Bookshelf: Zilch | Isaac B Watson

Zilch. Zero. Nada. Rien. All of them add up to each other. Nothing. This is often what solo business startups have, and this is almost always what non-profits work with. Nancy Lublin is the highly successful founder of Dress for Success, and CEO of Do Something?two high-profile make-a-difference non-profits. And Nancy has something to say: Do more with less.

Zilch: How Businesses and Not-for-Profits Can Get More Bang for Less Buck is a call to action. Nancy wants you to turn it up to eleven and rock out. In a highly approachable, matter-of-fact and humorous way, she walks through eleven steps with eleven points, each summed up with eleven critical questions.

I picked up this book as I was perusing the non-profit management shelves at my favorite bookstore for three reasons:

1. It was bright orange in a sea of green and blue covers and didn?t look like it had been written in the 80s (design matters).
2. It wasn?t branded with ??For Dummies? or ?The Everything Guide? (branding is powerful).
3. I?m an unconventional person and I was looking for a more ambidextrous approach to learning about non-profit leadership mentality than your average business-based book.

Wait. You were perusing the non-profit management shelves of your local bookstore? Yes, I was. I?m in the process of starting a non-profit organization, but not quite ready to share what that is yet. All in good time, my friends. All in good time.

Nancy Lublin did a great job of diving into real-world non-profit success stories and relating them to the for-profit business world. I will say that the book is more weighted to teaching businesses how to apply non-profit chutzpah to their for-profit endeavors?she frames the entire work on sitting frustrated in a fancy conference room with a bunch of suits lamenting over a slashed marketing budget. But having worked on both sides, I can easily see where she?s coming from and turn those principles right back around into how a fledgling non-profit should approach the work they have before them.

Do more with less but not by yourself

The DIY community is probably the closest for-profit sphere that understands and implements these principles on a daily basis, and self-employed creative types are accustomed to making do without a lot of money. That?s the whole point of the do-it-yourself mindset, right? Saves on hiring people when you can take on a project all on your own.

But doing it constantly alone breeds a self-destructive martyrdom. Nancy asks the right questions to inspire you to embrace your people and galvanize support behind your cause, even if it?s a for-profit endeavor?to do it together.

So if you work at a for-profit business, work at a non-profit business, or run your own independent, DIY business, you should venture into the non-profit management shelf and pick up this orange delight. You just might learn to do more with less.

Buy Zilch from Powells.com

Next up on my shelf:

It?s time for a left-brain vacation. I?ll be reading Storm Large?s memoir, Crazy Enough.

Bookshelf is a series of book reviews and thoughts about what I?ve read. Some are left-brained books, some are right-brained books, but the best books are the ambidextrous-brained books. See what other books are on my Bookshelf.

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Zilch. Zero. Nada. Rien. All of them add up to each other. Nothing. This is often what solo business startups have, and this is almost always what non-profits work with....

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