These days it's increasingly rare to have a stable career in any field. More and more of us are blending big company jobs, startup gigs, freelance work, and volunteer side projects. We take chances to expand our knowledge, capabilities, and experience. But how do we make sense of that kind of career-and explain it? Pamela Slim, the acclaimed author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, gives us the tools to have meaningful careers in this new world of work.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who's ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs who want to get out, and artists who don't want to starve anymore will all find valuable inspiration and guidance in these pages. It's time to rework work.

Still in his early 30s, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth – he’s already visited more than 175 nations - and yet he’s never held a “real job” or earned a regular paycheck. Rather, he has a special genius for turning ideas into income, and he uses what he earns both to support his life of adventure and to give back. In The $100 Startup, he tells you how to lead of life of adventure, meaning and purpose - and earn a good living.

Many businesses create an ideal consumer profile - aiming all their sales and marketing efforts toward this single type of person - and end up missing out on endless opportunities to sell their services or products. Award-winning business coach, speaker, and author Pamela Slim has helped thousands of entrepreneurs around the world start, sustain, and scale their businesses. She explains how to build strong diverse relationships, identify and connect with new partners, expand markets, generate leads, and find new customers in places you may never have considered.

Internet marketing pioneer Seth Godin says he wants to change the way almost everything is marketed today. Will you give him permission to show you the future? Listen to how you can turn strangers into friends and friends into customers with this groundbreaking new approach.

Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better, and look cooler, than $20 no-names... and believing it makes it true.

People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran company-builder Norm Brodsky, there's a mentality that helps street- smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. Brodsky shares his hard-earned wisdom every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular "Street Smarts" column he cowrites with Bo Burlingham. Now they've adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.

You live in your dream house, but there's no mortgage. No alarm clock, no boss, no bills. No claims on the day's time other than what you choose. It is making more money before breakfast than you made for an entire week at your last job. It is a crazy expensive car parked in your garage, a victorious symbol that your dreams no longer sleep in fantasies, but are awake with reality.

They actually have vastly different styles and backgrounds. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: They don’t hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. They don’t believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They don’t try to help people overcome their weaknesses. And, yes, they even play favorites. In this longtime management bestseller, Gallup presents the remarkable findings of its massive in-depth study of great managers.

You think you know what you want in life. You've tried to achieve those things. But if you still don't have them, the culprit may be closer than you think. In this perspective-altering program, the world-renowned Pitbull of Personal Development(tm), Larry Winget, exposes the things you are doing right now to unknowingly prevent your own success in the most important areas of your life.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or a not-for-profit leader, there's no shortage of advice on such topics as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact there are so many books, articles, and websites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis, or they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes.

As Al Ries and Jack Trout - the world-renowned marketing consultants and best-selling authors of Positioning - note, you can build an impressive airplane, but it will never leave the ground if you ignore the laws of physics, especially gravity. Why then, they ask, shouldn’t there also be laws of marketing that must be followed to launch and maintain winning brands? In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Ries and Trout offer a compendium of 22 innovative rules for understanding and succeeding in the international marketplace.

A million-copy seller, Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson is a classic economic primer. But it is also much more, having become a fundamental influence on modern “libertarian” economics of the type espoused by Ron Paul and others. Called by H. L. Mencken “one of the few economists in history who could really write,” Henry Hazlitt achieved lasting fame for this brilliant but concise work.

Whole Foods Market cofounder John Mackey and professor and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. cofounder Raj Sisodia argue for the inherent good of both business and capitalism. Featuring some of today's best-known and most-successful companies, they illustrate how these two forces can - and do - work most powerfully to create value for all stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment.

Don't think you have what it takes to run a business? It's time to reconsider. Carrie Wilkerson offers the opportunity to live life on your terms. Want to start your workday with e-mail and coffee on the back patio? Want the flexibility of joining your fourth grader on an all-day field trip? Are you ready to take that vacation you’ve been planning for years? Then you have a choice to make, and The Barefoot Executive will help jump-start your transition. You’ll learn: Your “why.” The most important question.

Do you have a hobby or passion that has nothing to do with your nine-to-five job? Do you craft vintage jewelry, make handmade furniture, or offer expert negotiating advice to family and friends in your spare time? Then you, too, could join the one-third of Americans who turn their talents into a lucrative side hustle. In What If It Does Work Out? life coach and professional side-hustler Susie Moore offers expert tips and guidance to help you earn an extra source of income by doing something you love.

Ryan Blair knows about building a business from the ground up. Like many entrepreneurs he had no formal business education. But he had great survival instincts, tenacity, and, above all, a "nothing to lose" mindset.Blair's middle-class childhood came to an abrupt end when his abusive father succumbed to drug addiction and abandoned the family. Blair and his mother moved to a bad neighborhood, and soon he was in and out of juvenile detention, joining a gang just to survive. Then his mother fell in love with a successful entrepreneur who took Ryan under his wing.

The Myth: If you get into a good college, study hard, and graduate with excellent grades, you will be pretty much set for a successful career. The Reality: The biggest thing you won't learn in college is how to succeed professionally. Some of the smartest, most successful people in the country didn't finish college. None of them learned their most critical skills in an institution of higher education. And like them, most of what you'll need to learn to be successful you'll have to learn on your own, outside of school.

In Silicon Valley slang, a "bozo explosion" is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, "If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don't make sense"...then it's time for a reality check.

From living on Jess's wages as a makeup counter sales clerk, to achieving dramatic success as network marketing partners, to running a multi-million-dollar coaching and training company today, Ray and Jessica Higdon have built their lives on a shared desire for freedom and balance. With 10 simple rules for redefining what's possible in your life, this book will help you build confidence, shift your mind-set, and learn the tools to take control of your life and start on a path toward your own definition of freedom.

Geared toward women who are considering getting into tech, or those already in a tech job who want to take their career to the next level, this book combines practical career advice and inspiring personal stories from successful female tech professionals Brianna Wu, Angie Chang, Keren Elazari, Katie Cunningham, Miah Johnson, Kristin Toth Smith, and Kamilah Taylor. Written by a female startup CEO and featuring a host of other successful contributors.

Have you ever known that you needed to make a change but felt unable to do anything about it? Have you ever felt like you aren't where you are supposed to be and wondered how the people around you managed to find their purpose in life? After realizing that his well-paying, prestigious job was actually making him miserable, Adam "Smiley" Poswolsky started asking these big questions: How do you actually find meaning in the workplace? How do you find work that makes your heart sing?

For everyone who dreads going to work on Monday mornings, inspiring advice on how to find fulfilling work in an uncertain age. Do you hate Mondays? If so, what's keeping you at your current job? If you said a steady paycheck and the promise of a secure retirement, then you're in for a big disappointment. In today's volatile economy, there is nothing safe about punching the clock for a job you hate.

What if someone could guide you, step-by-step, as you identify, plan, and launch your dream career - in just one year. That's what Ben Arment does in his transformative coaching class, which has helped hundreds of people reinvent their lives to enjoy greater enthusiasm and fulfillment while also making a living. Now he's sharing his best insights, advice, and inspiring true stories in Dream Year. You'll find out how people just like you are discovering (or rediscovering) what they were truly born to do, then following a proven process to make it real.

In this book Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create lives that are both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of whom or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.

Careers are not linear, predictable ladders any longer; they are fluid trajectories. No matter our age, life stage, bank account balance, or seniority, we are all being asked to navigate career changes much more frequently than in years past. The average employee tenure in America is just four to five years, and even those roles change dramatically within that time. Our economy now demands that we create businesses and careers based on creativity, growth, and impact. In this dynamic world of work, the only move that matters is your next one.

The New Entrepreneurz provides a game-changing, game-based approach to molding your mind and developing a fresh entrepreneurial mentality that focuses on working smart & on collaborative winning. Advocating not for simple change, but for total transformation, this revolutionary resource provides a powerful platform to shift the paradigm for all those interested in running a smart purpose driven business.

Big new ideas rarely make great businesses. Laboring on a business plan can be a waste of time. You are going to need dramatically more start-up money than you think you do. Counterintuitive concepts like these have helped the world's best entrepreneurs succeed. Yet most of us only learn them the hard way. Len Green, an experienced investor, entrepreneur, and business professor, shares inside secrets and proven tactics for launching a business.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or a not-for-profit leader, there's no shortage of advice on such topics as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact there are so many books, articles, and websites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis, or they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes.

Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process—a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.

The Book of Mistakes will take you on an inspiring journey, following an ancient manuscript with powerful lessons that will transform your life. You'll meet David, a young man who with each passing day is more disheartened and stressed. Despite a decent job, apartment, and friends, he just feels hollow...until one day he meets a mysterious young woman and everything starts to change. In this self-help tale wrapped in fiction, you'll learn the nine mistakes that prevent many from achieving their goals. You'll learn how to overcome these hurdles and reinvent your life.

Regardless of what you do within your organization and the current circumstances of your life, the single most important fact is that you have the power to show leadership. Wherever you are in your career or life, you should always play to your peak abilities.This book shows you how to claim that staggering power, as well as transform your life and the world around youin the process.

Is today your best day ever? Are you happy, grateful, motivated, and living your best life? Today is your day to answer with a definitive yes to these questions! The Life Is Too Short Guy: Strategies to Make Every Day the Best Day Ever will give you a practical road map to make the most of every minute and to live a happier and more fulfilling life.

Ever wondered why CEOs, leaders and recruiters talk endlessly about soft skills? Job interviews, promotions, appraisals, teamwork, managing workplace challenges, communication skills and a lot more—soft skills give you a sizable professional edge to ace all of these. In this book, Ronnie Screwvala shares personal stories and observations from his many failures and few successes to give you an insider's view of the "invisible" skills, which can cut years off your learning curve.

At long last, Mary Beard addresses in one brave book the misogynists and trolls who mercilessly attack and demean women the world over, including, very often, Mary herself. In Women & Power, she traces the origins of this misogyny to its ancient roots, examining the pitfalls of gender and the ways that history has mistreated strong women since time immemorial.

Thanks to the invidious reputation of his most famous work, The Prince, Niccolo` Machiavelli exerts a unique hold over the popular imagination. But was Machiavelli as sinister as he is often thought to be? In Machiavelli: His Life and Times, Alexander Lee reveals the man behind the myth, following him from cradle to grave, from his father's penury and the abuse he suffered at a teacher's hands, to his marriage and his many affairs (with both men and women), to his political triumphs and, ultimately, his fall from grace and exile.

With the countless distractions that come from every corner of a modern life, it's amazing that we're ever able to accomplish anything. The Power of Less demonstrates how to streamline your life by identifying the essential and eliminating the unnecessary - freeing you from everyday clutter and allowing you to focus on accomplishing the goals that can change your life for the better

In The Laws of Wealth, psychologist and behavioral finance expert Daniel Crosby offers an accessible and applied take on a discipline that has long tended toward theory at the expense of the practical. Listeners are treated to real, actionable guidance as the promise of behavioral finance is realized and practical applications for everyday investors are delivered.

Internet marketing pioneer Seth Godin says he wants to change the way almost everything is marketed today. Will you give him permission to show you the future? Listen to how you can turn strangers into friends and friends into customers with this groundbreaking new approach.

Much of our business thinking is shaped by delusions that distort our understanding of the real reasons for a company's performance. The most pervasive delusion is the Halo Effect. When a company's sales and profits are up, people often conclude that it has a brilliant strategy, a visionary leader, capable employees, and a superb corporate culture. When performance falters, they conclude the opposite. In fact, little may have changed.

People Skills is a communication-skills handbook that can help you eliminate these and other communication problems. Author Robert Bolton describes the twelve most common communication barriers, showing how these "roadblocks" damage relationships by increasing defensiveness, aggressiveness, or dependency. He explains how to acquire the ability to listen, assert yourself, resolve conflicts, and work out problems with others. These are skills that will help you communicate calmly, even in stressful emotionally charged situations.