- Jeni Herberger, Creative and Corporate Visionary

Are you a Corporate Creative? “Whether they’re copywriters, marketers, product designers, R&D engineers or even forward thinking managers and, dare I say, enlightened HR staff—if they are individuals who are empathetic, entrepreneurial, intuitive and non-linear thinkers with a healthy rebellious bent, then, I’d say, they are a corporate creative,” says Epstein.

Surviving and more importantly succeeding in a corporate world requires you to be a project manager as well as a designer as well as a creative. This book provides key strategies and tactics to help you establish yourself and your team as powerful players in your company. Experienced in-house designer Andy Epstein shows you how to:

• Communicate clearly and effectively
• Hire and train a winning team
• Work with other departments in the company
• Maximize efficiency within your group
• Make client management easy
• Cut through the read tape to create great design

Click here to purchase this book!

Both Jeni and Andy will be speaking at this year’s In-HOWse Conference in Denver from June 6-8. Please visit www.inhowseconference.com for more information!

Goal-Free Living: How to have the life you want NOW! introduces a new philosophy for achieving success. By redefining the idea of setting goals, Stephen Shapiro encourages his reader’s to seek aspirations rather than chase goals. The idea being that when we are focused on our goals we often miss new opportunities. By using a compass as a guide rather than following a map we can wander a bit and allow our adventures to redefine our path. “Maps are useful in trying to get to your destination as quickly and efficiently as possible. But life is not about efficiency. It is about exuberance. And you can’t map out passion.”

Each of us has an internal compass that tells us so much about ourselves if we slow down long enough to listen. This compass guides us towards our own unique sense of purpose. We find this compass setting by recognizing our passions, defining our skills and living by our values. Imagine the excitement of a road trip where you stop when the mood strikes you and find pleasures you would have missed if you had simply driven straight to your destination. Simply stated, a successful life is lived today not in the future.

But wherever you are on your personal or professional journey, there are keys here for your locked doors, and transformative concepts that will clarify what currently confounds you. In Max Siegel words: “People always ask me how I did it – how I got from where I started, to where I am today. And to be honest, when someone asks me about my success, it can still be hard to believe they’re talking about me. Back when I was a teenager in Indianapolis, if you had looked at me from the outside, you would have seen a poor black kid with a Jewish name, a mixed-race boy from a broken home – an outsider,  even among outsiders…”

A riveting life story, raw, heartbreaking – provides the backdrop for this powerful autobiographic tutorial. We’re all familiar with the adage that our history is not our destiny, but, as Siegel explains – without an aggressive leap forward – the demons of a painful past have the power to absolutely shape our current and future reality. Walking the talk, we’re shown step by step, how Max Siegel transformed his scars to strengths, and how we can do the same.

Having achieved stunning heights of success throughout his career, as an attorney and agent for luminaries in sports and entertainment, as a global music executive, as former president of Dale Earnhardt Inc. and now, partnered with NASCAR, leading the Drive for Diversity program, and co-owner of Revolution Racing – Siegel’s skills as a unifier, mediator and consensus builder are at the center of that success. This essential component of leadership, Siegel asserts, can be learned and demonstrated by all who make the choice to do the work.

Think of your most challenging business crisis, intractable conflict – or betrayal. When was the last time you received any counsel that delivered effective solutions that did NOT sugarcoat or trivialize? Max Siegel offers specific examples of interpersonal dynamics that cause conflict – and outlines how those differences can be recalibrated to achieve unity and cohesion.

When have you been challenged to determine what restores your sense of internal balance – by leveraging the elements in your personal history that cause you pain or shame – and view that suffering from the perspective that it can BUILD rather than undermine your success? Siegel challenges us to take a penetrating look at ourselves and ask: WHAT MAKES ME TICK? What do I value – and what am I willing to walk away from, to formulate a clear vision for my life? And developing that life vision can be as simple as deciding what you don’t want to repeat.
Siegel is persuasive in communicating how his approach is gratifying, both personally and spiritually. By developing the ability to ask the right questions, to connect, and to truly listen, we elevate our interactions – diffuse discord, and can build solid relationships and communities.

What drives the people in our lives with whom we live and work? How do those motivations intersect? How do we tap those motivations – shape them and work together to uplift one another? We learn to KNOW WHAT MAKES THEM TICK.”

Bettina de Perez is a corporate consultant and designer. She specializes in the field of applied intuitive analysis, providing clients with strategic planning, business, brand and product development. More about Bettina can be found at http://www.bettinadesignandconsulting.com

How Full Is Your Bucket?

How Full Is Your Bucket? is powerful, inspirational and easy to read. Grounded in decades of research and co-authored by Donald Clifton, a pioneer in the practice of positive psychology, this book uses the simple metaphor of a bucket and a dipper to illustrate the effects meaningful “bucket filling” can have on our life. The authors share with their readers discoveries based on research conducted on relationships in the work place, the military and among married couples. Along with scientific research, the authors tell engaging stories and leave the reader with five strategies for beginning to make positive change:

• Strategy One: Prevent Bucket Dipping
• Strategy Two: Shine a Light on What is Right
• Strategy Three: Make Best Friends
• Strategy Four: Give Unexpectedly
• Strategy Five: Reverse the Golden Rule

This book seems to have a heart of its own offering the perfect combination of narrative, explanation and action plans. The back of the book holds a pocket containing a wallet-size interview guide along with a few tools to get you started on filling the buckets of those around you. Additionally, visit http://www.bucketbook.com for more information, tools and tests.

How Full is Your Bucket?
By Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, Phd.

Steve consulted with over a hundred different creative professionals to extract the best 100 habits for running a freelance business. Not to mention pulling from his owe experiences as an independent designer. “I didn’t want to write another business book geared toward white-collar, suit and tie guys or as I like to call them, ’studio heads,’ or write an overly generic book talking about creativity and design. I wanted to create a reference guide for truly independent creative people.”

A compilation of advice on project and business management, creativity, collaboration and more, 100 Habits of Successful Freelance Designers is packed full of illustrations (designed by the author himself), sample work and actual quotes from successful independent creatives! Beautifully bound and a cover design that will not your socks off, this is a great book to read and to show off!

100 Habits of Successful Freelance Designers
By Steve Gordon Jr.

Never Eat Alone

For years I have worked with my own staff and advised those I have consulted with to use relationships as the core foundation of their business believing that these forged connections will carry a business through good times and bad. It’s not about cold calls. As a matter or opinion, I believe cold calls are an ineffective method of marketing. I look to take an opportunity with someone and make it a warm call, make a connection that will last.

“I learned that real networking was about finding ways to make other people more successful. It was about working harder to give more than you get.” I love this quote! By looking to the success of other you inevitably increase your own. People that instinctively do this are the most successful people I know, and they are happy!

The philosophy/ideas in this book can easily be summed up into this few principles:

1. Building relationship is key to building business
2. Do for others as you do for yourself
3. Be genuine and sincere
4. Plan out your networking strategies, short term and long
5. Become a master at follow-up

Never Eat Alone is a recommended read for everyone, whether a business manager, sales person or any type of professional interested in a growing their career and longterm success. I truly believe that nothing can make you as successful (or happy) than growing a career that is based on the principle of building relationships that matter.