READING LIST

Kerwin’s RECOMMENDED BOOKS

Kerwin-rae-books-reading-list
The Solutions Focus

Acclaimed first business book on the powerful, simple yet subtle approach to positive change in people, teams and organisations. Used around the world by a wide range of people, professions and organisations, the first edition has now sold nearly 10,000 copies and been translated into 7 languages.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

It’s no wonder that The Power of Now has sold over 2 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 30 foreign languages. Much more than simple principles and platitudes, the book takes readers on an inspiring spiritual journey to find their true and deepest self and reach the ultimate in personal growth and spirituality: the discovery of truth and light.

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)

A New Earth, Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.

Think and Grow Rich: The Original, an Official Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation

Money and material things are essential for freedom of body and mind, but there are some who will feel that the greatest of all riches can be evaluated only in terms of lasting friendships, loving family relationships, understanding between business associates, and introspective harmony which brings one true peace of mind! All who read, understand, and apply this philosophy will be better prepared to attract and enjoy these spiritual values.

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (Business Skills and Development)

Pitch Anything introduces the exclusive STRONG method of pitching, which can be put to use immediately:
Setting the Frame
Telling the Story
Revealing the Intrigue
Offering the Prize
Nailing the Hookpoint
Getting a Decision
One truly great pitch can improve your career, make you a lot of money–and even change your life. Success is dependent on the method you use, not how hard you try. “Better method, more money,” Klaff says. “Much better method, much more money.” Klaff is the best in the business because his method is much better than anyone else’s. And now it’s yours.
Apply the tactics and strategies outlined in Pitch Anything to engage and persuade your audience–and you’ll have more funding and support than you ever thought possible.

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

The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes:
• More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point
• Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal
• How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times
• The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

Enchantment, as defined by bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It con­verts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers and the undecided into the loyal.
Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it’s more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.
Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions.

#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness

#AskGaryVee showcases the most useful and interesting questions Gary has addressed on his popular show. Distilling and expanding on the podcast’s most urgent and evergreen themes, Gary presents practical, timely, and timeless advice on marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and everything else you’ve been afraid to ask but are dying to know. Gary gives you the insights and information you need on everything from effectively using Twitter to launching a small business, hiring superstars to creating a personal brand, launching products effectively to staying healthy—and even buying wine.

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

Do you have a hobby you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you love. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed here, transformed his entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of this book, readers will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Step by step, Crush It! is the ultimate driver’s manual for modern business

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

When managers and marketers outline their social media strategies, they plan for the “right hook”—their next sale or campaign that’s going to knock out the competition. Even companies committed to jabbing—patiently engaging with customers to build the relationships crucial to successful social media campaigns—want to land the punch that will take down their opponent or their customer’s resistance in one blow. Right hooks convert traffic to sales and easily show results. Except when they don’t.
Thanks to massive change and proliferation in social media platforms, the winning combination of jabs and right hooks is different now. Vaynerchuk shows that while communication is still key, context matters more than ever. It’s not just about developing high-quality content, but developing high-quality content perfectly adapted to specific social media platforms and mobile devices—content tailor-made for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Tumblr.ge hearts, minds, and actions.

The Thank You Economy

Here renowned entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk reveals how companies big and small can scale that kind of personal, one-on-one attention to their entire customer base, no matter how large, using the same social media platforms that carry consumer word of mouth. The Thank You Economy offers compelling, data-driven evidence that we have entered into an entirely new business era, one in which the companies that see the biggest returns won’t be the ones that can throw the most money at an advertising campaign, but will be those that can prove they care about their customers more than anyone else. The businesses and brands that harness the word-of-mouth power from social media, those that can shift their culture to be more customer-aware and fan-friendly, will pull away from the pack and profit in today’s markets.

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck--Why Some Thrive Despite Them All

Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns withanother groundbreaking work, this time to ask: why do some companies thrive inuncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research,buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins andhis colleague Morten Hansen enumerate the principles for building a truly greatenterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous and fast-moving times. This book isclassic Collins: contrarian, data-driven and uplifting.

100 Great Businesses and the minds behind them

100 Great Businesses and the Minds Behind Them is a diverse and inspiring collections of great business stories. Covering a variety of success paths, brilliant strategies and engaging entrepreneurs, each profile explores the genius behind the greatest business minds.

48 Laws of Power

Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition

Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say “yes”—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book.
You’ll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

In DELIVERING HAPPINESS, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, DELIVERING HAPPINESS shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own.

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm

What are the underlying handful of fundamentals that haven’t changed for over a hundred years? From Harnish’s famous One-Page Strategic Plan to his concise outline of eight practical actions you can take to strengthen your culture, this book is a compilation of best practices adapted from some of the best-run firms on the planet. Included is an instructive chapter co-authored by Rich Russakoff, revealing winning tactics to get banks to finance your business. Lastly, there are case studies demonstrating the validity of Harnish’s practical approaches.

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their sales message to the customer’s specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer’s every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale. The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any average-performing rep, once equipped with the right tools, can successfully reframe customers’ expectations and deliver a distinctive purchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth.

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day — as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: “What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the comparison companies and what were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?” Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.

The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World

Consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all existence, declares University of Oregon physicist Goswami, echoing the mystic sages of his native India. He holds that the universe is self-aware, and that consciousness creates the physical world.

The Biology of Belief 10th Anniversary Edition: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles

This 10th-anniversary edition of Bruce Lipton’s best-selling book The Biology of Belief has been updated to bolster the book’s central premise with the latest scientific discoveries—and there have been a lot in the last decade.The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of new biology. Former medical school professor and research scientist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., presents his experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, which examine in great detail the mechanisms by which cells receive and process information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life, showing that genes and DNA do not control our biology; instead, DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. This profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics has been hailed as a major breakthrough, showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking.

The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire

Though much has changed in society since the first publication of The Way of the Superior Man, men of all ages still “tussle with the challenges of women, work, and sexual desire.” Including an all-new preface by author David Deida, this 20th-anniversary edition of the classic guide to male spirituality offers the next generation the opportunity to cultivate trust in the moment and put forth the best versions of themselves in an ever-changing world.
In The Way of the Superior Man, Deida explores the most important issues in men’s lives—from career and family to women and intimacy to love and spirituality—to offer a practical guidebook for living a masculine life of integrity, authenticity, and freedom. Join this bestselling author and internationally renowned expert on sexual spirituality for straightforward advice, empowering skills, body practices, and more to help you realize a life of fulfillment, immediately and without compromise.

The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality

Now witha new foreword by Lynn McTaggart, author of TheField, Michael Talbot’s classic treatise on the latest frontiers of physicsreveals a revolutionary theory of reality, explaining the paranormal abilitiesof the mind, the unsolved riddles of brain and body, and the true nature of theuniverse. Lyall Watson, author of Supernature,calls The Holographic Universe “elegant,” writing, “[Talbot] helps tobridge the artificial gap that has opened up between mind and matter, betweenus and the rest of the cosmos.”

Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine

Why do we feel the way we feel? How do our thoughts and emotions affect our health? Are our bodies and minds distinct from each other or do they function together as parts of an interconnected system?
In her groundbreaking book Molecules of Emotion, Candace Pert provides startling and decisive answers to these and other challenging questions that scientists and philosophers have pondered for centuries.
Her pioneering research on how the chemicals inside our bodies form a dynamic information network, linking mind and body, is not only provocative, it is revolutionary. By establishing the biomolecular basis for our emotions and explaining these new scientific developments in a clear and accessible way, Pert empowers us to understand ourselves, our feelings, and the connection between our minds and our bodies — body-minds — in ways we could never possibly have imagined before.
Molecules of Emotion is a landmark work, full of insight and wisdom and possessing that rare power to change the way we see the world and ourselves.

The HeartMath Solution: The Institute of HeartMath's Revolutionary Program for Engaging the Power of the Heart's Intelligence

Access the power of your heart’s intelligence to improve your focus and creativity, elevate your emotional clarity, lower your stress and anxiety levels, strengthen your immune system, promote your body’s optimal performance, and slow the aging process.

Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur

Richard Branson is an iconic entrepreneur and the founder of Virgin Airways, Virgin Records, and many other Virgin businesses around the world. Now he shares the inside track on his life in business and reveals the incredible truth about his most risky, brilliant, and audacious deals. Combining invaluable advice with remarkable, and candid stories of Virgin’s greatest achievements, as well as some of its setbacks, this is a dynamic, inspirational, and truly original guide.
Whether you are an executive, an entrepreneur, or are just starting out, Branson strips business down to show how you can succeed and make a difference.

The Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises

Chang has devoted forty years of intensive research, experience, and meticulous selection to make sure that the techniques within this book are: Absolutely true Taoist teachings 2.) absolutely scientific 3.) Proven to possess great healing value 4.) Absolutely natural 5.) Absolutely sale (no side-effects) and free from time or space limitations.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't

Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.
But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth

“A truly enlightening work filled with fundamental strategies that have worked for others.Martin Fridson documents the essential principles inherent in every billionaire’s success.”

Magic In Action

Magic In Action shows the ways in which I use humor and speed to work with clients. It gives the layman an idea of what an NLP session should be like. I constantly joke with clients about their problems in order to cure them of seriousness, which is what locks the model down. You get serious, you get stuck. Humor is the fastest way to reverse this process. As soon as you can laugh about something, you can change it.
And change doesn’t need to be slow or painful. If you can learn to create something as sophisticated as a phobia, fear or compulsion, you can learn to use the same ability to do something different in the same situations. – Richard Bandler

Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know

Based on unprecedented access to the “Googleplex,” Planet Google goes deep inside the company to unveil the extraordinary scope and scale of its ambition to become the master gate-keeper of “all the world’s information,” including its users’ most personal information. New York Times columnist Randall Stross provides a lively tour through Google’s flurry of new information gathering initiatives. Will Google stay true to its famous “Don’t Be Evil” mantra? Will it protect all of the personal information it collects? Planet Google is a much-needed wake-up call about how powerful the Google juggernaut has become.

Secrets of Question-Based Selling: How the Most Powerful Tool in Business Can Double Your Sales Results

But consumer behavior and sales techniques change as rapidly as technology—and there are countless contradictory sales training programs promising results. Knowing where you should turn to for success can be confusing. Now fully revised and updated, The Secrets of Question Based Selling provides a step-by-step, easy-to-follow program that focuses specifically on sales effectiveness—identifying the strategies and techniques that will increase your probability of success.
How you sell has become more important than the product. With this hands-on guide, you will learn to:
•Penetrate more accounts
•Overcome customer skepticism
•Establish more credibility sooner
•Generate more return calls
•Motivate different types of buyers
•Develop more internal champions
•Close more sales…faster
•And much, much more

Tested Advertising Methods

The fifth edition of this work on how to create successful advertising features new coverage on small businesses with limited revenues, non-profit advertising, as well as techniques of headlines, illustrations and layouts. There is also new information useful to smaller businesses.

The 22 Irrefutable Laws of Advertising (and when to violate them)

A breakthrough guide to the universal principles underlying great advertising
Written by an all-star team of international advertising professionals, this guide offers readers a lively, in-depth exploration of advertising principles as they are understood and applied by many of the world’s most respected advertising experts. Each chapter features numerous illustrations, case studies and vignettes, and reproductions of print ads and TV commercial stills.
Michael Newman (Palm Beach, Australia) is a former Executive Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia and Director of the Worldwide Toyota Board. While at Saatchi, he was Australia’s most awarded creative director.

The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty

The Entrepreneurial Mindset offers a refreshingly practical blueprint for thinking and acting in environments that are fast-paced, rapidly changing, and highly uncertain. It provides both a guide to energizing the organization to find tomorrow’s opportunities and a set of entrepreneurial principles you can use personally to transform the arenas in which you compete. The authors present simple but powerful ways to stop thinking and acting by the old rules and start thinking with the discipline of a habitual entrepreneur.

The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR

Bestselling authors and world-renowned marketing strategists Al and Laura Ries usher in the new era of public relations.
Today’s major brands are born with publicity, not advertising. A closer look at the history of the most successful modern brands shows this to be true. In fact, an astonishing number of brands, including Palm, Starbucks, the Body Shop, Wal-Mart, Red Bull and Zara have been built with virtually no advertising.
Using in-depth case histories of successful PR campaigns coupled with those of unsuccessful advertising campaigns, The Fall of Advertising provides valuable ideas for marketers — all the while demonstrating why advertising lacks credibility, the crucial ingredient in brand building, and how only PR can supply that credibility;
the big bang approach advocated by advertising people should be abandoned in favor of a slow build-up by PR;
advertising should only be used to maintain brands once they have been established through publicity.
Bold and accessible, The Fall of Advertising is bound to turn the world of marketing upside down.

Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions From Facial Expressions

Using scores of photographs of faces that reflect the emotions of surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, and sadness, the authors of UNMASKING THE FACE explain how to identify correctly these basic emotions and how to tell when people try to mask, simulate, or neutralize them. In addition, it features several practical exercises that will help actors, teachers, salesmen, counselors, nurses, and physicians–and everyone else who deals with people–to become adept, perceptive readers of the facial expressions of emotion.

Using Your Brain--For a Change: Neuro-Linguistic Programming

The book is typically presented for the layperson, but there is much practical insight and value here for experienced practitioners and master practitioners alike. The Afterword tells why the attitude of curiosity is so essential for NLP and our ongoing journeys through life. Some of the things that Using Your Brain — for a CHANGE covers include:
Fast Phobia Cure: An approach to a workshop participant’s fear of “elevators.” Of particular interest here is the discussion of the principles and effects of dissociation and the application of submodalities within this context.
Motivation Strategies: Motivational strategies explored from a submodality perspective, and within the context of toward and away from motivation. The most personal change issues that are brought into therapy have a lot to do with motivation, and workshop participants’ motivational strategies for “waking up” are used to explore how our own submodalities can be utilized to enhance motivation in other areas of our lives.
Contrastive Analysis and Belief Change Patterns: An in-depth exploration of contrastive analysis of submodalities is presented in order to show how confusion can be made into understanding. The underlying pattern of contrastive analysis is then modified to create the “belief change pattern” for removing limiting beliefs and installing new, more positive beliefs in their place (utilizing the submodalities of doubt at key stages). Significant emphasis is also placed on the importance of information gathering and set-up to understand how use of a specific pattern should be best tailored for each individual.
Swish: The reader is able to gain a clear understanding of the technology behind one of the most well-known NLP techniques. This book is worth reading for the important insights and invaluable information to be gained on the Swish alone.

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