We want to know which business book YOU want us to summarize in August. Voting concludes Friday, July 13th at 11.59pm EST. Look for July’s Readers’ Choice title, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain by Barbara Arrowsmith-Young, on Monday, July 23rd.
<a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/6377190/">What business book do you want us to summarize in August?</a>
1. TURNING PRO: TAP YOUR INNER POWER AND CREATE YOUR LIFE’S WORK by Steven Pressfield and Shawn Coyne
The follow-up to his bestseller The War of Art, Turning Pro navigates the passage from the amateur life to a professional practice. “You don’t need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind.” –Steven Pressfield TURNING PRO IS FREE, BUT IT’S NOT EASY. When we turn pro, we give up a life that we may have become extremely comfortable with. We give up a self that we have come to identify with and to call our own. TURNING PRO IS FREE, BUT IT DEMANDS SACRIFICE. The passage from amateur to professional is often achieved via an interior odyssey whose trials are survived only at great cost, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. We pass through a membrane when we turn pro. It’s messy and it’s scary. We tread in blood when we turn pro. WHAT WE GET WHEN WE TURN PRO. What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and live out.
2. BREAKTHROUGH BRANDING: HOW SMART ENTREPRENEURS AND INTRAPRENEURS TRANSFORM A SMALL IDEA INTO A BIG BRAND by Catherine Kaputa
From the grassroots growth of beverage brands like Red Bull, and Honest Tea, to the exploding growth of digital brands like Twitter, and Groupon — successful companies of all types and sizes begin with three things: an entrepreneur, a winning idea, and a brand strategy. Branding expert Catherine Kaputa, founder of SelfBrand LLC, uses dozens of US and international brand histories to demonstrate what makes a brand thrive, and provides you with the tools to do the same.
3. LIKEONOMICS: THE UNEXPECTED TRUTH BEHIND EARNING TRUST, INFLUENCING BEHAVIOR, AND INSPIRING ACTION by Rohit Bhargava
The future isn’t about the next social media tool or clicking a “Like” button. Instead, people decide which organizations to trust, what advice to follow, and who to forge personal or business relationships with based on the simple metric of likeability. This is no longer a soft quality and it is not the same thing as just being nice. With today’s “modern believability crisis,” earning the trust of your customers, employees, and colleagues is much harder to do. Likeonomics offers a new vision of a world beyond Facebook, where real relationships and personal values such as unabashed honesty, extreme simplicity, and basic humanity are the keys to success. There is a real ROI to likeability, and exactly how big it is will amaze you.
Likeonomics uncovers five key principles to win trust (or win it back)—and keep it. You’ll learn how to use the TRUST formula (Truth, Relevance, Unselfishness, Simplicity, and Timing) to power every relationship. Being more believable is the real secret to standing out—whether you are trying to grow your business, win an election, or find your next job—and this book will help you get there.
4. GREAT FROM THE START: HOW CONSCIOUS CORPORATIONS ATTRACT SUCCESS by John B. Montgomery
“Great From the Start” suggests how to build corporations that answer the fundamental philosophical question never answered by the Founding Fathers: What are the rights and moral responsibilities of our corporations? This question is especially pressing in an interdependent global economic system dominated by multinational corporations. Great from the Start applies the business secrets of Silicon Valley to show you how build companies that awaken a planetary conscience that protects not only their shareholders but also society and the environment. Such corporations are also conscious and designed to attract success in an interdependent economy. Why conscious?
* First, to thrive, a corporation must be awake to make conscious decisions with inspired people who are united by a common purpose and shared values.
* Second, a corporation must be aware of all of its stakeholders’ needs and the complexities of today’s world. Without this awareness, the prevailing concept of the corporation existing solely to maximize profit for shareholders will limit its success.
* Finally, because the law endows it with many of the rights of personhood, a corporation must be conscious to act appropriately as a responsible global citizen.
