Books Recommended by Alan Pierce

This book dramatically changed the way I structured my day to day life. Based on over two decades of personal interviews and studies of some of history's’ greatest minds, the author distills the lessons he learned and details how you can train and condition your mind through daily habit to master your actions. The way it promotes a disciplined and holistic approach of continual self-improvement, goal setting and strategic decision making really resonated with me.

This was an amazing glimpse into one of the most disruptive companies in history as well as the past and future trajectory of e-commerce and retail. It is also a testament to unwavering self-belief. The thing that impressed me the most is that Jeff Bezos intentionally built an entire department dedicated to making his primary business obsolete which allowed him to take the lead in the next development, e-books. His foresight is extraordinary and he is an inspirational big thinker.

The underlying premise of the book is Keeping a flexible mind and making a real effort to understand someone’s underlying motivations as well as what they are trying to accomplish. This baseline will help you to find common ground in difficult negotiations and create mutually beneficial and long-lasting agreements. The best agreements, from my experience, are the ones where both parties find great value in the agreement and it is built on solid and transparent fundamentals. This book has also helped me in creating mutually beneficial partnerships with partners and investors in my company, ABM Investments. During the reading of “Getting to Yes” I was managing operations on a remote island and one of my workers was shot with a bow and arrow and stabbed with a spear. We all could have been injured or killed as we were stuck on an island with no way out, but I sat with the local leader and both men involved and negotiated a peaceful truce. In large part due to the principles in “Getting to Yes”, we managed to avoid a war with hundreds of villagers. My one hundred men team was only at twenty at that point as many had gone home between projects. It would not have ended well for us, so thankfully we made it out peacefully.

This novel is the second book in a great saga detailing the intense competition between two shipping magnates and their battle over the gateway to China: the very lucrative island of Hong Kong. Set in the tumultuous period during which the British had seized Hong Kong before it was known as England’s crown jewel, it is an exciting and fun ride detailing Hong Kong as a melting pot of political and economic interests with no shortage of intrigue. It’s a must read for sure.