Career & Growth

Develop the life-changing ability to excel in spontaneous communication situations—from public speaking to interviewing to networking—with these essential strategies from a Stanford lecturer, coach, and host of the popular Think Fast, Talk Smart The Podcast. “A roadmap to mastering the art of thinking quickly and speaking confidently, this is the perfect book for…anyone else who talks.” —Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better and Supercommunicators Many of us dread having to convey our ideas to others, often feeling ill-equipped, anxious, and awkward. Public speaking experts help by focusing on planned communication experiences such as slide presentations, pitches, or formal talks. Yet, most of our professional and personal communication occurs in spontaneous situations that creep up on us and all too often leave us flustered and stumbling for words. How can we rise to the occasion and shine when we’re put on the spot? In Think Faster, Talk Smarter, Stanford lecturer, podcast host, and communication expert Matt Abrahams provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously. Abrahams provides science-based strategies for managing anxiety, responding to the mood of the room, and making content concise, relevant, compelling, and memorable. Drawing on stories from his clients and students, he offers best practices for navigating Q&A sessions, shining in job interviews, providing effective feedback, making small talk, fixing faux pas, persuading others, and handling other impromptu speaking tasks. Whether it’s a prospective client asking you an unexpected question during a meeting or all eyes turning to you at a dinner party, you’ll know how to navigate the situation like a pro and bring out your very best. Think Faster, Talk Smarter is an accessible guide to communication that will help you master new techniques in no time.

In Protecting Your Time, an audio course from Scribd Coach, Lauren Shippy guides you on gaining mastery over your schedule, cultivating effective habits, and setting yourself on the right path toward your goals. In this comprehensive course, Shippy helps you unleash your potential by eliminating the roadblocks and distractions that hinder your progress and explores how to establish crucial routines to fuel your personal and professional growth while sustaining positive habits in the long run. The course is complete with interactive exercises to help you put what you’ve learned into practice right away. With Shippy’s approach, making lasting changes in your daily life becomes effortless. Anyone looking to unlock unparalleled productivity will find valuable insights in Shippy’s course.

An NPR best book of the year * New York Times bestseller The Washington Post sportswriter and New York Times bestselling author of the “fascinating” (The Wall Street Journal) The Real All Americans presents a love letter to the extraordinary coaches and athletes she has covered over the years and the actionable principles of excellence they embody. Sportswriter Sally Jenkins has spent her entire adult life observing and writing about great coaches and athletes. With her engaging and expert prose, she has helped shape the way we view these talented sports icons. But somewhere along the line, she realized, they had begun to shape her. Now, she presents the astonishing inner qualities in these same people that pushed them to overcome pressure, elevate their performances, and discover champion identities. Based on years of observing, interviewing, and analyzing elite coaches and playmakers, such as Bill Belichick, Peyton Manning, Michael Phelps, and more, Jenkins reveals the seven principles behind success: -Conditioning -Practice -Discipline -Candor -Culture -Resilience -Intention Discover how you can apply these same principles to your life and become your own champion. Colorful, inspirational, and accessible, The Right Call is the one stop shop for anyone wanting to learn how to effectively elevate themselves to greatness.

This program is read by and contains archival audio of the author from MSNBC, BBC Question Time, Oxford Union, and other sources. Win Every Argument shows how anyone can communicate with confidence, rise above the tit-for-tats on social media, and triumph in a successful and productive debate in the real world. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan isn’t one to avoid arguments. He relishes them as the lifeblood of democracy and the only surefire way to establish the truth. Arguments help us solve problems, uncover new ideas we might not have considered, and nudge our disagreements toward mutual understanding. A good argument, made in good faith, has intrinsic value—and can also simply be fun. Arguments are everywhere—and especially given the fierce debates we’re all embroiled in today, everyone wants to win. In this riveting guide to the art of argument and rhetoric, Hasan shows you how. As a journalist, anchor, and interviewer who has clashed with politicians, generals, spy chiefs, and celebrities from across the world, Hasan reveals his tricks of the trade for the first time. Whether you are making a presentation at work or debating current political issues with a friend, Mehdi Hasan will teach you how to sharpen your speaking skills to make the winning case. A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

How do the principles of global espionage apply to building and growing a business? In Company Rules, Or Everything I Know About Business I Learned From the CIA, Mike Baker shares the nine make-or-break tactics that he mastered during his tenure with the Central Intelligence Agency and details how he used them to succeed in the private sector. These exclusive rules, once only accessible to the intelligence community, are laid out step-by-step and can be put into practice on your own terms. Leaving behind a life of international intrigue, Baker took on a new venture when he met a “pipe-smoking British fraud investigator” by the name of Mike Comer who was launching an ambitious startup, Maxima, in London’s West End. While Baker didn’t know the first thing about fraud investigation at the time, he realized that he could use what he learned in his CIA training to help bring the startup to prominence. While at Maxima, Baker recognized that success in business is dependent upon information-gathering, and as he notes, “Whoever has the best intelligence…wins.” From the Company Rules like Know Your Risk Appetite and Immediately Admit Your Mistakes, to Define Your Mission and Identify and Resolve Threats, Baker demonstrates that the business world isn't as unlike the spy world as one might think. Baker lays out the nine Company Rules clearly and precisely, intermixing them with accounts of riveting adventures from his time in the private sector. The tactical rules can be applied to any start-up, growing, or established business. Company Rules, Or Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the CIA is full of valuable insight for entrepreneurs and managers alike who are seeking a structured method to build a foundation for success.

*A "Next Big Idea Club" Must-Read Book for January* *AS HEARD ON ARMCHAIR EXPERT WITH DAX SHEPARD* Rediscover your ability to pay attention with this groundbreaking new approach from "the definitive expert on distraction and multitasking" (Cal Newport). We spend an average of just 47 seconds on any screen before shifting our attention. It takes 25 minutes to bring our attention back to a task after an interruption. And we interrupt ourselves more than we're interrupted by others. In Attention Span, psychologist Gloria Mark reveals these and more surprising results from her decades of research into how technology affects our attention. She shows how much of what we think we know is wrong, including insights such as: Why multitasking hurts rather than helps productivity How social media and modern entertainment amplify our short attention spans What drains our mental resources and how to refuel them The four types of attention that we experience every day and how to recognize themWhile the concept of “flow” has previously been considered the ideal state of focus, Dr. Mark offers a new framework to help explain how our brains function in the digital world: kinetic attention. This book reveals how we can take control, not only to find more success in our careers, but also to find health and wellness in our everyday lives. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Named a Newsweek Best Book of 2023 From the creator of the popular finance podcast So Money, this accessible and clever guide to leaning into your fear to maximize your financial success and beyond “is a game-changer” (Kelly Ripa), perfect for fans of Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies and You Are a Badass at Making Money. Farnoosh Torabi is familiar with fear. Growing up in the 1980s as the daughter of Iranian immigrants, she was warned to always play it safe. She spent her childhood immersed in fear—of rejection, loneliness, missed opportunities, and falling short of her potential. Of course, now her mother says, “It all worked out, didn’t it?” Funnily enough, it did. Farnoosh came to the realization that fear never limited her. Instead, it has become a friend, opening her world and equipping her with the tools and street smarts to navigate life’s trials and thrive on her own terms. Now, Farnoosh pairs stories from her immigrant upbringing with hard-won industry knowledge and data to show how leaning into your fears can help you take control of your financial future. With clear-eyed advice and an engaging, heartfelt voice, she lays out the nine most common fears that hold us back—both personally and in our financial decisions—and shows how these fears can be pivoted into strengths and mined for wisdom to help us achieve richer, more meaningful lives: 1. The Fear of Rejection and how it leads to self-discovery and where we are loved. 2. The Fear of Loneliness and how it promotes strength, resilience, and empathy. 3. The Fear of Missing Out and how it begs for self-reflection and promotes individuality and boundaries. 4. The Fear of Being Exposed and how it heightens awareness and draws comedy and connection. 5. The Fear of Uncertainty and how it accelerates our goals and finds order in the disorder. 6. The Fear of Money and how it encourages landing on your (true) money story and pursuing financial freedom. 7. The Fear of Failure and how it helps us to embrace red flags and the next right thing. 8. The Fear of Endings and how it sparks action, deepens an appreciation for what endures and unveils the beauty in regret. 9. The Fear of Losing Your Freedom and how it fuels self-advocacy and inspires a legacy. Discover how you can become more self-reliant and financially resilient, invite calm and control into your daily routine, and how fear can serve you with this “wise, witty, and illustrative guide” (Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author) to building your best life.

The ultimate guide to mastering change and successfully reinventing how you live, work, and lead “Filled with useful ideas for rethinking your next steps.” —Adam Grant Porchlight Business Book Awards Winner The profound disruptions of recent years have sparked a collective reckoning. We reprioritized our lives, and reordered how we envisioned the future. Businesses were forced to pivot, while leaders scrambled to rethink their roles. There has been an unprecedented global reset. But in truth, almost everyone goes through this kind of reappraisal at least once in their life—and probably more often than that. Whatever the catalyst, it prompts in us the urgent need to pivot, to ask the question: What’s next—and how do I get there? In Next!, bestselling author and journalist Joanne Lipman distills hundreds of personal interviews along with the latest scientific research to answer just this question. Through irresistible storytelling, she takes us inside successful career reinventions (ad executive to bestselling novelist; stay-at-home mom to CEO) and astonishing business transformations (wait until you hear what Play-Doh and Viagra have in common). From the laboratories of neuroscientists to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, to the frontlines of the social justice movement, Lipman explores how and why these transformations succeed. At its heart, Next! offers a thrilling argument: by harnessing the science and understanding the process, we can better understand how to reinvent that new career, change the direction of our lives, or inspire innovation in our organizations. This book provides a toolkit that shows how to make meaningful transitions—large or small—and to figure out for ourselves what’s Next!

"Using stories and examples, David Moinina Sengeh presents seven principles for radical inclusion that are AS ACTIONABLE AS THEY ARE POWERFUL." ―Brené Brown From an inspiring young global leader—"A MASTER CLASS IN INNOVATION" (Kwame Alexander) for anyone who wants to make the world a better place. The first title from Melinda French Gates’s Moment of Lift Books As the newly appointed minister of education in Sierra Leone, David Moinina Sengeh assumed that the administration he served—not to mention his family and friends—shared his conviction that all girls belong in the classroom. He was shocked to learn that many of those closest to him, including a member of his own family, were against lifting a long-standing policy banning pregnant girls from school. Radical Inclusion is the dramatic narrative of Sengeh’s drive to guarantee pregnant girls’ right to an education. His story functions as a parable that can help us all advocate for change by reimagining the systems that perpetuate exclusion. The specifics of his efforts in Sierra Leone are captivating, and the lessons Sengeh shares are universal. In addition to the candid account of his quest for reform, he offers stories and perspective from other parts of his life, drawing on his experiences encountering racial profiling as a Harvard student, developing cutting-edge prosthetic limbs at MIT, and working to combat algorithmic bias as a data scientist. Sengeh offers listners a road map for pursuing radical inclusion in their own lives and work—from identifying exclusions, to building coalitions and adapting to a new normal. His audiobook is essential reading for modern leaders or anyone who hopes to help unleash the power of a world that is truly, radically inclusive. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in the world. But in our workplaces, anxiety has been a hidden problem-there in plain sight but ignored. Until now. The Anxious Achiever is a book with a mission: to normalize anxiety and leadership. As leadership expert and self-proclaimed anxious achiever Morra Aarons-Mele argues, anxiety is built into the very nature of leadership. It can-and should-be harnessed into a force for good. Inspired by the popular podcast of the same name, The Anxious Achiever is filled with personal stories, research-based insights into mental health, and lots of practical advice. You'll learn how to: figure out your own anxiety profile so that you can recognize and avoid common thought traps and triggers; confront bad habits and unhealthy coping mechanisms; resist perfectionism, manage social anxiety, and set boundaries to prevent burnout; deal with feedback, criticism, and impostor syndrome; and model-and communicate-healthy behavior as a leader. Whether you're experiencing anxiety for the first time or have been battling it for years, The Anxious Achiever will help you turn your stress and worries into a source of strength for yourself, your career, and the people you lead.

You Are a Badass meets Grit in this powerhouse guide to overcoming your fear and finding the confidence within—from Christie’s ambassador and author of the “insightful, inspiring” (New York Journal of Books) The Most Powerful Woman in the Room Is You. “How do I become more confident?” is the question Lydia Fenet hears almost every time she speaks to women across the country. Navigating a two-decade career at the world’s leading auction house while raising three children, Lydia had her own journey of learning self-assurance. Through stories of overcoming challenges in both her work and personal lives, she demonstrates that confidence isn’t something that only some people are born with; rather, it’s inside every one of us, waiting to be claimed. Claim Your Confidence offers case studies, insights, and advice on how to: - Harness the Power of Positivity - Slam Your Imposter Syndrome - Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable - Grow Your Mindset And more! From building up the courage to do what scares you the most to persisting when all you want to do is give up, get ready to claim your confidence and get the life you want.

New York Times bestselling author Jonah Berger’s cutting-edge research reveals how six types of words can increase your impact in every area of life: from persuading others and building stronger relationships, to boosting creativity and motivating teams. Almost everything we do involves words. Words are how we persuade, communicate, and connect. They’re how leaders lead, salespeople sell, and parents parent. They’re how teachers teach, policymakers govern, and doctors explain. Even our private thoughts rely on language. But certain words are more impactful than others. They’re better at changing minds, engaging audiences, and driving action. What are these magic words, and how can we take advantage of their power? In Magic Words, internationally bestselling author Jonah Berger gives you an inside look at the new science of language and how you can use it. Technological advances in machine learning, computational linguistics, and natural language processing, combined with the digitization of everything from cover letters to conversations, have yielded unprecedented insights. Learn how salespeople convince clients, lawyers persuade juries, and storytellers captivate audiences; how teachers get kids to help and service representatives increase customer satisfaction; how startup founders secure funding, musicians make hits, and psychologists identified a Shakespearean manuscript without ever reading a play. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. This book is designed for anyone who wants to increase their impact. It provides a powerful toolkit and actionable techniques that can lead to extraordinary results. Whether you’re trying to persuade a client, motivate a team, or get a whole organization to see things differently, this book will show you how to leverage the power of magic words.

Reclaim control of your workday with a proven time-saving method. Life is busier than ever before. We are working longer hours to keep up with longer to-do lists. Yet we’re experiencing more stress and seem to fall further and further behind. Our so-called leisure time is punctuated with interruptions, constantly pulling us back to work. We are led to believe we can prioritize our way out of this, but prioritization is broken. In Workday Warrior, productivity expert Ann Gomez presents a fresh approach that smashes today’s time challenges: too many priorities, too many interruptions, and too much complexity. We don’t need more willpower, discipline, or hours in our day. Instead, we need a straightforward approach to help us reclaim our time and upgrade our work habits. We need to concentrate our priori ties, protect our time, and simplify our work to amplify our results. This book will help you become a Workday Warrior. Find more time in your day, play at a higher level, and feel more in control of your time. Your work (and life!) will never be the same.

“One of my favorite books of the year. It completely reshaped how I think about information and how and why I take notes.” —Daniel Pink, bestselling author of Drive A revolutionary approach to enhancing productivity, creating flow, and vastly increasing your ability to capture, remember, and benefit from the unprecedented amount of information all around us. For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge. There has never been a better time to learn, to contribute, and to improve ourselves. Yet, rather than feeling empowered, we are often left feeling overwhelmed by this constant influx of information. The very knowledge that was supposed to set us free has instead led to the paralyzing stress of believing we’ll never know or remember enough. Now, this eye-opening and accessible guide shows how you can easily create your own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. As a trusted and organized digital repository of your most valued ideas, notes, and creative work synced across all your devices and platforms, a Second Brain gives you the confidence to tackle your most important projects and ambitious goals. Discover the full potential of your ideas and translate what you know into more powerful, more meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain.

There is a force in our everyday lives that we aren't even aware of-and it's so powerful it threatens to derail otherwise promising careers and lives: microstress. It's the hidden epidemic of small moments of anxiety that infiltrate both our work and personal lives. Because each individual microstress is so small, it doesn't trigger the normal stress response in our brains to help us deal with it. Instead, the microstress just embeds in our minds, accumulating along with scores of other microstresses, day-to-day and week-to-week. The long-term effect is devastating: microstress invisibly weighs us down, damages our physical and emotional health, and contributes to a decline in our overall well-being. The good news is that once you learn about microstress, you can fight back. Drawing on fresh research, Rob Cross and Karen Dillon will teach you how to recognize and manage the most common forms of microstress, and even remove some from your life. Compelling interviews with high achievers who've endured their share of microstress bring to life best practices that show you how to build resilience against microstress, and ultimately how to find purpose in your everyday life, using it as an antidote to your own microstress.

Ladies, leadership, and legacy! Like gravity, sowing and reaping is a natural law of life—you simply reap what you sow. It naturally plays and pays out, until it DOESN’T. Time and again, history has shown that until society learns and positively changes from the past with its deeply-rooted thought patterns and norms, we are condemned to repeat its many trappings, stereotypes, and shortcomings. Never Get Their Coffee is a call to action and underscores the glass ceiling disparities of gender equity in the marketplace. However, its focus fixates on helping shape societal strides in fueling fearless leadership, and its mission is in inspiring faith and tenacity of the human spirit to dream a dream, sow a thought, reap an action...a habit...a character...and ultimately to discover one’s destiny. Woods’ challenge for all her readers is that death is no respecter of persons—stop apologizing for success, aim high, dream deeply, and start living your divine calling. Become doers of destiny.

In Leading from the Middle, an audio course from Scribd Coach, Gill Bennet provides leadership tools to help leaders thrive in diverse environments and become more effective, inclusive, empathetic leaders. Through this dynamic course, which covers everything from unconscious bias to mental health, language to learning styles, you’ll learn how to build bridges and strengthen relationships by building a deeper understanding of the unique experience and perspectives of those around you, thanks to proven, practical strategies to help you foster an inclusive and collaborative environment. Complete with actionable insights and exercises to help you apply what you’ve learned, Bennet’s expert guidance will give you all the information you need to lead from the middle, with confidence as well as kindness.

What if the greatest salespeople on the planet are the opposite of who you think they are? Everyone sells, every day. It’s why the most successful people are better than most at selling themselves, their ideas, or their products and services. Yet when people hear the word sales they think of an overly confident, articulate extrovert (at best) or a pushy, know-it-all huckster (at worst). Because of these misperceptions, when we find ourselves in a situation where we need to sell, we feel compelled to put on the persona of a “good salesperson.” But there’s a disconnect between who we think good salespeople are and who they actually are. In any room, they’re not the most self-confident, they’re the most self-aware. They’re not the most sociable, they’re the most socially aware. And they don’t succeed in spite of obstacles, they succeed because of obstacles. Colin Coggins and Garrett Brown sought out some of the most successful people from all walks of life, including CEOs, entrepreneurs, doctors, trial lawyers, professional athletes, agents, military leaders, artists, engineers, and countless others in hopes of understanding why these people are so extraordinary. Colin and Garrett found that, as different as all these incredible people were, they all had an eerily similar approach to selling. It didn’t matter if they were perceived as optimists or pessimists, logical or emotional, introverted or extroverted, jovial or stoic—they were all unsold on what it meant to sell and unsold on who people expected them to be. The Unsold Mindset reveals a counterintuitive approach not just to selling but to life. It’s a journey toward an entirely new mindset—the greatest sellers on the planet aren’t successful because of what they do, they’re successful because of what they think. Being a good person and a good salesperson aren’t mutually exclusive. The Unsold Mindset will change the way you think about selling and the way you think about yourself. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Get the best from accelerating social change with the new audiobook from the bestselling author of 2030 and “acclaimed thought leader” (Kirkus), Mauro Guillén. Adam Grant praises how the book "invites us to rethink our careers, our families, and our future plans.” Find out why business leaders and bestselling authors around the world are calling it "sharply relevant and necessary" (William P. Lauder), "insightful and deeply researched" (Richard Florida), and "a must read" (Mohammed A. El-Erian). In today’s world, the acceleration of megatrends – increasing longevity and the explosion of technology among many others – are transforming life as we now know it. In The Perennials, bestselling author of 2030 Mauro Guillén unpacks a sweeping societal shift triggered by demographic and technological transformation. Guillén argues that outmoded terms like Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have long been used to pigeonhole us into rigid categories and life stages, artificially preventing people from reaching their full potential. A new postgenerational workforce known as “perennials” – individuals who are not pitted against each other either by their age or experience – makes it possible to liberate scores of people from the constraints of the sequential model of life and level the playing field so that everyone has a chance at living a rewarding life. Guillén unveils how this generational revolution will impact young people just entering the workforce as well as those who are living and working longer. This multigenerational revolution is already happening and Mauro Guillén identifies the specific cultural, organizational and policy changes that need to be made in order to switch to a new template and usher in a new era of innovation powered by the perennials. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

The Wall Street Journal Bestseller For so many entrepreneurs, running a small business ended up looking different than they imagined. They’re stressed, discouraged, and not confident in their plan for growth. In How to Grow Your Small Business, Donald Miller gives entrepreneurs a 6-step plan to grow their businesses so they produce dependable, predictable results. Using the exact steps you’ll learn in this book, Donald Miller grew his small business from four employees working out of a basement to a 15 million dollar operation, increasing revenue sixfold in just six years. As Miller grew his own business from the ground up, he realized nobody had put together a simple, step-by-step playbook for growing a business. That book didn’t exist. Until now. In this book, you’ll learn the 6 steps to grow a successful small business and create a playbook to implement them- your Flight Plan. When you have a completed Flight Plan in hand, you can stop drowning in the details and spend more time doing the things you truly love- in your business and your life. In How to Grow Your Small Business, you’ll learn how to: Cast a vision for your company that includes three economic priorities Clarify your marketing message Install a sales framework that makes your customers the hero Optimize your product offering Run a management and productivity playbook that aligns your entire team. Use 5 checking accounts to manage your cash flow If you’re ready to experience freedom, flexibility, and growth for your business, How to Grow Your Small Business is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Learn how to reframe your time around life’s happiest moments to build days that aren’t just full but fulfilling with this “joyful guide” (Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author) that is the antidote to overscheduling. Our most precious resource isn’t money. It’s time. We are allotted just twenty-four hours a day, and we live in a culture that keeps us feeling “time poor.” Since we can’t add more hours to the day, how can we experience our lives as richer? Based on her wildly popular MBA class at UCLA, Professor Cassie Holmes demonstrates how to immediately improve our lives by changing how we perceive and invest our time. Happier Hour provides empirically based insights and easy-to-implement tools that will allow you to: -Optimally spend your hours and feel confident in those choices -Sidestep distractions -Create and savor moments of joy -Design your schedule with purpose -Look back on your years without regrets Enlivened by Holmes’s upbeat narrative and groundbreaking research, Happier Hour “is filled with loads and loads of practical, evidence-based advice for how to live better by investing in what really matters. It’s the kind of book that can change your life for the better” (Laurie Santos, Yale professor and host of The Happiness Lab podcast).

Make achieving your goals and finding success possible with this one-of-a-kind guide by Robert Irvine, popular host of Food Network’s Restaurant: Impossible. Robert Irvine knows a thing or two about business. For over 200 episodes of Food Network’s hit show Restaurant: Impossible, he’s helped failing entrepreneurs make the necessary changes to reverse course and transform their businesses from the brink of collapse to sustainable enterprises. And he doesn’t just talk a good game; Irvine is a successful entrepreneur himself with a family of companies to his credit, from frozen foods and liquor to protein bars, restaurants, a traveling live show, and a namesake foundation that gives back to America’s veterans and first responders. Now Irvine is sharing the success secrets he has learned along the way so he can help others thrive. As he says in the book: “I’ve always wanted to write this book, and now I finally have enough hindsight to analyze the moves that transformed me from an aspiring entrepreneur to a successful one.” In this book, you will: Learn how to stop micromanaging. Understand what really motivates you, how to be accountable, and how to manage ego. Foster the traits of authenticity and trust into your culture. Change your mindset around technology and social media.  

LEARN THE RECIPE FOR STARTING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS For the first time ever, founder of Sprinkles cupcakes, Candace Nelson, is sharing the recipe for success in her new book, Sweet Success. She will walk you through the steps she took to build a globally beloved brand, so you can do it too. Although she deals in frosting, there’s no sugarcoating here. Candace pushes back the kitchen door to reveal mistakes, misses, and lessons learned the hard way. Readers will learn how to: Obtain the key ingredients to any successful business Craft the mindset of an entrepreneur Learn the secret recipe for packaging a product for profit Turn kitchen experiments into top selling products Cultivate a community of brand evangelists Step into a personal brand to amplify the business Know where to put marketing dollars most effectively And much more.   In a time of unprecedented disruption and innovation, people are rethinking career and professional purpose. It’s never been a better time to start a business. Sweet Success dispels the myth that entrepreneurship is reserved for an elite few and is a must-read for anyone with a passion needing a place to start or a push along the way. At a career crossroads, instead of going to business school like her peers, Candace Nelson reflected on what she really wanted to do—and did what nobody, including Candace herself, would have expected. She poured her passion and life savings into creating the world’s first cupcake bakery. Today, Sprinkles Cupcakes and its Cupcake ATMs have become a globally recognized brand, celebration mainstay and inspiration for entrepreneurs everywhere.

A “captivating…constructive” (Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again) guide to breaking free from the thoughts, habits, jobs, relationships, and even business models that prevent us from achieving our full potential. Almost everyone feels stuck in some way. Whether you’re muddling through a midlife crisis, wrestling with writer’s block, trapped in a thankless job, or trying to remedy a fraying friendship, the resulting emotion is usually a mix of anxiety, uncertainty, fear, anger, and numbness. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Anatomy of a Breakthrough is the “deeply researched and compelling” (Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism) roadmap we all need to escape our inertia and flourish in the face of friction. Adam Alter has spent the past two decades studying how people become stuck and how they free themselves to thrive. Here, he reveals the formula he and other researchers have uncovered. The solution rests on a process that he calls a friction audit—a systematic procedure that uncovers why a person or organization is stuck, and then suggests a path to progress. The friction audit states that people and organizations get unstuck when they overcome three sources of friction: HEART (unhelpful emotions); HEAD (unhelpful patterns of thought); and HABIT (unhelpful behaviors). Despite the ubiquity of friction, there are many great “unstickers” hidden in plain sight among us and Alter shines a light on some exceptional stories to share their valuable lessons with us. He tells us about the sub-elite swimmer who unstuck himself twice to win two Olympic gold medals, the actor who faced countless rejections before gaining worldwide fame, the renowned painter who became paralyzed and had to relearn to paint with a brush strapped to his wrist, and Alter’s own story of getting unstuck from a college degree that made him deeply unhappy. Artfully weaving together scientific studies, anecdotes, and interviews, Alter teaches us that getting stuck is a feature rather than a glitch on the road to thriving, but with the right tweaks and corrections, we can reach even our loftiest targets.

Power is not working—for women, for men, or for the world. We don’t need to remake women. We need to remake power. New York Times bestselling authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are on a mission to reclaim power for women. In the wake of sweeping changes in the way we work, the veteran journalists challenge pre­conceived notions of what power is and what it’s good for, along with the insidious, mostly hidden structures of the status quo that hold women back. What started as a straightforward examination of best practices has become a manifesto for a new form of power, a distinctly female version that is already emerging in workplaces, in politics, and on the home front. It’s a version that is more appealing to women (and most men as well). It offers women a blueprint for shaping their own professional futures, maximizing their impact for the benefit of others, and experiencing the real joy that comes from taking the reins and influencing outcomes. Writing from their own lived experiences, Kay and Shipman interviewed dozens of women of all ages, races, and backgrounds around the world, as well as cutting-edge academic researchers. Taken together, these per­spectives offer a clear-eyed and hopeful redesign of the workplace and our relationships at home, one that puts women in a remade and modernized seat of power. And now is exactly the right moment for women to step into their power. What’s at stake is much greater than the next job; it’s about the need for a new vision of what power can be, for a new code that focuses not simply on hierarchy, on having power over others, but also on purpose, on what power can achieve. Both a prescription for societal change and a pro-fessional guidebook for individual women, The Power Code shows you how to leverage the power you already have, find new sources of power in yourself and your community, and remodel your workplace and your home-life to produce less ego, more joy, and maximum impact.

This program features a bonus conversation between the authors. The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations. Find out why Adam Grant says, "If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place." Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.” Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others’ time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now, so they feel less threatening, to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams. Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up). A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

Steve Case, New York Times bestselling author of The Third Wave and cofounder of America Online shows how entrepreneurs across the country are building groundbreaking companies, renewing communities, and creating new jobs—reimagining the American landscape “and [giving] us hope for America’s future” (Ken Burns). In 2014, Steve Case launched Revolution’s Rise of the Rest, an initiative to accelerate the growth of tech startups across the country. Rise of the Rest is based on a simple idea: cities can be renewed and rise again if they develop a vibrant startup culture. A visionary entrepreneur himself, Case believes that great entrepreneurs can be found anywhere, and can thrive with the proper support and investment. In fact, they’re key to the American DNA. After all, America itself was a startup. It struggled to get going and almost didn’t make it. Today it’s the leader of the free world, in part because it has the world’s largest economy—a testament to several generations of pioneering entrepreneurs. But America needs help keeping its promises, as it is harder today for innovators who live outside the major tech hubs. For most of the past decade, seventy-five percent of venture capital has gone to just three states—California, New York, and Massachusetts—while the forty-seven states making up the rest of the country have been forced to share the remaining twenty-five percent. And it’s even harder for some people no matter where they live. Less than ten percent of venture capital currently goes to female founders, and less than one percent to Black founders. Since new companies—startups—are responsible for net new job creation, it is essential that entrepreneurs everywhere have the opportunity to start and scale companies. Rise of the Rest is about leveling the playing field for everybody, and in the process creating opportunity and jobs for the people and places that have been left behind. This book tells that story and provides a hopeful perspective on the future of America. In The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream, Case takes readers on an exhilarating journey into the startup communities that are transforming cities nationwide. Rise of the Rest’s signature road trips, on a big red tour bus, have created significant local and national buzz and spotlighted communities large and small that have committed to a new tech-enabled future. Along the way, Case introduces readers to dozens of entrepreneurs whose inspirational stories of struggle and achievement match the most iconic examples of American invention. To date, Case has traveled to forty-three cities on his Rise of the Rest bus tour and has been featured on 60 Minutes, and in The New York Times, USA TODAY, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal. With dedicated venture funds, backed by an iconic group of investors, executives, and entrepreneurs including Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Meg Whitman, John Doerr, Sara Blakely, and Ray Dalio, Rise of the Rest also invests in the most promising high-growth startups located anywhere in the US outside of Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston. The fund has invested in more than 175 companies across more than eighty cities, including: Phoenix, Chattanooga, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Louisville, Baltimore, Columbus, St. Louis, Green Bay, Madison, Buffalo, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Miami, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Indianapolis, New Orleans, and dozens of others.

A Living Now Book Awards Gold Medalist, Social Activism/Charity A practical, shame-free guide for navigating conversations across our differences at a time of rapid social change. In the current period of social and political unrest, conversations about identity are becoming more frequent and more difficult. On subjects like critical race theory, gender equity in the workplace, and LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms, many of us are understandably fearful of saying the wrong thing. That fear can sometimes prevent us from speaking up at all, depriving people from marginalized groups of support and stalling progress toward a more just and inclusive society. Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, founders of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at NYU School of Law, are here to show potential allies that these conversations don’t have to be so overwhelming. Through stories drawn from contexts as varied as social media posts, dinner party conversations, and workplace disputes, they offer seven user-friendly principles that teach skills such as how to avoid common conversational pitfalls, engage in respectful disagreement, offer authentic apologies, and better support people in our lives who experience bias. Research-backed, accessible, and uplifting, Say the Right Thing charts a pathway out of cancel culture toward more meaningful and empathetic dialogue on issues of identity. It also gives us the practical tools to do good in our spheres of influence. Whether managing diverse teams at work, navigating issues of inclusion at college, or challenging biased comments at a family barbecue, Yoshino and Glasgow help us move from unconsciously hurting people to consciously helping them.

This program is read by the author. A candid, intensely funny memoir of ambition, gender, and a grueling decade inside Amazon.com, from the author of Nothing Good Can Come from This. "A unique and brilliant book." —Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks What would you sacrifice for your career? All your free time? Your sense of self-worth? Your sanity? In 2006, Kristi Coulter left her cozy but dull job for a promising new position at the fast-growing Amazon.com, but she never expected the soul-crushing pressure that would come with it. In no time she found the challenge and excitement she'd been craving—along with seven-day workweeks, lifeboat exercises, widespread burnout, and a culture driven largely by fear. But the chase, the visibility, and, let's face it, the stock options proved intoxicating, and so, for twelve years, she stayed—until she no longer recognized the face in the mirror or the mission she'd signed up for. Unsparing, absurd, and wickedly funny, Exit Interview is a rare journey inside the crucible that is Amazon. It is an intimate, surprisingly relatable look at the work life of a driven woman in a world that loves the idea of female ambition but balks at the reality. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

A USA TODAY bestseller, this groundbreaking, empowering guide for women—from former PepsiCo COO Grace Puma and former Nike President of Consumer Direct Christiana Smith Shi—shows how to prioritize a career path, build professional value, and enjoy a full life both in and out of the workplace. At a time when many long-held workplace structures and beliefs are changing, Career Forward is a beacon for women aspiring to achieve success and satisfaction in rewarding careers. Drawing on decades of experience reaching the top of Fortune 500 companies, Grace Puma and Christiana Smith Shi show women how to maximize their career journeys, get paid what they’re worth, navigate the shifts that occur in any company, build a leadership identity, and have a full life in and out of work. The authors challenge negative stereotypes about female ambition, and urge women to be bold, follow their dreams, and seize the chance to lead “big” lives. The secret is to focus on career first, job second. Instead of chasing a better job title or a salary bump, the goal should be a long-range career path that leads to success. “Career forward” means keeping a focus on the future and recognizing that being good at your job is often not enough—that you should take every opportunity to boost your connections, take on “difficult” assignments, and work actively to broaden your skills. Packed with personal anecdotes and wisdom from women who’ve been there, and featuring quizzes and checklists for self-evaluation, Career Forward provides a wealth of valuable lessons, including the value of thinking of yourself as a “growth stock” and, instead of chasing the elusive work-life balance, living a well-rounded 360-degree life that fully embraces both. Offering a refreshing response to anyone who wonders whether working hard is really worth it, Puma and Smith Shi’s emphatic answer is “yes,” because by correctly following the blueprint in Career Forward, the rewards will far outweigh the effort.