Green Weenies and Due Diligence – Insider Business Jargon – Ron Sturgeon; Mike French Publishing, 1619 Front Street, Lynden, WA 98264, 8--. 238.3964; www.greenweenies.com ISBN 0971703116; August, 2005; 298 pages, $28.95 Reviewed by: G.A. “Andy” Marken III, Marken Communications Inc, 408-390-0002, andy@markencom.com
Here is an excellent reference library for investor and public relations people – young, old; student, seasoned pro.
Personally and professionally you’ve used many of the business terms and phrases Ron has painstakingly accumulated over the years. Green Weenies and Due Diligence isn’t just a book…it is an encyclopedia for you to keep hidden in your top drawer so you can rise above all of the engineering, manufacturing, financial and marketing folks in your organization.
Ron has conveniently divided Green Weenies into two sections – one you can use in meetings, hallway discussions and presentations (the not so serious side of the business). The other section is the one you’ll have to use in a more formal and structured fashion when you are preparing news releases, white papers and presentations as well as discussions with the press, analysts and investors.
A self-taught entrepreneur/business professional and author, Ron has stripped bare the words your bosses and you use every day in evaluating/discussing situations, business opportunities and people. The book will make you laugh, cry and in the end say “yes, now I can speak on a level with anyone inside and outside the organization.”
Green Weenies is the book you should have read in your undergraduate and MBA programs. You’ll enjoy the first section that will add color to your speech around the office. But it is the Due Diligence section where you’ll spend most of your time getting a solid foundation of the words and phrases you’ll use when things get serious. Fortunately, Sturgeon makes all of the words and phrases easy to understand with very non-technical explanations so you can use the information at the appropriate time and place.
A perpetual entrepreneur, Sturgeon takes a very dry subject and makes it interesting and easy to read and comprehend. According to the book cover he has accumulated over 1200 terms (we never bothered to actually count). In fact, we found ourselves trying to think through all of the cliché statements we’ve heard over the years and hunting them up so we could say “ah ha! We caught you.” But it didn’t work. We feel he caught them all and that includes quite a few we can’t wait to drop in a creative business meeting sometime.
In addition to deflating a lot of our carefully groomed and used phrases, the Due Diligence section gets serious and is extremely useful for anyone in the field. This is especially true when you need to understand the financial and professional phrases that are used. These are usually phrases that couch whole concepts and useful information in legal mystery that you need to know and use everyday whether you’re wading through contracts or financial statements.
Sturgeon really has made learning fun. And with your own due diligence in reading the book three to four times you will be able to make meetings and your writing fun also.
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Green Weenies and Due Diligence - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Marken's Website.
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