The FUD Factor
Overcoming Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt to Achieve the Impossible
The inspirational personal development guide The FUD Factor forwards advice for surmounting obstacles to achieve one’s full potential.
Brendan P. Keegan’s self-help guide The FUD Factor shares suggestions for pushing past roadblocks to meet one’s personal and professional goals.
Drawing on his experiences with turning around flailing or failing companies, Keegan names useful leadership strategies like facing one’s fears, believing in oneself, and becoming an example for others to follow in an organization. Indeed, the book was written for people of all backgrounds who wish to become fearless leaders, whether as part of small businesses or multinational corporations. Its practical insights on topics like open communication, employee motivation, and productivity contribute to its achievable advice.
To help people tackle their fear, uncertainty, and doubt, the book’s broad-minded, encouraging chapters cultivate virtues like personal growth, impactfulness, and collaboration; they are headed in a catchy and interest-piquing manner. Throughout, the book emphasizes integrating the personal and the professional, with examples as of a person’s efforts to outgrow their fear of heights by walking across the Golden Gate Bridge that lead into pithy, familiar encouragements, such as to push yourself to the limit (and beyond). Anecdotes are also used to complement general tips on topics like articulating a vision and tying it to every employee’s role.
The book’s lessons are designed to be digestible; their language is personable and clear. However, some of the book’s tales are self-aggrandizing, as when it recounts Keegan’s decision to lead a youth football team at the age of eight, or when it compares its work to firefighting (because, a firefighter said, it requires running into “burning companies” and saving them). Further, its recalled conversations are too stilted. Nonetheless, it proceeds at a stimulating pace, engaging interest throughout. And the book’s frequent use of bullet points, pull quotes, and lists (such as a gathering of methods for building toughness, including tasks like exercise, reading, prayer, and meditation) are eye-catching.
Oriented toward actionable advice, the book builds toward a chapter on putting its teachings into practice. It stresses the belief that people should avoid complacency and “reach for positions above [their] current competencies and lean into the opportunity to grow.” But in doing so, it reiterates previous lessons, though distilling them to their essences as a prospective launching pad into the real world.
The inspirational personal development guide The FUD Factor forwards advice for surmounting obstacles to achieve one’s full potential.
Reviewed by
Joseph S. Pete
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
