Mark Horner

This book has been recommended to help grow business

These books have been recommended to help grow business

• The Happiness Advantage: The seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work

  Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.

  In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.

  Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential. Among the principles he outlines:

  • The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look. • The Zorro Circle: how to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones. • Social Investment: how to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network

  A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mindset to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

  Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn.

  So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like?

  Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last 10 years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn’t a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval’s own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

• The Courageous State: Rethinking Economics, Society and the Role of Government

  What is the Courageous State?

  The Courageous State is Richard Murphy's vision of a country in which politicians strive to give everyone the chance to achieve their potential. So what's the book about?

  Three things. First, it says that neoliberalism has given us feeble politicians who think anything they do will be worse than the market outcome, so they do little or nothing. They fail us as a result. Second, it argues that this is wrong and a whole raft of new economic thinking from Richard shows why.

  And third, it contains a whole range of economic policy proposals that Courageous politicians could adopt to get us out of the neoliberal mess we're in. Why buy it now?

  Because everyone says that we're living in a world where there are no alternative ideas to counter neoliberalism - and now there are lots of them, all wrapped up in The Courageous State.

  Who is Richard Murphy?

  Richard is a chartered accountant, political economist, adviser to the TUC, PCS, The Tax Justice Network and others, and the person who put the Tax Gap on the UK policy agenda. He's also well known for his Tax Research UK blog - now ranked the number 1 economics blog in the UK.

  About the Author Richard Murphy is a chartered accountant and economist. He has been described by the Guardian newspaper as an "anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert". Keven Maguire, associate editor of the Daily Mirror has said: "We've got to take sides on tax. Rich individuals, corporations, well-funded special interest groups and much of Fleet Street is on one (the wrong) side and then there is Richard Murphy plus a few others, including yours truly. But it is Murphy who is the heroic figure. Tireless and forensic, driven by an admirable moral fervour, I take my hat off to a campaigner with Duracell batteries."

  A graduate in Economics and Accountancy from Southampton University he was articled to Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co in London. He subsequently founded a firm of accountants in London which he and his partners sold in 2000. In parallel with his practice career Richard was chairman, chief executive or finance director of more than 10 SMEs.

  Since 2003 Richard has been increasingly involved in economic and taxation policy issues. He was a founder of the Tax Justice Network and is director of Tax Research LLP which undertakes work on taxation policy, advocacy and research for aid agencies, unions, NGOs and others in the UK and abroad.

  Richard Murphy has been responsible for introducing many new issues into debates on tax policy. In particular he created the entirely new accounting concept of Country-by-Country reporting that is now being considered for adoption by the European Union, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Accounting Standards Board and others. Country-by-Country reporting requires a multinational company to publish a proper loss account each and every jurisdiction in which it trades, without exception, and is seen as as a mechanism for holding multinational corporations to account for their activities in developing countries, the extractive industries and tax havens. It will also assist the monitoring of corporate transfer mispricing and is believed to cost developing countries tens and maybe hundreds of billions of dollars a year as well as corporate tax and governance risk in multinational corporations. As principal researcher of the Tax Justice Network from its inception until 2009 Richard helped put the tax haven issue on the international agenda as principal author of such works as 'Tax Us If You Can', 'Closing the Floodgates', 'Creating Turmoil' and the extensive analysis underpinning TJN's Secrecy Jurisdictions website and its Financial Secrecy Index. During the course of this work he defined what a secrecy jurisdiction is and this term has as a result been widely used in international dialogue on tackling tax abuse through what were previously known as tax havens. The practical consequences of this work can be seen in changes imposed upon the tax systems of locations such as Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, all resulting from his exposure of their failure to comply with international requirements.

  Richard's work for the TUC, PCS and others on the tax gap in the United Kingdom has also put this issue on the UK tax agenda. It was not part of taxation debate until the TUC published his report `The Missing Billions' in 2008. It is now the main priority of H M Revenue & Customs' business plan. Richard is also a principal author of many of the proposals made by the Green New Deal group in the UK, which has had a significant influence on political debate in the UK and beyond. He has written extensively on tackling the UK's deficit without imposing cuts on the most vulnerable in society.

  Richard has written widely, and blogs frequently. He has appeared in many radio and television documentaries on taxation issues. He has also presented written and oral evidence to select committee committees of the House of Commons and House of Lords.

  Richard has been a visiting fellow at Portsmouth University Business School, the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex and at the Tax Research Institute, University of Nottingham.

  Richard was voted the seventh most influential left wing thinker in 2010/11 in a Left Foot Forward poll, making him the highest ranked UK based economist on the list.

• Talk And Grow Rich: How to create wealth without capital

  Deep in your mind, you already have what it takes to come up with ideas that will make you a fortune: the ability to carry your plans through and the ability to be a storming success in whatever you choose to do. This book/ audio program teaches you a whole new way of thinking that will enable you to release that ability and help you achieve everything you've always wanted to do, however unlikely those hopes have been!

  Talk your way into great riches, and never look back.

  After the ability to think well, probably the most powerful skill you can ever have is the ability to talk to people, really engage them, and have a powerful influence over them. By teaching you how to click in to the way other people are thinking, and talk directly to their subconscious rather than their conscious mind, this book / audio will show you how you can get the upper hand over anybody. Helping Create Millionaires since 1981 “I can categorically state that Ron Holland’s book Talk & Grow Rich and his personal mentoring helped me tremendously. Ron held my hand until I got the first million in the bank and I am now a multi-millionaire with international homes around the world.” Andy Hunt, Clearsky Properties. Talk & Grow Rich has been helping to create millionaires since 1981 and it will blow you away! This book was first published in 1981 and having passed the test of time, is now one of the greatest self-help classics of all time, selling all over the world in countless languages and formats. It was the first book to introduce Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) into the MLM, business and sales arenas. Many folk claim this book is more powerful than Think & Grow Rich.

  Countless people claim they prefer Ron’s book more than Napoleons Hill’s incredible Think & Grow Rich, because it shows in great detail, in layman’s terms, exactly what you have to do in order to make money and become wealthy. Think & Grow Rich and the Science of Getting Rich were written way back in the day, before they even discovered the brain had two separate hemispheres that work in totally different ways in the way they process information. Talk & Grow Rich will show you how to cultivate peace of mind as well as how to sell anything to anyone. Its powerful techniques will teach you how to get people to lend you money, buy from you and also how to get into the other man’s mind. It will show you how to develop a rapport with your prospect, at levels that have never been revealed before. It will show you how to generate wealth without capital, and why thinking may be the worst possible thing you can do. It will teach you how you can succeed even if you are shy, feel cumbersome about talking to people and feel like an absolute failure. You will discover how to tell what other people are thinking just by the position of their eyes and well as hundreds of ways of dealing with all the niggling and small things that stand between you and wealth. You will learn how to generate so many fool proof success ideas (Ron calls these Eureka’s!) that you will need to carry pen and paper around to capture them. Once you have your million dollar idea, Ron will show you in great detail how to turn that idea in money. Without doubt this book is preferred reading / listening for all MLMers. Download and start reading or listening now!

• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

  Ferriss developed the ideas present in The 4-Hour Workweek (4HWW) while working 14-hour days at his sports nutrition supplement company, BrainQUICKEN. Frustrated by the overwork and lack of free time, Ferriss took a 3-week sabbatical to Europe. During that time and continued travels throughout Europe, Asia, and South America, Ferriss developed a streamlined system of checking email once per day and outsourcing small daily tasks to virtual assistants. His personal escape from a workaholic lifestyle was the genesis of the book.

  The format of The 4-Hour Workweek took shape during a series of lectures Ferriss delivered on high-tech entrepreneurship at Princeton University, his alma mater. The lectures (and book) described Ferriss' own experiences in company automation and lifestyle development.

• The Future Leader: 9 Skills and Mindsets to Succeed in the Next Decade

  There has been a lot written about leadership for the present day, but the world is changing quickly. What worked in the past won't work in the future. We need to know how to prepare leaders who can successfully navigate and guide us through the next decade and beyond.  How is leadership changing, and why? How ready are leaders today for these changes? What should leaders do now? To answer these questions, Jacob Morgan interviewed over 140 CEOs from companies like Unilever, Mastercard, Best Buy, Oracle, Verizon, Kaiser, KPMG, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Yum! Brands, Saint-Gobain, Dominos, Philip Morris International, and over a hundred others. Jacob also partnered with Linkedin to survey almost 14,000 of their members around the globe to see how CEO insights align with employee perspectives. The majority of the world's top business leaders that Jacob interviewed believe that while some core aspects of leadership will remain the same, such as creating a vision and executing on strategy, leaders of the future will need a new arsenal of skills and mindsets to succeed. What emerged from all of this research is the most accurate groundbreaking book on the future of leadership, which shares exclusive insights from the world's top CEOs and never before seen research.

• How to win friends & influence people: The only book you need to lead you to success

  Dale Carnegie’s rock-solid, time-tested advice has carried countless people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. One of the most groundbreaking and timeless best-sellers of all time, How to Win Friends & Influence People will teach you:

  -Six ways to make people like you

  -Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking

  -Nine ways to change people without arousing resentment

  And much more! Achieve your maximum potential

  —a must-read for the twenty-first century with more than 15 million copies sold!

• American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Very few of us will ever have to manage a crisis on this scale The complexity was staggering. “Never in modern history has government ordered businesses, schools, and private institutions to close. State government has never issued stay-at-home orders, not even during the 1918 flu pandemic.”

  The communication lessons learned and shared from will help any aspiring leader navigate teams through a crisis.

  1. Deliver a consistent message.

  It was well-known to the state’s voters that Cuomo and New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, had a strained relationship. But the two leaders decided to hold the first briefing together to show a unified front.

  “An informed, consistent message was important, so by doing this event with the mayor, I could make sure we were stating the same facts,” writes Cuomo.

  Consistency extended to the time of the presentation, too. Daily briefings were held at 11:30 a.m. “Consistency of presentation offered its own kind of comfort to viewers: they knew what to expect.”

  2. Choose your words carefully.

  Cuomo acknowledges a communication mistake he made on March 3, when he used a poor choice of words. To slow the spread of the virus in the suburb of New Rochelle, a town that would become the nation’s first hot spot, Cuomo announced a “containment zone” and said that the National Guard would help deliver food to students after the schools closed.

  “The combination of the words ‘containment zone’ and ‘national guard’ frightened people,” according to Cuomo.

  “To be clear, there was no actual containment of people; they could come and go as they pleased. The containment was of the virus. But the term was misunderstood, and I soon learned that a poorly worded phrase was dangerous. The quick escalation from mild concern to high anxiety surprised even me.”

  Cuomo was even more careful with his word choice after a panic broke out in the San Francisco Bay Area when local governments issued a ‘shelter-in-place’ order.

  “Shelter in place was originally used in the 1950s in anticipation of a nuclear attack. It literally means to seek to out shelter in an interior windowless room in your home and remain there until the all-clear is given. It was a startling and frightening concept.”

  Cuomo’s right. I live in the Bay Area and had just returned from a trip on the same day as the order. I’ll never forget the chaos. I saw long lines at the gas stations, no parking availability in grocery store lots, and rows and rows of empty store shelves.

  “Did I miss something?” I asked. “Grocery stores aren’t shutting down, are they?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Shelter in place. You can’t leave your house!”

  They were wrong, of course. We could still leave for essential reasons.

  When Cuomo issued a similar order in New York on March 20, he used the words, “Stay home” or “pausing,” words he considered more comforting.

  “Communication is an art form, especially when emotion is running high,” writes Cuomo. Words matter.

  3. Write the presentation in your own words.

  Trust is a key word that runs throughout Cuomo’s book. In a crisis, a leader can’t tell people what to do and watch as they do it. Leaders have to persuade people. Persuasion requires trust.

  “If they did not trust my credibility, they would not trust me, the information I gave them, or my proposals,” writes Cuomo.

  Cuomo’s words had to be his own. That meant that Cuomo had to understand what the numbers meant.

  The daily COVID numbers (new cases, tests, hospitalizations, deaths) came in at 3:00 a.m. Cuomo’s staff talked on the phone and reviewed the numbers with him when he woke up at 5:00 a.m. He got to the office at 6:00 a.m. and read through stacks of reports, peppering his team and outside scientists with questions.

  Cuomo then wrote the entire presentation by hand.

  “It was important to me that everything I conveyed at the briefings was logically organized and in my own words…In the briefings, I spoke the way I would speak to a close friend or my daughters. I said the same words that I said to my mother and brother.”

  4. Visualize the message.

  After writing the day’s message in his own words, Cuomo sketched the visuals for each of the twenty or thirty slides in the PowerPoint deck.

  For example, one day Cuomo wanted to visualize the threat facing New York’s hospital system. “I sketched a tidal wave representing COVID cases cresting upward, and in the sea below, a hospital.”

  Members of his staff would create the slides along with graphics, charts, art.

  Interestingly, the team wanted to use more modern visuals. “They thought ours looked straight out of the 1960s,” Cuomo recalls. But Cuomo didn’t want the presentation to look slick. “I wasn’t trying to sell anything.”

  This tells me that everything about Cuomo’s presentation was intentional. He thought carefully about the message he wanted to send, the feeling he wanted to convey, and the emotion he wanted to evoke.

  5. Show authentic emotion.

  The briefings were meant to be authentic and real. “I felt the same emotions so many people were feeling, and I would acknowledge them and show them,” Cuomo writes.

  Cuomo allowed himself to display his emotions by dividing his presentation into two parts. In part one he delivered the facts: numbers and statistics. Part two began with a slide titled, “Personal Opinion.”

  “When I was afraid and I was frustrated, I said that. When I was sad, especially when the fatalities began, I communicated honestly and extemporaneously exactly what I was feeling.”

  Cuomo says if he had not connected emotionally with people, they would not have had the trust or confidence to follow his proposals.

  “I needed to connect to people where they were. To believe in me, they had to know me as a person.”

  Cuomo is a student of history. He often quoted Winston Churchill or Franklin D. Roosevelt in his press briefings. He’s learned that in periods of crisis, an inspired leader can bring people together to accomplish the impossible. But inspiration requires that people are unified behind a common goal, understand the facts, and trust the leader to get them to the other side.

  Yes, communication is an art form. It’s a skill that every leader must sharpen if they hope to persuade people to follow their vision.

• Talk like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds

  Ideas are the currency of the twenty-first century. In order to succeed, you need to be able to sell your ideas persuasively. This ability is the single greatest skill that will help you accomplish your dreams. TED Talks have redefined the elements of a successful presentation and become the gold standard for public speaking. TED―which stands for technology, entertainment, and design―brings together the world's leading thinkers. These are the presentations that set the world on fire, and the techniques that top TED speakers use will make any presentation more dynamic, fire up any team, and give anyone the confidence to overcome their fear of public speaking.

  Public speaking coach and best-selling author Carmine Gallo has broken down hundreds of TED talks and interviewed the most popular TED presenters, as well as the top researchers in the fields of psychology, communications, and neuroscience to reveal the nine secrets of all successful TED presentations. Gallo's step-by-step method makes it possible for anyone to deliver a presentation that is engaging, persuasive, and memorable.

  Many people have a fear of public speaking or are insecure about their ability to give a TED-worthy presentation. Carmine Gallo's top 10 Wall Street Journal Bestseller Talk Like TED will give them the tools to communicate the ideas that matter most to them, the skill to win over hearts and minds, and the confidence to deliver the talk of their lives.

• The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

  Clayton asserts that the reason why great companies fail is that good management itself was the root cause.

  "Managers played the game the way it’s supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies: listening to customers; tracking competitors actions carefully; and investing resources to design and build higher-performance, higher-quality products that will yield greater profit. These are the reasons why great firms stumbled or failed when confronted with disruptive technology change.

  Successful companies want their resources to be focused on activities that address customers’ needs, that promise higher profits, that are technologically feasible, and that help them play in substantial markets. Yet, to expect the processes that accomplish those things also to do something like nurturing disruptive technologies – to focus resources on proposals that customers reject, that offer lower profit, that under-perform existing technologies and can only be sold in insignificant markets– is akin to flapping one’s arms with wings strapped to them in an attempt to fly. Such expectations involve fighting some fundamental tendencies about the way successful organisations work and about how their performance is evaluated.”

  A common misinterpretation is that incumbents fail to develop these disruptive technologies or that they fail to embrace them due to the inability of the organisation to adapt operationally or technologically. In other words, management is unable to identify new trends, develop new ideas and reorganise to bring these new technologies to market. This interpretation, however, is plain wrong and the opposite is shown to be true.

  What the theory — and the extensive evidence — in fact support is that incumbents often are the ones to spot and develop new technologies while easily reorganising themselves to do so. The problem is they fail to value new innovations properly because incumbents attempt to apply them to their existing customers and product architectures — or value networks. Often new technologies are too new and weak for the more advanced and mature value networks that incumbents operate.

  This leads to the ROI needed to advance the innovation to be seen as low. In other words, management acts sensibly in rejecting the continued investment in these new technologies and act in the company’s best fiduciary interests. Moving into new markets is rejected as they are seen as too small to make a dent for them and their cost structure prohibitive to enter at sensible margins.

  Therefore, new entrants (often founded by frustrated ex-employees of the incumbents) with little or nothing to lose when they enter the market. Initially these small upstarts don’t pose a threat — the new entrants find new markets to apply these technologies largely by trial and error, at low margins. Their nimbleness and low cost structures allow them to operate in a sustainable way where incumbents could not.

• Step Back, Move Forward: How changing your perspective can change your life

  With a no nonsense, realistic approach to life and a history of turning potential failure into resounding success, Liz will tell you:

  -How to fight back when life knocks you down,

  -How to use visualisation techniques to create a better future,

  -Why it's okay to feel down,

  -How meditation can be an effective form of pain control,

  -The importance of having a strong support network,

  -The efficacy of 'negative' mantras,

  -Why it's important to have a plan,

  -How to use your inner 'stubbornness',

  -How to create a life you love.

  By following Liz's advice, readers can learn to fight back against depression and anxiety and make the most of any situation. There are no miracle cures and no magic formula for success, but with a little hard work and a dose of self belief, you can be a happier, better you. Remember, you will never fail until the day you stop trying to succeed.

• How to Persuade: The skills you need to get what you want

  'It's a fact that likable people are the ones who get furthest in life. Even if you're not the smartest or most experienced, if you are the most likeable, you'll often be the most persuasive in the moment,' Michelle says. 'In contrast, unlikeable people are a turn-off. They destroy the joy and can make people feel uncomfortable, judged and fearful.  'The four most unlikeable behaviours in others were unsatisfactory grooming, killing the fun, and ignoring or talking over others.' 1. Be attractive Whether you like this fact or not, attractive people get more breaks in life than their 'plain' counterparts.  Business psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic reported in 2019 that people who don't fit a society's dominant aesthetic criteria simply don't get the same breaks in life as those who do.  And psychologist and researcher at Harvard University Nancy L Etcoff and her colleagues published a 2011 study that found that groomed woman who were wearing makeup were seen as more attractive, competent, likeable and trustworthy than women who presented with a bare face. Pretty convincing!  The good news is that 'attractiveness' doesn't really relate to your 'natural' beauty. Whatever you look like, you can certainly make the most of your qualities and features.

  You don't have to spend a lot of money making yourself attractive. Ask yourself the following: • Is your hair styled the best way for your face? Is it well kept and stylish? • Do you keep yourself clean and tidy? • Are you wearing clothes that flatter your body type? • Are your nose and ear hairs trimmed? • Do you smell good? • Are your teeth clean? • Are your fingernails well kept? • Do you have clean shoes, and are your clothes laundered and ironed without food stains and mess? • Did you tuck in your shirt? You may think this is fussy and no-one else's business, and the bad news is that you think that at your own peril. This stuff counts when it comes to persuasion.

  The three ways to boost your charisma - and why it matters  Why be charismatic? Charismatic people are attractive, likeable, and respected. They convey a contagious confidence for their point of view and can win people over with their magnetic personality and charm. When someone is charismatic, people want to be like them, and they also want to spend time with them. And when someone is charismatic, they are automatically more believable, no matter their point of view. You will most definitely be more persuasive if you can develop your perceived charisma. There are three areas to work on if you want to build your perceived charisma with others: 1. Presence Presence is about a smoothness of activity. Imagine a swan gliding along the water. They seem calm, serene, and controlled. Under the water their legs are kicking and paddling furiously, but you don't see all that commotion.   To ensure you seem smooth on the surface it's important to limit stressful behaviour such as jerky movements, closed body language, and impulsive comments, or actions.  2. Power Power is all about your self-belief and how much you like and back yourself. It's about an inner confidence that radiates from you and implies success.  You can demonstrate power by holding an upright, commanding posture, maintaining direct-connected eye contact, and by your superior ability to articulate your point through excellent structure and clever storytelling.  Perhaps you could begin to improve your power and charisma by participating in the conversations around you. Try to inject a short story, an example, or a metaphor (even in a small way) into every conversation. 3. Warmth   Warmth is about your perceived care and acceptance of the other person. If you are a charismatic person, you put people at ease and you make people feel amazing!  You make others feel important and as though they matter. This of course can be very alluring and addictive to the people around you. People want to spend time with someone who makes them feel worthy.  If you're keen to develop this capability aim to do all the activities that build rapport easily, care about others, remember key facts about them. Interestingly warmth is also very much conveyed through the eyes and facial expressions. If you'd like to improve your warmth and therefore your charisma you could practice looking at people in the same way you would look at a person you care for deeply (don't be weird about this though!). 2. Smile and 'smize' Smiling is a winning behaviour recognised internationally as a sign of positivity. Did you know that babies are born with the ability to smile? People who smile are seen by others as confident, positive and attractive.  You appear younger when you smile a lot because of the way smiling affects the muscles in your face. Smiling is even good for you because it releases endorphins and other chemicals that help you relax and feel good.  Unsurprisingly, an American Association of Cosmetic Dentistry study found that people were more likely to remember your smile than the first thing you said.  A wonderful strategy for persuasion is to not just smile but 'smize' - or smile with your eyes. This is a term coined by supermodel Tyra Banks.  Over 50 different types of smiles are possible, but the one that is deemed the most sincere is the smize - it pushes up into your eyes, your eyes sparkle and you look genuinely happy. 3. Laugh and use humour to negotiate Laughing is a wonderful way to build rapport with people because playful communication triggers good feelings and a positive emotional connection.  You probably know that a sense of humour is one of the first things people look for in a life partner - because people who can laugh are more likely to let go of defensiveness, act more spontaneously and release inhibitions.  Funny people are likeable. People who laugh freely are thought of as joyful, light and fun to be around. Who wouldn't want that? Humour that's working for both parties can also help you negotiate more effectively, resolve conflict and move people forward. It's true that laughter unites people during difficult times. Befriend funny people and watch and read funny things daily. 4. Show your hands and don't fidget Showing your hands signals safety - the people around you have nothing to fear. Whether you are standing or sitting down, aligning your shoulders with the other person and keeping your hands open and obvious suggests that you are interested and engaged in the conversation.  Turning away, twisting your body or hiding your hands signifies either a lack of interest or disagreement. You also shouldn't do a whole lot of other things with your hands if you're aiming to be trustworthy. For example, don't cross your arms, put your hands in your pocket, hold your crotch, clasp your hands behind your back, hold your fingers in a steeple position, touch your face or hair, or fidget with your rings or clothes.  These distracting hand movements stop your stakeholder from listening properly. They may even start to distrust you. 5. Listen and don't talk over people Bestselling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey, wisely said, 'Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply'.  Isn't it just so irritating when you are talking and someone speaks over the top of you? Doing so implies that the person doesn't value what you're saying. It breaks rapport and prevents the forming of goodwill.  Try to do what you can to listen when someone is talking. Take a moment of pause before adding your point. If you focus on these five actions, you'll be even more likeable than you already are and look out world - because this is one of the skills you need to get what you want!

• Eat That Frog!: Get More of the Important Things Done - Today!

  There just isn't enough time for everything on our 'To Do' list - and there never will be. Successful people don't try to do everything. They learn to focus on the most important tasks and make sure they get done. There's an old saying that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that it's probably the worst thing you'll do all day. Using 'eat that frog' as a metaphor for tackling the most challenging task of your day - the one you are most likely to procrastinate on, but also probably the one that can have the greatest positive impact on your life - Eat That Frog! shows you how to zero in on these critical tasks and organize your day. You'll not only get more done faster, but get the right things done. Bestselling author Brian Tracy cuts to the core of what is vital to effective time management: decision, discipline, and determination. In this fully revised and updated second edition, he provides brand new information on how to keep technology from dominating your time. He details twenty-one practical and doable steps that will help you stop procrastinating and get more of the important tasks done - today!

• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

  Deep Work shames and then motivates to build the skill of high productivity in a world of interruptions. Who will gain the most from reading this book? Those of us who find the mass of e mail, social media and electronic input stops them getting useful work done. Core Content It would be too simple to describe Deep Work as a guide to how to work more productively and avoid the pitfalls of constant interruption. Yes, the book does describe techniques for avoiding distraction and procrastination and they are powerful if utilised constantly. The core premise is that the ability to concentrate and apply our minds to an opportunity or to a challenge is now so rare that, if we can build that skill, then we have become one of a special group. It is also worth noting that this is not just about avoiding interruption. The author asserts that we concentrate so little in our flitting style of life that we have actually lost the ability to concentrate for the time required to achieve meaningful work. It it this concentration span itself that is a skill that needs to be relearned. Looking for inspiration? Download our ‘one-page business plan examples’ sheet to challenge your thinking

  The author attempts to help us out in two major and additional ways that can help the reader actually use the techniques. In the first instance he attempts to help us understand our own habits and weaknesses. By explaining exactly what’s going on in our heads when we allow ourselves to be distracted he allows us to understand our basic human frailty and to some degree shames us into demonstrating more discipline. The book then moves on to explain how Deep Work undertaken with enthusiasm can really drive competitive advantage. The fact that so few people can achieve this state of high productivity means that everything is possible for those that can. In truth, for a reader who is interested in the subject, and that is why they would have bought the book, Deep Work provides techniques and the motivation to move over from the dark side of being driven by technology to the light of using it to much better effect than those around them.

• What's Your URP?: Don't just make a living; make a life.

  Do you love Mondays?

  I do! And Tuesdays, Wednesdays… every day is a great day where I earn my living doing things I love doing, with people I love being with. This book explains how you can do this too and take back control of your own destiny. Are you struggling to make money, despite working all hours? Are you constantly going outside of your comfort zone because, ‘that’s just what people like me have to do’?

  This book gives you a new formula to follow that will help you find your own space, align your activities with your core values, and help you take steps every day that move you closer to your dream.

  Are you bored? Frustrated? Do you really want to wait for retirement before you start enjoying yourself? This book provides a toolkit that will help you make the most of every day – to the point where you won’t want to retire!

  This book shares the secret of finding out how you can earn more through helping others. You can make a difference. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, don’t just make a living; make a life.

  You can achieve the Business Owner’s goal of Easy Growth... ‘Winning lots more work, without doing lots more work’ Andy Bounds Sales and Communication Expert Best-selling author and international speaker

• The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

  From the cofounder of Square, an inspiring and entertaining account of what it means to be a true entrepreneur and what it takes to build a resilient, world-changing company

  In 2009, a St. Louis glassblowing artist and recovering computer scientist named Jim McKelvey lost a sale because he couldn't accept American Express cards. Frustrated by the high costs and difficulty of accepting credit card payments, McKelvey joined his friend Jack Dorsey (the cofounder of Twitter) to launch Square, a startup that would enable small merchants to accept credit card payments on their mobile phones. With no expertise or experience in the world of payments, they approached the problem of credit cards with a new perspective, questioning the industry's assumptions, experimenting and innovating their way through early challenges, and achieving widespread adoption from merchants small and large.

  But just as Square was taking off, Amazon launched a similar product, marketed it aggressively, and undercut Square on price. For most ordinary startups, this would have spelled the end. Instead, less than a year later, Amazon was in retreat and soon discontinued its service. How did Square beat the most dangerous company on the planet? Was it just luck? These questions motivated McKelvey to study what Square had done differently from all the other companies Amazon had killed. He eventually found the key: a strategy he calls the Innovation Stack.

  McKelvey's fascinating and humorous stories of Square's early days are blended with historical examples of other world-changing companies built on the Innovation Stack to reveal a pattern of ground-breaking, competition-proof entrepreneurship that is rare but repeatable.

  The Innovation Stack is a thrilling business narrative that's much bigger than the story of Square. It is an irreverent first-person look inside the world of entrepreneurship, and a call to action for all of us to find the entrepreneur within ourselves and identify and fix unsolved problems--one crazy idea at a time.

• Be More Mosquito: How you can campaign and create change

  It’s no secret that campaigning is tough, but just how tough you’ll never know until you try, and it’s this first step which is often the hardest to overcome: caring enough about something to even start to try and change it. Often campaigners are invited onto the news because some form of tragedy has affected them or their loved ones, an injustice they’re now fully committed to trying to fix, and prevent happening to anyone else. Not only is this degree of activism so soon after the actual traumatic event commendable, but it most likely offers a very convenient distraction from grieving, which as anyone who’s lost someone close to them will know only too well, can be unbelievably debilitating in those first few months and years.

Other reasons we put off attempting to change stuff we genuinely care about may include apathy, pessimism, or just a belief that someone else with more campaigning knowledge, pots of money, other valuable resources, or all of the above will probably do it instead; so realistically what’s the point of us even trying?

  Well, to be brutally honest, if you don’t do something then it’s unlikely that anything will ever change. And that’s precisely what I’m going to attempt to convey in my forthcoming articles for Animal Journal, that we can all play a major part in the solution, in fixing problems and issues involving our animal, natural, or conservation world.

  Swapping anger and negativity for proactive positivity should be our default setting if we ever want to improve situations for our four-legged friends, whether domestic, wild, or livestock, as well as the fragile environments they all inhabit.

  From simply sharing a single social media post which, let’s face it, takes less than a second, to full-on leading a campaign to change a law which might take years; there’s a place for everyone and anyone on that curve. 

  Indeed these days there are not one, not two, but multiple opportunities to create change, to right that injustice, help protect the most vulnerable, and ultimately improve the status quo and future. What’s more, it doesn’t have to be a response to anger or trauma, we can all do something just because we care.

  And I promise you, His Holiness the Dalai Lama got it spot-on: no one’s too small to make a difference. It’s just the way we do it that needs to be carefully thought out, planned, and put into workable, practical, and impactful action. It’s just the way we do it that needs to be carefully thought out, planned, and put into workable, practical, and impactful action.

  But before we start delving into all the mechanisms and processes that can result in meaningful progress, it's important to visualise what our actual solution is, so we can almost work backwards and come up with a strategy that will help us achieve that ambition.

  And I say solution, because it's not uncommon to observe people starting a campaign with no obvious end goal.

  Over this series of blogs I hope to share with you a few useful campaigning tips I’ve picked up over the years, so you can also be more mosquito, embrace grassroots activism and campaigning, even with minimal resources, and eventually create change; whatever form or solution your intended change manifests itself in.

  -- Dr Marc Abraham

• Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times: Too many opportunities are lost because of self-sabotage and friction with people who think and behave differently. It doesn't have to be like that.

  A TRANSFORMATIONAL BOOK WITH OVER £500 WORTH OF RESOURCES
  Have you ever felt that you were talking to someone and the other person had no common sense at all? No matter how hard you tried to explain your point of view, it seemed you were talking about a completely different situation. Most of us have experienced this frustration and seemingly pointless uphill battle. Have you ever considered that the other side had exactly the same feeling about you, but for a different reason?
  I lost my first business and ruined friendships because I used to think that speaking the same language, having common sense and good intentions, would be enough to get along with others. I was wrong. Just like most people who don't change until it hurts enough, I waited for that personal and professional slap in the face to embark on my mission to find out why people think, feel, and behave so differently; and how we can turn those differences into synergy. There are plenty of books and online courses about cultural intelligence, personal and leadership development. They tend to be informative but rarely transformative as knowledge without practice is like a teabag without hot water, potential waiting to be released. But in this hybrid book, every chapter is fully integrated with an interactive coaching platform to challenge your views on concepts you might have taken for granted and stretch your comfort zone to a point where life is going to make much more sense in these unusual times. Testimonials "Csaba has put together valuable insights to equip readers with a solid foundation and practical tools to master people - the most important asset of our businesses. Whether we are enhancing individual, team or organisational performance, this book provides the framework to make things happen in the most effective and efficient way possible." Tinette Cortes - CEO of ConsultAsia Global Global DISC is a powerful tool for Intelligent Leaders to leverage personal and cultural differences for competitive advantage, to enable trust and to build high-performing teams at home and globally."  - John Mattone, the #1 Authority on Intelligent Leadership and the World's Top Executive Coach, Steve Jobs' former coach "Bridging the gap between our intention and the actual impact on others is the foundation of great leadership. Global DISC makes this process clear and highly actionable." Marshall Goldsmith - Only two-time Thinkers 50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the world. "The book is very interesting and as I read it reminds me the excitement of reading Tim Ferriss's 4-hour work week book." Svetana Jordanova - Business Development and leadership coach

• The Power of Small: How to Make Tiny But Powerful Changes When Everything Feels Too Much

  Feeling overwhelmed? This is the book for you. 'At last! A book that shows you realistically how to transform your life, one small step at a time.' Russ Harris, author of international bestseller The Happiness Trap

  Rather than waiting for the big life-changing moments, which more often than not don't happen, The Power of Small shows you how to take manageable steps as opportunities to change your life, one decision at a time -- emphasising self-compassion as a means to gently expand your comfort zone and open up new horizons. Mixing case studies from clinical practice with the latest psychological research, the authors also share personal stories, having worked first-hand with these techniques on their own journeys towards improved mental and emotional wellbeing. From understanding -- and learning to observe without judgement -- the traps our minds set, to breaking our of our comfort zones, The Power of Small technique is all about what is manageable in the now, and teaches us how to prioritise and know what boundaries to keep, and which to gently push. If your mind tells you that certain life changes are unattainable, undeserved, or too hot to handle, this simple and effective book is the one for you.

• The Tipping Point:

  The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

• Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet

  The stakeholder concept goes a long way back: more than 50 years. Klaus Schwab wrote about it in 1971, when he was a young business academic. But its roots go even further. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was quite natural for a company and its CEO to consider not just shareholders, but everyone who as a “stake” in the success of a firm.

  That is the core of stakeholder capitalism: it is a form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimise short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.

  This approach was common in the post-war decades in the West, when it became clear that one person or entity could only do well if the whole community and economy functioned. There was a strong linkage between companies and their community. In Germany, for example, where I was born, it led to the representation of employees on the board, a tradition that continues today. And, as sourcing, production, and selling took place mostly locally or at least regionally, there was a connection with suppliers and clients as well.

  This fostered a strong sense that local companies were embedded in their surroundings, and from that grew a mutual respect between companies and local institutions such as government, schools, and health organizations. It led to a constellation of stakeholders that Klaus Schwab visualized in his 1971 book Modern Company Management in Mechanical Engineering.

  In subsequent years, the stakeholder concept was adopted most prominently in the social democracies of Northern and Western Europe, including Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. It led there, among other effects, to a tripartite system of collective labour negotiations including company management, employees, and government. And it contributed to the welfare state in which companies and employees paid their fair share of taxes to fund public education, health care, and social security.

  This system did adapt as decades went by, and it lives on to various degrees in these countries.

  But as a global organising principle for business, the stakeholder concept competed head-on with Chicago University economist Milton Friedman’s notion of “shareholder primacy”. It held that “the business of business is business” (or, as he literally wrote: “the social responsibility of company is to make profits”) —and the stakeholder approach ultimately lost out. Shareholder capitalism became the norm across the West as companies globalized, loosening their ties with local communities and national governments, and focusing instead on maximising short-term profits for shareholders in competitive global markets.

  At the same time, labor unions, governments, and other civil society stakeholders lost a lot of their power and influence, further weakening the fabric in which a stakeholder model could prosper. It meant that even in those countries that did adhere to the stakeholder concept as a governance principle, other actors got weaker, as companies, and specifically those who prospered in the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions, got stronger. The Stakeholder Model today: People and Planet at the center Today, the stakeholder concept is ready for a comeback, albeit in an updated, more comprehensive form. We are facing a whole set of social, economic, and health crises, and the best response to these challenges, would be for all actors in society to consider more than their narrow and short-term self interest. So what could stakeholder capitalism look like today, and how does it differ from the stakeholder management my father’s generation intuitively implemented in the 1960s and 1970s?

  The most important characteristic of the stakeholder model today is that the stakes of our system are now more clearly global. Economies, societies, and the environment are more closely linked to each other now than 50 years ago. The model we present here is therefore fundamentally global in nature, and the two primary stakeholders are as well.

  This is true first and foremost for the planet. The planet’s health, we now know, is dependent not just on individual or national decisions but on the sum of decisions made by actors from around the world. If we are to safeguard the planet for future generations, every stakeholder will therefore need to take responsibility for its part in it.

  What was once seen as externalities in national economic policy making and individual corporate decision making will now need to be incorporated or internalised in the operations of every government, company, community, and individual. The planet is thus the centre of the global economic system, and its health should be optimised in the decisions made by all other stakeholders.

  The same interconnectedness can be observed for the people who live on the planet. The well-being of people in one society affects that of those in another, and it is incumbent on all of us as global citizens to optimise the well-being of all. Failing to do so will inevitably come back to haunt us. COVID-19 was just one reminder of this global inter-connectedness, and the fact that no one is safe and well, until everyone is. When the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread around the planet, it devastated the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and led to death or severe illness for many millions. With the exception of a few island nations, no border closure was stringent enough to prevent the spread of the disease. The extensive spread of Internet technology also makes people around the world more aware than ever of the fortunes of people elsewhere. This draws attention to global equity, making it an important objective, perhaps for the first time in history. Indeed, people are social animals, and their absolute well-being is less important than their relative well-being.

  Wherever you are in the world, there is thus an increased consensus that the well-being of people—wherever they live—and the planet as a whole matter to all of us. These two elements are natural stakeholders, with people being simply all human individuals and planet being the natural environment we all share. It leads to a new stakeholder model where those two are at the centre.

  The Key Stakeholders and Their Objectives: Profits, Purpose, Prosperity and Peace

  To ensure that both people and the planet prosper, four key stakeholders play a crucial role. They are: governments (of countries, states, and local communities); civil society (from unions to NGOs, from schools and universities to action groups); companies (constituting the private sector, whether freelancers or large multinational companies); and the international community (consisting of international organizations such as the UN as well as regional organizations such as the European Union or ASEAN).

  All these stakeholders crucially consist of people and make use of the planet. It is no surprise then, that they should want to optimise the well-being of all of us as well as that of the environment. But equally, it should be clear they have specific objectives that make them distinct organisms in the first place.

  •   Governments focus on creating the greatest possibly prosperity for the greatest number of people
  
  •   Civil society exists to advance the interest of its constituents and to give a meaning or purpose to its members.
  
  •   Companies aim to generate an economic surplus, measurable in profits in the short run, and long-term value creation in the long run
  
  •   And the overarching goal for the international community is to preserve peace
  

  It leads to the stakeholder model as we know it today, valid anywhere in the world. When the well-being of people and planet are at the center of business, the four remaining key groups of stakeholders contribute to their betterment. As all of these groups and their goals are interconnected. One cannot succeed if the others fail.

  The model is simple, but it immediately reveals why shareholder primacy and state capitalism lead to suboptimal outcomes: They focus on the more granular and exclusive objectives of profits or prosperity in a particular company or country rather than the well-being of all people and the planet as a whole.

  By contrast, in the stakeholder model, neither of the more granular objectives is set aside, but the interconnectivity and the overarching well-being of people and the planet are central, ensuring a more harmonious outcome over time.

• Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion

  Webs of Influence is an excellent book that translates some well established psychological concepts into easy to understand everyday language. Nathalie has an easily digestible style of writing and it’s all nicely presented to make it easy to absorb. Interesting reading for how to influence human behaviour and decision making and some great advice for web design. A fair chunk of the first two sections called ‘Know who you are targeting’ and ‘Communicate persuasively’ a lot of generally familiar business psychology. However, the last section ‘Selling with integrity’ usefully explores the look and feel of a web site’s professional look and feel versus content in order to elicit those all important repeated clicks – where the “secret strategies” in the title come into play. Make no mistake Nathalie Nahai is a serious psychologist, reading this book could well persuade some readers to seek a career in psychology its so fascinating in places. In places the concepts are a bit scary, should web experts and those who design websites be able to manipulate us so easily. However, its insights into the psychology of influence are relevant to all aspects of marketing and sales. The text is thoroughly researched and referenced. The book is also beautifully designed, with nice clear graphics. If you want to know how to target your audience, develop messages that will appeal to them and convert them to your cause, then Natalie Nahai provides all the essential information you need. It’s draws on the latest research and is full useful facts and insights. For example, viewing websites on tablets encourages far deeper levels of engagement. Despite its complex subject the book is split into three simple sections, the last of which gives the reader confidence that book is not aiming at embezzling money from all and sundry. (1) Know Who Your Targeting, (2) Communicate Persuasively (3) Sell with Integrity One could read the book from cover to cover, but you’re more likely to consume it in fits and starts, and that’s due to the practical application material that ends each section. This was obviously a conscious choice, where the author decided to trust that the reader is a true practitioner and not a casual reader. There are nuggets of genius for the amateur as well. Odd numbers feel smaller than even, 9 is less than 8 when we look quickly, always price in odd numbers. Could a Yorkshire perspective improve Webs of Influence? This science is the opposite of the straight talking business advice we encourage in Yorkshire, I’d be scared to let the author into Yorkshire for fear of what she might find out! One of the strongest aspects of this book is the deeply fact based approach the Author takes to the work. Too often when it comes to psychology in general and especially web psychology every man and his dog is quick to self-label themselves an expert in the field of psychology, despite being completely lacking in any formal training in the subject. The author of Webs of Influence does not suffer from the usual lack of academic credibility and by holding formal qualification in a psychology Nathalie inspires confidence in the findings that the work draws. When it comes to psychology work it should be left to the professionals, precisely because of the ambiguity associated with the field.

Recommended a useful business book here: book.mark-horner.com