I bought this book directly from the author, gentle reader, at a 1,000,000 Cups meeting four or five years ago. He is a successful real estate agent. I got on with his brother better, though, and had long conversations with Tom, who was (is, I hope) a former technical illustrator for the aeronautics industry up in Kansas who was working in his retirement as an artist and teacher. But I’m not sure if he wrote a book.
So I see Iron John (the Robert Bly book) blended with some business lessons. A Bearded Man comes out of the woods (well, he’s on a walk in a park), and he meets a young man with his son in the park, and he gives the young man who has stagnated a bit some life lessons. Basically, Coleman (with Hanke) extends the 80/20 rule, indicating that 5% are free thinkers and innovators, 15% are early adopters, 30% are steady, and 50% go along with the majority, to oversimplify. Of course, the book is life lessons for the free-thinking 5%, which seems to be a self-identified bunch, and more importantly, for selling to the 5%, and….
Well, it’s not bad. A short book, what I was looking for in these dark and expensive days and fireless nights at Nogglestead. I guess you can get some things from it, but mostly it would be reinforcement of things you’ve heard elsewhere. Coleman really tried to build a community around the 5% concept–although I did not see him present at 1,000,000 Cups here in Springfield, I understand he traveled the country and presented the the book and community to a lot of cities. And…. Well, I don’t know if it really took off.
I see on LinkedIn that he’s keeping busy using LLMs to make music, and he has another book out. So he’s still working. Hopefully because he loves it.
