Keys to Success. The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement by Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill summed up his philosophy of success in Think and Grow Rich!, one of the bestselling inspirational business books ever. A recent USA Today survey of business leaders named it one of the five most influential books in its field, more than 40 years after it was first published. Now, in Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success, his broadly outlined principles are expanded in detail for the first time, with concrete advice on their use and implementation. Compiled from Hill’s teaching materials, lectures, and articles, Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success provides mental exercises, self-analysis techniques, powerful encouragement, and straightforward advice to anyone seeking personal and financial improvement. In addition to Hill’s many personal true-life examples of the principles in action, there are also contemporary illustrations featuring dynamos like Bill Gates, Peter Lynch, and Donna Karan. No other Napoleon Hill book has addressed these 17 principles so completely and in such precise detail. For the millions of loyal Napoleon Hill fans and for those who discover him each year, Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success promises to be a valuable and important guide on the road to riches.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, It’s all Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, PH.D.

Got a stress case in your life? Of course you do: “Without question, many of us have mastered the neurotic art of spending much of our lives worrying about a variety of things all at once.” Carlson’s cheerful book aims to make us stop and smell–if not roses–whatever is sitting in front of our noses. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… offers 100 meditations designed to make you appreciate being alive, keep your emotions (especially anger and dissatisfaction) in proper perspective, and cherish other people as the unique miracles they are. It’s an owner’s manual of the heart, and if you follow the directions, you will be a happier, more harmonious person. Like Stairmasters, oat bran, and other things that are good for you, the meditations take discipline. Even so, some of the strategies are kind of fun: “Imagine the people in your life as tiny infants and as 100-year-old adults.” The trouble is, once you start, it’s hard to stop.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Anniversary Edition) by Stephen Covey

Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®, has been a top-seller for the simple reason that it ignores trends and pop psychology for proven principles of fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity. Celebrating its fifteenth year of helping people solve personal and professional problems, this special anniversary edition includes a new foreword and afterword written by Covey exploring the question of whether the 7 Habits are still relevant and answering some of the most common questions he has received over the past 15 years.

The Alchemist by Paula Coelho

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.” Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has already established itself as a modern classic, universally admired. Paulo Coelho’s charming fable, now available in English for the first time, will enchant and inspire an even wider audience of readers for generations to come.

The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.
The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, above all, following our dreams.

One Minute for Yourself by Spencer Johnson

In this book, through a vivid parable, Dr. Spencer Johnson demonstrates that caring for others begins with caring for ourselves. In just one minute, Dr. Johnson starts readers on the way to a sense of peace and balance, improved business and personal relationships, increased energy and joy, less stress at work and at home, a dramatic improvement in job performance and much more.

Life is lived minute by minute. Those who know this live best. With the deft practical wisdom that characterizes all of the books in the One Minute series, Dr. Johnson shows how sixty seconds spent on yourself can lead to a lifetime of fulfillment and success.

In this book, through a vivid parable, Dr. Spencer Johnson demonstrates that caring for others begins with caring for ourselves. In just one minute, Dr. Johnson starts readers on the way to a sense of peace and balance, improved business and personal relationships, increased energy and joy, less stress at work and at home, a dramatic improvement in job performance and much more.

Life is lived minute by minute. Those who know this live best. With the deft practical wisdom that characterizes all of the books in the One Minute series, Dr. Johnson shows how sixty seconds spent on yourself can lead to a lifetime of fulfillment and success.

Marketing Your Clinical Practices: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Fourth Edition by Neil Baum, MD

Marketing Your Clinical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Fourth Edition is an updated and revised edition of this best selling guide to medical practice marketing including new topics and advanced techniques. This essential resource provides readers with the plans and real examples to market and grow a successful practice. This book is filled with practical marketing tips and strategies based around five components of a successful practice: retaining current patients; attracting new patients; motivating staff; working with managed care and other physicians; and utilizing the Internet and consultants. Marketing Your Clinical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Fourth Edition is the perfect resource for any physician in a single or group practice looking to improve their business and medical students learning how to develop a practice. New topics to the Fourth Edition include: Internet and website strategies; Professional consultants; Marketing to the Generations: Boomers, Seniors, GenXers; Improving EMR efficiency; Adding ancillary services; In-office dispensing, advantages and risks; How to reconfigure your space; Natural Disaster and Technological Disaster planning.

Focus on the Good Stuff. The Power of Appreciation by Mike Robbins

Motivational speaker and professional coach Robbins sets out for well-worn territory, turning out a useful but unsurprising exploration of the power of positive thinking and the art of appreciation. Like self-help titles such as The Secret, Robbins insists that like attracts like, and to get what we want in life we must focus on what we want (rather than what we don’t). In this never preachy three-part primer, Robbins explains how the simple act of appreciation can change our lives, making up in empathy, anecdote and readability what he lacks in fresh ideas. In part one, Robbins analyzes the effects of living in a culture of negativity and fear, which keeps individuals from connecting with others, and from seeing the good in both people and life. Part two elucidates his Five Principles of Appreciation (“be grateful,” “use positive words,” etc.) and part three is about putting the principles into action (“it’s not what we know, but what we do that matters”); exercises and “positive practices” throughout give readers further steps to put appreciation’s power to work in daily life.

Juggling Elephants by Jones Loflin and Todd Musiq

In this fun parable written by corporate trainers Loflin and Musig, the hero, Mark, gets more than just an afternoon of family time out of a visit to the circus with his daughter—he gets a new way of organizing his life. Using the extended metaphor of the three-ring circus, this short volume is written as a dialogue between Mark and his ringmaster mentor, who teaches him how to better coordinate the activities happening in each ring. Readers who take themselves too seriously might have trouble getting past the large print, circus illustrations and a dialogue style more commonly found in children’s books. But the book passes along several circus maxims that easily translate to balancing professional and personal relationships as well as one’s personal pursuits, such as the ringmaster cannot be in all three rings at once and the key to the success of the circus is having quality acts in all three rings. While the advice is not new, the presentation helps it stick in your head, increasing the odds of keeping your act together.

Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions by John Kotter

Harvard Business School professor Kotter, author of the bestselling Leading Change (1996), teams up with executive Rathgeber to offer his contribution to the “business fable” genre. Kotter presents his framework for an effective corporate change initiative through the tale of a colony of Antarctic penguins facing danger-inspired, perhaps, by today’s real-life global warming crisis (or, perhaps, by March of the Penguins’ box office). Under the leadership of one particularly astute bird, a small team of penguins with varied personalities and leadership skills implement a thoughtful plan for coaxing the other birds in their colony through a time of necessary but wrenching change. The logic of Kotter’s fictional framework is wobbly at times-his characters live and act very much like real penguins except that one carries a briefcase and another (“the Professor”) cites articles from scholarly journals-and the whimsical tone will not be to everyone’s taste. However, this light, quick read should fulfill its intended purpose: to serve as a springboard for group discussions about corporate culture, group dynamics and the challenges of change.

The Present by Spencer Johnson

Johnson’s mega-selling Who Moved My Cheese? helped readers cope with changes beyond their control. The author now proffers another easily digestible parable encompassing a related, but broader, topic: how to attain happiness and success in life. In large type that’s easy on eyes both old and young (and that stretches this brief book past 100 pages), Johnson lays out a bare-bones tale of a man who learns a valuable lesson about living in the present from a wise old gent. Stuck in a rut in his job and personal life, the younger man learns about The Present, a three-fold way of living and working. Bit by bit, the old man explains how it works: in order to achieve bliss in life, it’s important to pay equal attention to the past (learn from mistakes), the present (live in the moment) and the future (plan for it as best as possible, but don’t “lose yourself in worry or anxiety”). The common-sense knowledge and concentration on living in the now lend a Zen feel to the story, and while Johnson’s approach may border on the corny (everything runs smoothly for his characters, and they share with each other such tidbits as, “The Present is a gift you give to yourself. Only you have the power to discover what it is”), it’s undeniably sound. Despite some awkward phrasings, Johnson’s latest brims with good ideas for those feeling frustrated, stagnant, depressed or overwhelmed, and is bound to be embraced by the self-help-loving masses.

Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy

The legendary Eat That Frog! (more than 450,000 copies sold and translated into 23 languages) provides the 21 most effective methods for conquering procrastination and accomplishing more. This new edition is revised and updated throughout, and includes brand new information on how to keep technology from dominating our time.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

A must for anyone wanting to improve their lives and their positive thinking. There have been more millionaires and indeed, billionaires, who have made their fortunes as a result of reading this success classic than any other book every printed. NAPOLEON HILLS’s “Think and Grow Rich” is the author’s most famous work. This is the COMPLETE Reference Book. A true masterpiece with the fundamentals of the Success philosophy.

*** ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Napoleon Hill was an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling books of all time. Hill’s works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” is one of Hill’s hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach for the average person, were the focal points of Hill’s books.

How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton

In this brief but significant book, the authors, a grandfather-grandson team, explore how using positive psychology in everyday interactions can dramatically change our lives. Clifton (coauthor of Now, Discover Your Strengths) and Rath suggest that we all have a bucket within us that needs to be filled with positive experiences, such as recognition or praise. When we’re negative toward others, we use a dipper to remove from their buckets and diminish their positive outlook. When we treat others in a positive manner, we fill not only their buckets but ours as well. The authors illustrate how this principle works in the areas of business and management, marriage and other personal relationships and in parenting through studies covering a 40-year span, many in association with the Gallup Poll. While acknowledging that most lives have their share of misfortune, the authors also make clear that how misfortune affects individuals depends largely on their level of positive energy and confidence. The authors also underscore that our human interactions provide most of the joys or disappointments we receive from life. The book comes with a unique access code to www.bucketbook.com, which offers a positive impact assessment and drop-shaped note cards that can be used to give praise and recognition to others.

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

Radio talk-show host and bestselling author Ramsey (Financial Peace) is less a financial analyst and more of a preacher, which explains both his popularity and the appeal of this book, which just might gain a wide audience. The bedrock of his system is simple: work hard, pay what you owe and stay out of debt. His main commandment is “Pay cash.” He first exhorts the reader to take “baby steps,” which are designed to build on each other: first, save $1,000 as an emergency fund; then, pay off all debts from smallest to largest; save a larger three-to-six-month emergency fund; finally, start to save for college and pay off your home mortgage. Ramsey understands the difficulty in putting these steps into action, and therefore packs his book with personal testimonials from everyday people who have used his system and have become debt free, with obvious struggles. The key is what Ramsey calls “Gazelle intensity,” which is to live a financial life the way a gazelle saves itself from an attacking cheetah-”outmaneuver the enemy and run for your life.” While Ramsey provides some helpful charts and graphs so readers can keep track of their efforts to follow his steps, the strength of this book is that it is a straightforward motivational tool. He provides the brutally direct truth about the hard work it takes to become free of debt, and his directness is a great part of the book’s charm.

The Power of Full Engagement (Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal) by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

The authors, founders of and executives at LGE Performance Systems, an executive training program based on athletic coaching programs, offer a program aimed at stressed individuals who want to find more purpose in their work and ways to better handle their overburdened relationships. Just as athletes train, play and then recover, people need to recognize their own energy levels. “Balancing stress and recovery is critical not just in competitive sports, but also in managing energy in all facets of our lives. Emotional depth and resilience depend on active engagement with others and with our own feelings.” Case studies demonstrate how some modest changes can have an immediate impact. Loehr (Mental Toughness Training for Sports) and Schwartz (Art of the Deal, writing with Donald Trump) also include a chart highlighting Action Steps, Targeted Muscle, Desired Outcome and Performance Barrier and apply these tenets to individual cases. A chart analyzing the benefits and costs to taking certain action shows the impact negative behavior can have on both physical and mental well-being. However, the actual “training program” whereby readers can learn how to institute certain rituals to change their behavior is less well-defined. Managers and other employees who have attended HR seminars may find this plan easy to use, but self-employed people and others less familiar with “training” may be unable to recognize their behavior patterns and change them.

No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan S. Kennedy

For more than 30 years, author, consultant, speaker, and entrepreneur Dan Kennedy has dished out no-nonsense advice, bases on his own experience, to achieve business and sales success. He regularly get “millionaire-maker” results for satisfied clients in hundreds of professions and industries. His bestselling books include How to Make Millions with Your Ideas.

These proven-effective productivity strategies address reality—the information-overload world of cell phones, PDAs, faxes, e-mails, and need-it-yesterday business demands. This hard-hitting guide boils it all down to 10 time management techniques worth using.

The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn Ordinary into the Extraordinary by Mark Sanborn and John C. Maxwell

In his powerful new book THE FRED FACTOR, motivational speaker Mark Sanborn recounts the true story of Fred, the mail carrier who passionately loves his job and who genuinely cares about the people he serves. Because of that, he is constantly going the extra mile handling the mail – and sometimes watching over the houses – of the people on his route, treating everyone he meets as a friend. Where others might see delivering mail as monotonous drudgery, Fred sees an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those he serves.
We’ve all encountered people like Fred in our lives. In THE FRED FACTOR, Mark Sanborn illuminates the simple steps each of us can take to transform our own lives from the ordinary – into the extraordinary. Sanborn, through stories about Fred and others like him, reveals the four basic principles that will help us bring fresh energy and creativity to our life and work: how to make a real difference every day, how to become more successful by building strong relationships, how to create real value for others without spending a penny, and how to constantly reinvent yourself.
By following these principles, and by learning from and teaching other “Freds,” you, too, can excel in your career and make your life extraordinary. As Mark Sanborn makes clear, each of us has the potential be a Fred.THE FRED FACTOR shows you how.

31 1/2 Essentials for Running Your Medical Practice by Dr. John Guiliana and Dr. Hal Ornstein with Mark Terry

Is there formula for running a practice that focuses on healing while still letting you enjoy robust profitability and a personal life, too? Yes! In fact, there are 31 “essentials” – concrete solutions that have been tested, refined and proven to make a difference by highly successful practices. Now, with 31 1/2 Essentials for Running Your Medical Practice You can start using these same ideas to streamline your own practice, contain costs, defuse conflicts, boost reimbursement and increase physician, staff and patient satisfaction.

While many books address medical practice management, this new book goes beyond textbook theory. Drawing on nearly 50 years of combined experience consulting with and running highly successful private practices, the authors map out practical, turnkey solutions to the harsh realities facing medical, dental, and all healthcare practices, including: tough competition, patient expectations, shrinking reimbursement, litigation, malpractice insurance costs, complex regulations, high rents, soaring utilities, and other challenges.

NOTEWORTHY FEATURES – A “fast start” users-guide style: Spend less time reading! Each chapter zeroes in on one success essential, concisely explaining how to identify problems, clear obstacles, make improvements and measure success. – Covers every aspect of your practice: No more guesswork! You can get right to work with today’s best strategies for everything from choosing an office location and the right staff, to controlling overhead and getting patients to comply with treatment plans. – Real-world examples: From mission statements to budgets, you can build your own improvements on the best work already done by other successful practices. – Ready-to-use tools: The book includes financial benchmarks, numbers and equations that make it even easier to put the 31 success strategies into action in your practice.

Additional Books Recommended on Marketing

Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell

If you work at a Fortune 500 company and live in southern Connecticut or New York’s Westchester County (two of Manhattan’s most affluent suburbs), chances are you buy your suits at Mitchells (in Westport, Conn.) or Richards (in Greenwich, Conn.). These two independent clothing stores are some of the most successful in the business and outfit CEOs from Chase, GE, IBM, Merrill Lynch and Pepsi. Mitchell, whose father started the business, shares the secret of his success in this unoriginal but cheerful guide to keeping customers happy. Hugging your customers, he says, has nothing to do with being touchy-feely around them and everything to do with offering them over-the-top service. For Mitchell, that means literally offering a customer the coat off your back, if that’s the only one left in the store in the customer’s size and preferred style and color. It means going to customers’ homes to tie their bow ties for big events. It means serving coffee and bagels in the store and giving away hot dogs in the parking lot on summer Saturdays. Some might view this as fawning, but for Mitchell, it’s the best way to keep customers coming back. His advice-know your customer, think outside the box, have a “no problem” attitude-is hardly groundbreaking. But those who work with customers daily have much to gain from this chipper, inspiring handbook.

Built to Serve by Dan J. Sanders

In Built to Serve, Dan Sanders, CEO of the award-winning, service-oriented United Supermarkets, makes this bold claim: the prevailing business culture is broken and a radical transformation is required-a paradigm shift that reshapes our understanding of the true purpose of work.

Leaders have a choice-continue to chase a broken price-profit model and suffer the consequences or build a culture committed to servant hood and discover the fulfillment evident when people see their work as a ministry. The choice leaders make will not only determine economic success and failure but also will determine their organization’s long term impact on humanity.

The time is now. Sanders reveals how your people can adopt United’s mission of “Ultimate Service, Superior Performance, Positive Impact.” He distills valuable lessons from nine decades of a people-centered culture that consistently delivers outstanding customer service and reveals how you can develop a fully engaged, productive workforce.

• Treat your customers like partners
• Create a people-centered culture in a numbers-focused world
• Communicate your organization’s vision
• Focus on strengths, not weaknesses
• Tie performance to the success of your mission
• Reduce your employee turnover
• Build communities connected by an emotional bond
• Ensure sustainability and growth-with an eye on the principles that allowed your success in the first place

When you’re built to serve, employees come to work because they want to, not just because they have to. Built to Serve is your hands-on guide to seeking this higher purpose.

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler

With a foreword by Jay Leno, how could this not be a nice book? Coauthors Thaler and Koval submit their own success in the cutthroat world of advertising as evidence that nice girls can finish first while taking home more than a dozen Clio awards along the way. Following up their bestselling look at creating compelling marketing strategies—Bang!—they turn most truisms about business inside out, arguing that good deeds are returned, not punished. Warning against a me vs. you mentality, they even suggest helping opponents as a good way to boost a career. Game face on? Thaler and Koval say, take it off. Being genuine, they explain, produces much better results. From crediting their friendly building security guard for helping them sign new clients to recommending chocolate as an accompaniment to presentation materials and invoices, they build their case for using little gestures to get you what you want. Though a lively and pleasant read, this is not a cutesy little bonbon of a book. Well thought-out and crisply presented, it offers key principles, case studies and exercises to help make niceness habitual. Some exercises, like turning personal disappointment into positive energy, are even quite therapeutic.

The No Complaining Rule by Jon Gordon

Negativity in the workplace costs businesses billions of dollars and impacts the morale, productivity and health of individuals and teams. “In The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work, Jon Gordon, a bestselling author, consultant and speaker, shares an enlightening story that demonstrates how you can conquer negativity and inspire others to adopt a positive attitude.” Based on one company’s successful No Complaining Rule, the powerful principles and actionable plan are practical and easy-to-follow, making this book an ideal read for managers, team leaders and anyone interested in generating positive energy.

The Power of Small by Linda Kaplan Thaler

According to successful authors and marketing business leaders Thaler and Koval, paying attention to the small things can improve your effectiveness in both personal and professional situations. Written in an appropriately succinct style, Thaler and Koval make a big deal of simple steps like paying better attention to what you’re saying (“Bill Clinton… waits until he has come to the end of a sentence to shift his attention to another person”) and picking up after yourself (“Professional organizer Molly Boren… says to put away three things in the morning and three things at night”). Some chapters are more professionally oriented, like a chapter on gaffes at work (“Little Mistakes Spell Disaster”), but widely-applicable, everyday advice gets much of the attention, as in the “Take Baby Steps” chapter: “Smaller, more attainable goals will also give you quicker, more frequent mini-rewards.” Though not necessarily for front-to-back reading, quick dips should yield enough practical inspiration for most seekers. Clean, simple writing, familiar to anyone who picked up the authors’ bestselling The Power of Nice, ensures a fast-paced reading experience, and an admirable example of the subtle, considered approach it advocates.