Pirates didn’t just break the rules, they rewrote them. They didn’t just reject society, they reinvented it. Pirates didn’t just challenge the status-quo, they changed everyf*ckingthing. Pirates faced a self-interested establishment, a broken system, industrial scale disruption, and an uncertain future. Sound familiar? “I’d rather be a pirate than join the navy.”–Steve Jobs Pirates stood for … Jobs
Pirates stood for MISCHIEF, PURPOSE, and POWER. And you can too.
Be More Pirate unveils the innovative strategies of Golden Age pirates, drawing parallels between the tactics and teachings of legends like Henry Morgan and Blackbeard with modern rebels, like Elon Musk, Malala, and Banksy. Featuring takeaway sections and a guide to building your own pirate code 2.0, Be More Pirate will show you how to leave your mark on the 21st century.
1. Rebel — Draw strength by standing up to the status quo.
2. Rewrite — Bend, break, but most importantly, rewrite the rules.
3. Reorganize — Collaborate to achieve scale, rather than growth.
4. Redistribute — Fight for fairness, share power, and make an enemy of exploitation.
5. Retell — Weaponize your story, then tell the hell out of it.
Whatever your ambitions, ideas and challenges, Be More Pirate will revolutionize the way you live, think, and work today, and tomorrow. So what are you waiting for? Join the rebellion.
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Ask forgiveness, not permission! A unique approach…reminds me of the fun we’ve had with our airlines.
I love the tidbits of history, the business advice the way it is written, the authors overall personality and the whole book in general! I thoroughly enjoyed this book, just by coincidence this is the second nonfiction book about life and business I’ve read this week but I found totally enjoyable are usually find them utterly boring this guy is to use an American term “batting 1000“ I hope he sees fit to write books in the future.
I do have to say that I found this book quite interesting and relevant in today’s world, this may be due to the author’s experience of working with kids so I guess he has a greater understanding than many of how different kids are. I did find myself learning a thing or two from reading this book and I will be implementing a few practical changes and principles to my life. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve the principles they live by.
Be More Pirate debunks commonly told myths about pirates and shares the uncommon truths about them: Pirates were, at their core, groups of people who fought for social justice, supported equal pay and equal rights regardless of gender and color, among other things.
Pirates stood up for what they felt was right and challenged the status quo time and time again. Much like the entrepreneurs and industry disrupters of today’s world. Think Rza, Steve Jobs, and Banksy who in deciding to go against the grain they broke rules, ushered change, and democratized music, technology and art. They were being more pirate.
Part history book, part leadership book, and 100% a mindset reset book, Be More Pirate delivers a delightful combination of facts and how-to for today’s entrepreneurs.
The approach Conniff takes on to attacking life and looking at the framework that keeps us in line and essentially unfulfilled day to day is a neat concept. Conniff draws inspiration and direct parallels to his ideas from the Golden Age of Piracy, employing some of their (at the time) radical concepts for living in an equal, yet winner-takes-all society.
Conniff seems to love pirate history and culture as much as I do, and he’s a very skilled wordsmith. This whole book’s point is to motivate and outline that it IS okay to fight for what you believe in and sometimes the system that confines us is not always right and we have to fight for a better system. At the same time it’s more than that, it’s raising the flag and sounding the horn. It’s a call to mobilize and stop letting complacency slowly eat away at us and kill what gives us power and drive.
I can’t give it a full 5, because as other have said it feels like he was forcing a word count at some spots. Still, it’s worth the read, it’s interesting and has a lot of neat quotable spots that outline a good life perspective.
British author Sam Conniff Allende is a force! From his youth he has been committed to making positive changes in the world. As co-founder and CEO of Livity (a youth marketing agency), Don’t Panic (a creative agency in London), and Live Magazine, he shouldered the challenge to make business better by rewriting the rules of life, society and work. Now he brings his acumen to the printing page in one of the most exhilarating books on how to ‘create the sort of Good Trouble the world needs.’ The awards he has garnered are many and significant!
From his website Sam states, ‘I’ve always written stories, and made my first newspaper around ten years old. My first ‘published’ writing was the now legendary Don’t Panic Poster-Zine, which I founded and ran in my late teens and early twenties, getting to collaborate with artists like Bansky, Shepard Fairey, etc., on topics that ranged from pollution to the surveillance state.’ Now all of that experience and steps toward change is gelled in this remarkable book.
Sam’s next book, HOW TO: BE MORE PIRATE, is a series of stories of Pirates who have created mutinies and rebellions –people who have created change and updated, challenged and enhanced the status quo of business. In his compelling manner, Sam opens this initial book – BE MORE PIRATE – with the following: ’Three hundred years ago a small group of frustrated and underappreciated, mostly young professionals finally had enough of living in a society run badly by a self-interested and self-serving establishment. Disruption had become the constant backdrop to their lives as they faced ongoing uncertainty and mass redundancy in a world plagued by ideologically influenced international conflict. This generation felt entirely abandoned, and they were right. The odds were stacked high against them and in every single way the rules of the day favored an elite few, and for the majority of people life was unclear, unfair, and unfulfilling. Sound familiar? Rather than simply voice their complaints, they chose instead to do something about the situation…You see, the action these particular disenchanted professionals took was to turn pirate.’ And that thought (and ’history’) opens the floodgate for Sam’s urging to break the rules to change industry.
Supporting ‘mutiny’ as a means to change the manner in which individuals act to alter the status quo, Sam revisits the pirates of old and encourages action on the part of workers to make the business/corporate world sensible – and the world, in general, better. He is a wise and inspiring man and writer, providing a ray of hope for altering the manner in which ‘work’ and the world can become better.
Be More Pirate: Or How to Take On the World and Win by Sam Conniff is a thought-provoking and positive read. If you are interested in learning more about the history of pirates, this book is a great place to start. One can only assume what pirates’ thought processes were and are, but nonetheless, that portion of the book is interesting. The book promotes rebelling against doing things in the prescribed, predictable way. Think outside the proverbial box and forge a new way of living in the moment, and create your own success whether in your personal life or in business. The book tells you to ostensibly break the rules, but you better put more useful rules in place. This is an interesting take on leadership, how leadership often fails, and how best to create a positive yet contrarian cultural mindset to improve your life. There are plenty of fun pirate lessons contained in this book, it’s up to you to make use of them.