Did you ever read a business book that filled you with enough creative energy and inspiration to just about make your head explode… in a good way? That’s what happened to me last week when I picked up a copy of Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra. Foreword by Mark Cuban....

I was killing time browsing books in the Cincinnati airport before my flight to San Francisco for a conference, when I looked down and saw a book cover with a picture of a sumo wrestler dunking a basketball. Roughly 70 pages later and halfway to San Francisco, I had a note pad full of new ideas on how to market many of my projects/products, plus a new-found energy, and mindset for how to take my marketing to the next level.

I’m not kidding, it was a light-bulb over the head moment for me, and a week later I have several high-quality ideas already in motion that just might work, we’ll see. The last, and only real time, that happened to me was way back in 2000 when I read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, which I have reread every year since then.

Back to Jon’s book, and the point of this article. Chapter 2 is entitled ‘What’s it gonna take?’

What if you asked the following question at your company? “What’s it going to take to be the best company in our industry this year?”

For example, when he was the President of the Portland Trail Blazers, Jon recalls that one of the first things he did in the meeting with the executives and coaches was to ask the question, “What’s it gonna take to win the NBA championship next year?” Now, as he mentions in the book, the Trail Blazers were a poor team at the time, so asking that question was kinda like asking something that was impossible, so most of the people on his team thought he was insulting them, or crazy.

But in reality, what Jon was doing was setting goals and creating mindsets, which then turned into real discussions and actionable items about exactly just how to meet those goals. In other words, just by asking that question, he was able to put the wheels in motion to making them happen.

When was the last time you tried this exercise?

What’s it gonna take for you to try it?

Here’s my solution. Go ahead, buy a copy of Jon’s book. If you don’t find it as mind blowing as I did, you can send it to me and I’ll write you a check for it out of my own pocket and I’ll give it to someone I know as a gift.

The rest of the book is equally inspiring. From chapter 3, entitled ‘Pushing the Outrageous Envelope’, to chapter 12 ‘The Rubber Chicken Method’, Marketing Outrageously is a must-read.

How about you? Got any books that have had the same effect on you as Jon’s book has had on me? And if you've read this book, let me know your thoughts and/or successes/failures that you've acheived from its ideas.