Career Growth

Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

Since 1966, a self-made man named Jose Silva has spread his message to over 5,000,000 people worldwide. The message: within our minds is the power to solve any problem, overcome any difficulty, and reach a consistent level of dynamic well-being.

Carol Dweck’s multi-million-copy bestseller Mindset transformed our view of individual potential, coining the terms “fixed” and “growth” mindset: in a “fixed” mindset, talent and intelligence are viewed as predetermined traits, while in a “growth” mindset, talent and intelligence can be nurtured. In Cultures of Growth, Dweck’s protégé, Mary Murphy, a social psychologist at both Stanford and Indiana University, shows that mindset transcends individuals.

Global technology executive, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high-growth, tech companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Stripe, and Square as they've grown from small companies to global enterprises. Across all of these breakout companies, a set of common patterns has evolved into a repeatable playbook that Gil has now codified in High Growth Handbook.

Best-selling author Ryan Holiday, the acclaimed marketing guru for American Apparel and many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians, explains the new rules and provides valuable examples and case studies for aspiring growth hackers. Whether you work for a tiny start-up or a Fortune 500 giant, if you're responsible for building awareness and buzz for a product or service, this is your road map.

Growth is a fundamental human need. It is at the root of everything that gives us a feeling of accomplishment, satisfaction, meaning, and progress. Yet many people find their growth stalled at some point. In The Laws of Lifetime Growth, Dan Sullivan and Catherine Nomura offer 10 simple laws that everyone can use to keep a fresh, innovative perspective on their lives and the world around them.

These short pieces have been personally selected by Donald Trump for Think Like a Champion, giving his special perspective in what amounts to an "informal education" on how to succeed in business and life. The pieces are engaging, informative and educational, presenting the clearest picture yet into the mind and heart of an extraordinary individual.

Hunters, Farmers, and Teamers by Joel Hubbard and Jim Zartman is rooted in the primal instincts that have shaped humanity’s progress for millennia. This elemental blueprint reveals the three instinctual drives that have built civilizations and continue to drive human achievement: Hunting, the instinct for innovation and risk-taking; Farming, the instinct for sustainability and resourcefulness; and Teaming, the instinct for collaboration and cooperation.

Inappropriate workplace conduct, lateness, sexually offensive behavior, productivity and communication issues...these are just a few of the uncomfortable topics bosses must sometimes discuss with their employees. 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees offers realistic sample dialogues managers can use to facilitate clear, direct interactions with their employees, helping to sidestep potential awkwardness and meet issues head-on.

"Energetic Selling and Marketing" is not just a powerful business book. It’s an energetic experience. One that will change your business and life in ways you could not even imagine. In this revolutionary book, Lenka Lutonska, a pioneer of Business Energetics, will support you with this. You will explore the energetic nature of your business, and learn how to harmonize the five areas of your energy - and your business - to open brand new pathways to the success you desire.

Do today's children lack the flexibility and mental strength they need to cope with life's challenges in an increasingly complicated and scary world? With safe spaces and trigger warnings designed to "protect" kids, many adults worry that children don't have the resilience to reach their greatest potential. Amy Morin, the author who identified the characteristics that mentally strong people share, now gives adults - parents, teachers, and other mentors - the tools they need to become mental strength trainers.

Over 60 billion online messages are sent on digital platforms every day, and only a select few succeed in the mad scramble for customer attention. This means that the question for anyone who wants to gain mass exposure for their transformative content, business, or brand or connect with audiences around the globe is no longer if they should use social media but how to best take advantage of the numerous different platforms. How can you make a significant impact in the digital world and stand out among all the noise?

Most startups don't fail because they can't build a product. Most startups fail because they can't get traction. Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely. As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die.

Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company's Chris Zook and James Allen researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external.

Great startups don't waste time on small stuff. If you study the early days of any great startup, you’ll see that 90% of their growth came from 10% of the stuff they tried. But most needed years of experimentation to find their growth levers. This book aims to shortcut that process. Generic tactics like paid ads, SEO and referral programs will only get you so far. Growth levers are things like the professional photographs that made tens of thousands of customers trust AirBnb when they otherwise wouldn’t—a crucial move that unlocked explosive growth.

Ilya Strebulaev has spent the last two decades at Stanford studying VCs’ counterintuitive approaches to decision-making, and the reasons behind the success and failure of corporate innovation efforts. Alex Dang, a senior leader at McKinsey and Amazon, has seen up close the impact VCs’ thinking and mechanisms can have on a business’ success. Together in The Venture Mindset, they present nine distinct principles that can help anyone looking to transform their business and achieve extraordinary results, no matter the industry.

From Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Investing offers “concrete insights and advice” (Booklist) on when to buy, sell, hold, and cash out; how to make smarter (and safer) investments; and how to build significant wealth over both the short- and long-term. Unlike traditional investment books, Jordan’s lessons, colorful stories, and principles entertain you with the charismatic swagger portrayed so famously on the screen by Leonardo DiCaprio. Belfort teaches you everything you need to know about savvy investing—even if whatever stock you’ve touched has turned to yesterday’s trash.

For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers with management positions. But treating management as the default path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well—or the engineer. The staff engineer's path allows engineers to contribute at a high level as role models, driving big projects, determining technical strategy, and raising everyone's skills. This in-depth book shows you how to understand your role, manage your time, master strategic thinking, and set the standard for technical work.

The CEO of Technology shows today's CIOs how to become exceptional leaders and bring value to their organization. By taking lessons from some of the world's best CEOs, you'll develop the traits and characteristics that drive legendary leadership. Interviews with top executives at leading global technology companies including Apple, Boeing, Direct TV, Facebook, Texas Instruments, and more provide deep and valuable insight into what it means to lead in a hyper-driven tech environment.

As much about "speaking in public" as it is about "public speaking, Talking with Confidence for the Painfully Shy can help even the most shy person speak up and speak out in any business or social situation.