

Billionaire Bill Cook of Bloomington (this medical devices mogul once slept on a cot in the factory where he worked because he had no other place to stay in Chicago that winter or maybe he was simply not motivated to go find an apartment) talked about how his company finds achievers and why big companies are not much different from small ones. He would know. I capture women leaders talking about glass ceilings and achievement despite the odds. Julia Stewart, CEO of IHOP talked about the immediate feedback that waitresses received. She started out as a waitress. Sheila Wellington of Catalyst talked about the importance of mentors and Tami Longaberger of Longaberger Co. offered her father’s mantra during hard times: do something.

Because I was a former metro reporter, I had the presence of mind to ask people about their interests away from the job: what books they were reading and what CDs were in their changers. Donald Trump likes meat loaf. Deepak Chopra likes goa fish curry.

As I set out to write a business book from those tapes, I soon realized something else: oh boy, another book from another guy telling executives what to do. Oh yeah, that’s just what this old world needed. Then it hit me – what I had and what was significant wasn’t what I thought or what I had learned but what these people thought and what these people had learned. So I began to set the alarm at 4 a.m. and started to transcribe those conversations word for word. Soon, I had what I think was a pretty good book. Soon is a euphemism for about five years.

About The Author:

John Eckberg is a career journalist with 25 years of experience in the challenging field of daily newspaper reporting. A graduate of Ohio University, he has been a business columnist and business reporter at The Cincinnati Enquirer for more than a decade, where he has covered numerous beats including federal courts, investigative reporter, feature writing, neighborhood columns and urban development. Widely published, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today and many other American print and Web publications. He is the co-author of Road Dog
, a true-crime thriller about serial killer Glen Rogers of Hamilton, Ohio. Eckberg has several other projects underway, including The Mud Daddy Chronicles, a recipe book and fishing memoir of 25 years of fishing trips, and Pot of Gold, a best-practices business book.

Reviews:

Amazon.com – 4 out of 5 stars with 15 customer reviews at the moment
Go read the Amazon reviews if you’d like those perspectives.

Headway Book Club – rates it a “must have”

Learn more about John Eckberg:

April 2007 – Author John Eckberg on the Impact of Small Businesses:

In an excerpt from our interview with John Eckberg, the author of The Success Effect discusses the impact of a mom-and-pop gas station/restaurant just outside of Cincinnati, OH called the Monarch Grill. MP3 runs almost 2 minutes.

John Eckberg on the Monarch Grill -click to listen to the interview

www.thesuccesseffect.com -Learn all about the book and the author’s previous books

Linkedin.com – John Eckberg Public Profile

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