And there are also a few books that have had very, very helpful impact on my thinking about this. One is a very short read. It’s called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. And what I like about it, get the old version not the for the internet version. The old version where they’re looking at imported beer and airlines, that’s the one that I like. And it just talks about, in simple terms, how to create new categories as opposed to trying to dominate an existing category. So it’s easier and more effective to try to create a new category, which I often do through language. So for instance, with the 4-Hour Workweek, I wrote the book that I couldn’t find.

It was, basically, the book that I wanted to find. And the options, at the time, I went to the book store, and I was searching for meaning. I had all of these challenges with business, with entrepreneurship and so on. And I could either choose a book that was how to give up money and why it’s not important and how to reuse your toothpaste 17 times, or how to build a Fortune 500 company with Jack Welch. And I wanted something I between. So I wrote that and ended up using this term that may have existed before, but I hadn’t heard it, called lifestyle design. So lifestyle design, I did not trademark.

I did not make any attempt to protect it because I wanted it to become part of the common vocabulary. I wanted it to become part of the vernacular, which it has. So now, that’s used by probably hundreds of thousands of people.

And it’s a category. Now, since I was that first mover advantage, I am kind of forever, in a sense, the founding father of that category.

via #167: Jamie Foxx Part 2

A couple of resources that I want to recommend before we get started because they helped me quite a lot are related to deal-making and negotiating . . . The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. The original edition talks about imported lite beer on airlines and whatnot. Not the version for the Internet. Blue Ocean Strategy. And both of those books really talk about creating a category of one, which just increases your leverage and negotiating ability.

via #166: How Creatives Should Negotiate

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing – the original edition, not the updated for the Internet version, which was out of date by the time the book went to press, but the old version, with Amstel Lite and airline examples and so on.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing apply to anything, not just a product or service. Or I should say, it applies to a product or a service even if you happen to be a product. Does that make sense?

via #103: Drunk Dialing Fans--Celebrating The 100th Podcast Episode!

You don’t get remembered in the middle and you need to – that’s why I recommend; look, it’s not a perfect book, but it is a very helpful book at least for me – The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing – the old version. Like don’t get the for-internet one that’s like from the AOL era. Get the old one which is like airlines and imported beer and all of these case studies, but it really points out that if you want positioning – whether that’s for a product, for a point you’re trying to persuade people to accept or a negotiation – you have to, it’s not enough just to be better. You have to be different.

No one will have a chance to realize you’re better if you don’t have their attention first. So, just thinking of positioning in that way as basically better as necessary but not sufficient I think is super-critical.

via #75: Tools and Tricks from the #30 Employee at Facebook - The Tim Ferriss Show

That’s an observation and a recommendation I'd like to make to folks is a very short book I recommended before called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Of course, all rules are made to be broken but these are pretty good rules for most people to at least start with. One of them is choose a market where you can be number one or number two.

Ideally, number one and if you can't be number one, you need to thinly slice it a bit further. In the case of Paypal for instance, they didn't start off trying to boil the ocean, they started off trying to dominate the beanie baby eBay power-seller space.

You have to define your market finely enough so that you can dominate it and just as importantly, acquire customers in a very targeted and affordable way, whereas saying "I want every mother in the US," even if you were to attempt that, which I wouldn't recommend, would require doing massive advertising spending that a start-up can’t afford nor should you be able to try to afford.

via Ep 30: Tracy DiNunzio, Founder of Tradesy, on High-Velocity Growth and Tactics

The two books that really helped me, or continue to help me, to think of being different, good and different, right... Necessary, but not sufficient. There are two that are on the older side, one that's relatively new—The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, really short read . . . Super short and just gives fantastic examples of how, say, Amstel Light becomes the only light imported beer. Boom, it defines and category, and owns it.

The second, Blue Ocean Strategy, really interesting book. Third, which is a little tech-centric, but I still think a lot is to be gained from it, is Business Model Generation.

via Episode 8: Chase Jarvis, Master Photographer

I have reread this before every product launch that I have done or even in the product development phases. Talks about things like creating a category versus trying to be the best in an existing category.

Very, very valuable and a very quick read. You can read this in 2 - 3 hours. This is one of the two books I recommend to all of my startup founders I work with and angel investments or an advisor.

You can see I take copious notes here in all these books. I create my own index so that when I go back to reread this it takes 1/10th of the time and I can hit the points that were most valuable to me. 

Tim Ferriss: "I have re-read this before every product launch that I have done."