Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Dan’s Biz Bookshelf: Own Your Weird

Own Your Weird: An Oddly Effective Way for Finding Happiness in Work, Life, and Love

Okay, this book is weird, but in a good way. After the first few pages, I realized that this is not a business book like any I have ever read before. But still it had value, so I decided to read on. If nothing else the book and the author himself were entertaining.

Jason Zook is the kind of guy who would be thrown off Shark Tank, but not before the Sharks had fun asking him questions and getting the best laughs they could out of his stint on the show.

The author writes about how he started a number of businesses, admittedly not many of them successful, but none of them boring.

One of his first businesses was IWearYourShirt. In this business, companies paid him to walk around in their walking advertisement of a t-shirt. His first customer paid him a dollar. And since he went crazy advertising this company, he ended up $100,000 in debt.

His second business was called BuyMyLastName, and the premise was he would offer his last name to the highest bidder and then become a walking billboard for that company. The highest bidder paid $45,000 for Jason to become “Jason Headsetdotcom.” And then later he changed his name to “Jason SurfrAPP” and he made $100,000 with that business.

He also started a business where he live streamed himself writing a book. People would pay to tune in and watch him writing live. In fact, it was this very book that I am reviewing right now.

Now, I can hear you chuckling but also thinking “Dan, why did you read this book, and why did you review it?”

Simple: because it was refreshingly creative. It was a great example of out-of-the-box thinking (saying “out of the box” represents thinking in-the-box thinking now, doesn’t it?)

Jason is fearless, and it is rare to find an entrepreneur who is so willing to get out there on that proverbial limb, willing to make a fool of himself. Frankly I love that.

We are all too stuffy, we are all practically cowards when it comes to risk; in reality, not taking risk in this era of constant and rapid change is the riskiest thing we can do.

This book was filled with lessons of inspiration when it comes to being creative and coming up with a money-making idea that no one has ever heard of.

The last chapter of the book has some very sound advice about creating and executing ideas:

• Perfection prevents you from finishing. Amen to that
• The process is not simple. The journey is not clear, the perfect process does not exist. What does exist is the process you create for yourself, and that works specifically for you.

I’ll leave you with this. If you have no sense of humor about business or about life in general, this book is not for you. But if you like to smile when your reading, this book is perfect for you. You’ll learn something along the way.

I’m thinking of changing my name to “Danatreadallaboutitdotcom.”

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.

Own Your Weird: An Oddly Effective Way for Finding Happiness in Work, Life, and Love

By Jason Zook

Copyright 2019, Running Press

Pages: 216 with Index

Hard copy edition $24.00