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WORK TITLE: Find Your Extraordinary
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.helloextraordinary.com/
CITY:
STATE: CA
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http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2135791/jessica-dilullo-herrin * https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicaherrin * http://www.helloextraordinary.com/jessica/ * http://www.lionessesofafrica.com/blog/2016/4/17/essential-read-find-your-extraordinary-dream-bigger-live-happier-and-achieve-success-on-your-own-terms-by-jessica-dilullo-herrin
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2015061796
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2015061796
HEADING: Herrin, Jessica DiLullo
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PERSONAL
Married; husband’s name Chad; children: two daughters.
EDUCATION:Stanford University, B.A. (economics); Stanford Graduate School of Business, attended.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Business entrepreneur and executive. WeddingChannel.com, cofounder, 1996; Stella & Dot family of brands, CEO and founder.
MEMBER:Young Presidents Organization.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Entrepreneur Jessica DiLullo Herrin is a successful company founder and corporate executive who writes about ways anyone can balance home and business life in Find Your Extraordinary: Dream Bigger, Live Happier, and Achieve Success on Your Own Terms. She is CEO and founder of the Stella & Dot family of brands, one of two multimillion-dollar businesses that she built from the ground up. She also lectures and makes television appearances on such shows as Oprah, the Today Show, and Undercover Boss and in media outlets like New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal. Herrin holds a degree in economics from Stanford University and attended Stanford Graduate School of Business but quit at age twenty-four in 1996 to start the WeddingChannel.com Web site. Herrin was listed on Inc.’s list of Top Ten Female CEOs in 2012 and was recognized as a top entrepreneur by Ernst & Young. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
For her WeddingChannel.com endeavor, Herrin worked constantly and learned lessons about taking time out for family. Chauncey Mabe remarked in Success that in Find Your Extraordinary, Herrin offers “the wisdom gained from the stress and constant work of the first business.” At her first company, she worked hard and was commercially successful but was “not soulfully fulfilled,” she remarked to Katia Savchuk in an interview with Forbes. “I felt a sense of completion. But next time I wanted to start a business that was more ambitious. I wanted to start a life—one that allowed me to be a wife and a mother at the same time as a business owner and leader,” said Herrin.
In Find Your Extraordinary, Herrin describes classic traits of successful entrepreneurs that guide professionals to create a company, participate in corporate business success, enjoy a balanced home and family life, and live an extraordinary life. It starts with creating their own definition of happiness and success and then tailoring work and family life to that goal. She also describes the democratization of entrepreneurship and flexible business that incorporates new technologies and customer expectations. The book also provides anecdotes of successful entrepreneurs. Writing in Publishers Weekly, Jeff Vasishta said that while the book is aimed at women entrepreneurs, “the issues they raise are not of concern to women only.” A healthy work-life balance is not just for mothers but for fathers as well. Speaking to Margaret Wheeler Johnson in Huffington Post, Herrin explained: “We need careers that can ebb and flow around our life. I do what I do because it’s a complete passion project, and I’m utterly convinced that it needs to exist.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, May 16, 2016, Carolyn Juris, “Find Your Extraordinary,” p. 10.
Success, May, 2016, Chauncey Mabe, “Reading List: Use Your Downtime to Relax and Enrich Your Mind with These Books,” p. 82.
ONLINE
Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/ (June 27, 2016), Katia Savchuk, “The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets: Why Stella & Dot CEO Jessica Herrin Stopped Trying to Do It All,” author interview.
Hello Extraordinary, http://www.helloextraordinary.com (March 1, 2017), author profile.
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (August 28, 2013), Margaret Wheeler Johnson, “Stella & Dot Founder Jessica Herrin: I’m ‘Living My One Precious Life in Accordance with My Values,’” author interview.
Penguin Random House, http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ (March 1, 2017), author profile.
Publishers Weekly, http://www.publishersweekly.com (May 13, 2016), Jeff Vasishta, review of Find Your Extraordinary.
Stella and Dot, https://www.stelladot.com/ (March 1, 2017), author profile.
JESSICA HERRIN
Mom of 2, Author of Find Your Extraordinary, CEO & Founder of Stella & Dot Family of Brands
Jessica Herrin is CEO and Founder of the Stella & Dot Family of Brands. She has been featured on Oprah, the Today Show, and Undercover Boss, in Fortune, the NY Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and was included on Inc.'s list of top 10 Female CEOs.
After graduating from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics, Jessica joined two successful tech startups before heading back to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. At the ripe age of 24, she dropped out of business school to co-found the leading wedding site, WeddingChannel.com.
Jessica_Hoopla.jpg
NYTimes.jpg
STELLA & DOT Family of Brands (Stella & Dot, KEEP Collective and EVER Skincare) enable over 50,000 independent business owners in 6 countries that have earned over $300 million from running their own flexible businesses, sharing over $1 billion in products. Jessica originally founded the company out of her living room in 2004 as Luxe Jewels. Their award winning products have been featured in InStyle, Vogue, Allure, Elle, Real Simple and worn by countless celebrities.
Stella & Dot
Stella & Dot
EVER Skincare
EVER Skincare
KEEP Collective
KEEP Collective
Jessica calls the San Francisco Bay Area home and lives with her husband Chad, their two daughters, a fish and a dog. She’s an avid runner, reader, adventurer and a member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JESSICA HERRIN is CEO/founder of Stella & Dot Family Brands. She has been featured on Oprah, in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, the Today Show and Undercover Boss, and was included on Inc.’s list of Top Ten Female CEOs in 2012.
STELLA & DOT Family Brands (Stella & Dot, KEEP Collective and EVER Skincare) include over 50,000 business owners in 6 countries that have earned over $300 million from running their own flexible businesses, sharing over $1 billion in product since 2007. Their celebrity coveted and award-winning products have been featured in InStyle, Vogue, Allure, Elle, and Real Simple.
MEET JESSICA CEO & Founder
As the brains behind Stella & Dot, Jessica has proven just how one woman can go about styling her life with smarts, courage, and tenacity. After joining two successful tech startups out of college, she went to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where, at the ripe age of 24, she co-founded the now world's leading wedding site, WeddingChannel.com. Jessica's been recognized for her business savvy even more than her style savvy -- Oprah, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Forbes have saluted her for her vision. Taking Social Selling to the next level, Jessica's been honored by Ernst & Young and Inc. 500 as a Top Entrepreneur. She is also actively involved in Young Presidents Organization (YPO) in the San Francisco Bay area. But Jessica is most proud of the recognition she gets from the women of Stella & Dot, who are mirroring her success in reinventing the home business opportunity for the modern woman. Because, as Jessica claims, "nine-to-five just doesn't flatter."
Typical Jessica: Endless optimism. Taking a look at the Pyramids and saying "Hmmm, that actually looks very doable."
Past Itineraries: Rock climbing in Thailand, scuba diving in Egypt, cooking school in Italy, safari in Africa.
Favorite Spot on Earth: Home.
Finds Beautiful: Brains, wit, her daughters’ happy shrieks as they play in ocean waves, and their dreamy daddy, Chad.
Passionate About: Being a great wife and mom. Never giving up. Creating the Stella & Dot Foundation.
Guilty Pleasure: Margaritas and friends on a beach in Mexico. Words with Friends.
Personal Motto: "Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the Ordinary." Cecil Beaton
JUN 27, 2016 @ 09:00 AM 12,959 VIEWS The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
Why Stella & Dot CEO Jessica Herrin Stopped Trying To Do It All
Katia Savchuk , FORBES STAFF
I write about billionaires and entrepreneurs around the world
Stella & Dot founder and CEO Jessica Herrin
Stella & Dot founder and CEO Jessica Herrin
The way Jessica Herrin puts it, she nearly “died alone on I-Can-Do-It-All-Island.” When she started Stella & Dot, a direct-sales accessories company, 13 years ago, it was a side business while she worked full-time as a marketing manager at Dell and was pregnant with her first child.
Herrin already had one company under belt. At age 24, she had dropped out of Stanford Business School to cofound a wedding-gift registry site, which later merged with WeddingChannel.com. Five years after Herrin left the company, it sold to The Knot in a deal worth $78 million.
Soon after Herrin's first daughter was born, the baby was diagnosed with a heart condition (she is now perfectly healthy). Two years later, a second daughter came along. Even as Herrin handled everything at home, she continued to work to get her business off the ground. In her second round as an entrepreneur, she knew something had to change.
Today, as CEO of the Brisbane, Calif.-based Stella & Dot, Herrin, 43, has grown the company to a profitable enterprise with $300 million in revenues. It has paid some $300 million in commissions to more than 50,000 stylists, who keep up to 35% of the value of sales they make.
Last year the company expanded beyond trendy accessories to two new brands: KEEP Collective, a line of keepsake jewelry, and EVER Skincare. Herrin has an estimated net worth of $135 million, making her one of FORBES' self-made women to watch in 2016 and well on her way to joining the rankings of America's Richest Self-Made Women. Her daughters are 10 and 12 years old.
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America's Richest Self-Made Women
Launch Gallery
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Herrin talked with FORBES about bootstrapping a multimillionaire company, renegotiating her marriage contract and managing guilt as a working mother.
What lessons did you learn from founding your first company, Della & James?
I learned that you can be commercially successful and not soulfully fulfilled. I started the business with my head. After building it for four long, hard years, I felt a sense of completion. But next time I wanted to start a business that was more ambitious. I wanted to start a life—one that allowed me to be a wife and a mother at the same time as a business owner and leader, and one in which I felt soulfully connected to what I did. For me that was about changing the workforce for women and allowing more would-be entrepreneurs a chance to thrive.
By the time Della & James merged with WeddingChannel.com in 2000, you had $120 million in combined investment. Stella & Dot has only taken in $37 million in venture capital, from Sequoia in 2011, at a valuation of $370 million. Why did you take a different approach?
When you're in business school, you think of getting venture capital as a big milestone of success. But that’s really just the beginning step to creating success—it’s a financing strategy. When I started my second business, I was adamant that I wanted to bootstrap it, and I wanted to do it on my own terms. When you have a lot of investors, there are many different interests around the table. I was more interested in managing the business for the mission than for the quarter, and I didn’t want to sell. I also knew that I needed to keep control of my life. But Stella & Dot became an amazing hyper-growth story, even though I have always kept my family first and paced it around my life.
You’re still pretty busy. What advice do you have for balancing work with your personal life?
My greatest challenge in starting this business wasn’t how to create the product or deal with the technology, but how to manage my own guilt as a working mother. I had to unshackle myself from the unrealistic expectations I had put on myself as a modern working woman. I don’t know who told me I had to make the baby food—it was all self-inflicted. Women today are a transition generation. When you go to build something transformative in the business world, there’s still that little voice in your head that says, “What are you doing?” So you feel like you’re failing. I really worked on managing guilt, because it’s a terrible waste of time and energy.
Was there a turning point for you in learning that lesson?
When my daughters were 2 and 4, we went on a family vacation to San Diego. I was planning to have a business meeting there. I told my husband, Chad, “You can just fly home with the kids, I’ll go to the meeting, and I’ll fly home later that night.” He said, “No way—that’s too hard. You take the kids to your work meeting, and I’ll fly home by myself.”
I married the nicest man in the world, but I’d created a monster by doing everything. I finally realized I can’t make organic baby food, cook you a gourmet dinner, run the company and do it all without anyone seeing me sweat. I realized I needed to create an equal partnership with my husband, and that’s not what we defaulted into. I told him, “I’m going to be a great mother, but I’m not going to be supermom. We can both take turns being heroes.” It took a real journey, but we radically changed and have been together now 21 years and married for 17. I want other women to realize, “Hold on, I’m not going to get what I don’t ask for.”
How did you come up with the idea for Stella & Dot?
When I was at Della & James, a lot of women reached out to me and asked how they could start a business too. I didn’t have a good answer, so I asked: What if you could democratize entrepreneurship? When I researched the options out there for flexible businesses, it felt like something built for the 1950’s housewife, not for the modern woman. Now it needed to lead with product, be customer-obsessed, leverage technology and allow professional women to earn high dollars per hour.
But direct sales sometimes gets a bad rap.
For good reason. When I started, I had a huge “ick” factor associated with the industry. I would see companies that really didn’t sell to customers, but to distributors that bought things and felt locked in. The key is to have profit programs and safety checks in place to prevent someone from losing money. Our revenue comes from our customers, and our sellers earn commissions. They’re not allowed to buy inventory, and if they do, they get kicked out. Stylists also earn credit towards next season’s samples if they sell, so the profits stay in your pocket. There are no quotas or territories. Our business will attract people who just like to dabble, so there are people only earning a little because they’re only working a little.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
It was my dad’s living example. He raised me as a single dad and reinvented his career many times. Whenever he wanted something, he never thought he was going to get an invitation to make it happen. He would always just crack a book, teach himself and do it. As an entrepreneur, you have to see yourself as the creator of your destiny, and I learned that from him.
You published a book called Find Your Extraordinary in May. Why did you decide to write it?
There just aren’t enough success stories of women in the world. There’s not just the wage gap, C-suite gap and STEM gap, there’s also the confidence gap and the happiness gap. More choices are hands-down a good thing, but we have to be thoughtful about addressing self-confidence and guilt at the same time. I wanted to give people a framework for creating true success in their lives on their own terms.
WOMEN
Stella & Dot Founder Jessica Herrin: I’m ‘Living My One Precious Life In Accordance With My Values’
08/28/2013 11:12 am ET | Updated Aug 28, 2013
1.3k
Margaret Wheeler Johnson
Senior Lifestyle Editor
COURTESY OF STELLA & DOT
What does it take to get to the top — without losing your center? Our “Making It Work” series profiles successful, dynamic women who are standouts in their fields, peeling back the “hows” of their work and their life, taking away lessons we can all apply to our own.
When Jessica Herrin started selling jewelry out of her living room, everyone thought she was crazy. She was a Dell executive at the time and already a proven e-commerce entrepreneur. At 24, she had co-founded the site that eventually became WeddingChannel.com. “All of my friends and family were like, ‘What on earth are you doing?’” she told the Huffington Post. “I [said], ‘Trust me. This is going to be fantastic.’”
She has since built her living room trunk shows into Stella & Dot, a direct-sales jewelry company valued at $450 million. The business model resembles the commission-based social shopping and home entrepreneurship models of old — think Tupperware parties and Mary Kay reps — merged with ecommerce, marketed via social media. The jewelry is chic — you can picture most of it being sold at boutiques in New York or L.A. — but the most compelling aspect of Stella & Dot, especially for the women who become sales reps or “stylists,” may be the way Herrin has positioned the company as an instrument for social good.
Herrin said her mission in founding and growing the company is to offer women the professional autonomy and flexible schedule that are for her the most rewarding and, especially since she became a mother, essential benefits of entrepreneurship. Now 40, Herrin, who lives in the Bay area with her husband of 14 years and their 7- and 9-year-old daughters, has proven her doubters wrong. Not that their opinions set her back, she said. “I realized that getting to the business and the life I wanted involved caring a lot less about what other people thought.”
jessica herrin
Why do you do what you do?
[When I was running WeddingChannel.com], we were fortunate enough to be featured on Oprah. [The episode] was all about pursuing your passion to find your fortune and develop a business. [Afterward] all these women reached out to me and said, “What advice do you have for starting a business?” At that time, I honestly felt like I didn’t have a good answer. It may have looked good from the outside, but I worked every night and weekend. I had a created a business that ran me versus me running it.
With Stella & Dot, the idea was, “How could you have the amazing elements of being an entrepreneur without having the high cost of capital to start it?” I became obsessed with reinventing the idea of flexible entrepreneurship. The modern woman had changed since home-based entrepreneurship had been thought up a hundred years ago.
I think women deserve a better answer for, “How can I lead a life [at] the intersection of all the other roles that women play in their lives and being an independent accomplished professional?” We need careers that can ebb and flow around our life.
I do what I do because it’s a complete passion project, and I’m utterly convinced that it needs to exist.
What work would you do if not this?
I would do this. With Stella & Dot I have found my calling. I’ve done other things that have been commercially successful, but it’s not enough. It left me wanting more, and that feeling of wanting more led me down this path. What we do really matters. We empower women.
Is there still a glass ceiling? Have you hit it?
Glass ceilings still exist in corporate America. I started my own business and became my own boss, [so] nobody’s holding me back but me. There is no ceiling.
I [also] believe [I haven’t hit it] because I have never acknowledged that being a female would be a barrier for me. I’ve never thought to myself, I can do anything a man can do. I’ve just always thought I can do anything.
Do women have an obligation to help other women at work?
One hundred percent. Because women are still trying to navigate the dual responsibility of being the lynchpin of all matters in the home and achiev[ing] career[s] worthy of their brains and ambition, we need each other’s help. I have a VP of strategy right now on a two month sabbatical in Uganda. That’s not easy and convenient for the rest of the company, but we’re going to make it work because that’s [who] we want to be. Mentoring her isn’t just about, “Here’s how you can broaden your skills and broaden your career.” It’s about providing an environment that says, “I get it. If you don’t have QT with your kids, you’re going to drop out of this work force. So were gonna be a company where somehow that can work out.”
jessica herrin
Herrin with Stella & Dot stylists
How do you define success?
Living my one precious life in accordance with my values. It’s not a monetary figure, it’s the amount of impact and joy that I’m creating in my life. I want to see the world and travel and have adventures. I want to have a full and rich life as a mother, as an individual, and from a work perspective, I want to make an impact. I want to get up in the morning and know that what I do makes other people’s lives a bit better.
Are you successful?
Absolutely. I always want to achieve more, but I think the beauty of being 40 is that you recognize that if you wake up and you’re happy that day, you’re successful.
What does an average day look like for you?
I wake up early in the morning and work from home, then I am usually in the office or in the field with stylists, and then I’m home for dinner with my family. I may log back on and do a few more things from home.
Do you exercise?
I feel like I don’t have time not to exercise. I can spend 28 minutes on a three mile run and feel like I get back three hours of energy. Long ago I realized I’m never going to have enough time to get everything I want to do done, so I might as well exercise and still have all that other stuff to do. Some things are going to be left undone every single day, and exercise cannot be one of them.
Where do you do your best work?
Running. That’s why I’ve committed to exercise. My morning run is when my head is most clear and when I synthesize all of the things that are going on in my head. When I’m running I’m always three to five years out in my mind. As a leader that’s where I need to spend time.
Has a big meeting ever conflicted with the school play or some version of that scenario, and what did you do?
I control the meeting schedule, so I go to the school play, and I move [the meeting]. [When you’re] running a business, there isn’t [often] something that can’t be moved up or back 30 minutes. My travel schedule [i]s my biggest challenge, but I plan very carefully a year in advance around my kids’ school calendar. [My husband and I] have [also] evolved our careers over time to work together as a family. His used to involve a lot more travel, and he switched his role so that we weren’t going in two different directions at the same time.
jessica herrin
Herrin with her husband, Chad Herrin, and her daughters, Tatum, 7, and Charlie, 9, in 2012
Who does grocery shopping, bill paying, etc. at your house?
I outsource the laundry and grocery shopping. When I first had kids, I tried to be a superwife and a supermom and do everything, and I realized that was a formula for disaster. My kids don’t need me to be the one making a five-course dinner. They need me to be on the floor playing with them. We can eat something somebody else made. We can get something delivered. I have a golden rule I live by which is if [the task involves being] eyeball to eyeball with my kid, I do it. If [it doesn’t], I can get somebody else to do that so I can spend more time being eyeball to eyeball.
Do you have a work persona and non-work persona?
No. I think it would be exhausting to try to be somebody else at work [other than] who you really are.
Are you close friends with anyone you work with or worked with in the past?
Absolutely. I’ve had other executives tell me [not to], but I just don’t understand that. If you spend all this time with people that you work with, to not feel like they’re your friends is crazy.
jessica herrin
A Stella & Dot trunk show
What has been the most stressful part of your career?
When I had a toddler and a newborn and [was] figuring how I was going to build a company and make sure that I was the one taking my daughter to swim class on Fridays. That was when I was most stressed, trying to reconcile these two people that I felt were within me, this very, very driven entrepreneur and this very old-school nurturing mother. I was raised Italian. [Part of me] wants to have ten kids and do everything with them all day.
Could you have the life you have if you worked for someone else?
No. I wouldn’t be as happy. Being in charge of my own schedule [and] running my own business is critical for my life plan. I could be a Stella & Dot stylist and run my own business — it doesn’t have to be something that I created — but I need to be in control of my own calendar.
What advice would you give your 25-year-old self?
It’s not about being right, it’s about making it right and helping everyone around you be successful. I’ve always been a person who’s go go go, so I think when I was 25, I didn’t understand when other people didn’t want to devote themselves to only work. I was a terrible, terrible people manager at 25.
jessica herrin
Herrin with her daughters in 2013
What haven’t you done that you want to do?
Stella & Dot is at the beginning of its potential as an entrepreneurial opportunity for women, so we’ll continue to grow. Personally, I don’t want for anything. I feel so lucky to have a wonderful husband and children. I’m sure there’s other things that I want to accomplish, but off the top of my head, I just want to enjoy every day with my [kids]. We are in that parenting nirvana stage where life is easy, [and they] still like hanging out with us! Right now, I am just enjoying every minute.
Find Your Extraordinary
Carolyn Juris
Publishers Weekly.
263.20 (May 16, 2016): p10.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Find Your Extraordinary
Jessica DiLullo Herrin
#21 Hardcover Nonfiction
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The founder and CEO of Stella & Dot Family Brands offers advice on finding happiness and success on one's own terms. For more on this book
and others that explore this idea, check out our business books feature, "A Fine Balance," on p. 18.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Juris, Carolyn. "Find Your Extraordinary." Publishers Weekly, 16 May 2016, p. 10. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453506711&it=r&asid=dd0700c687fe908d647e775421b8736a. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
2/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Reading list: use your downtime to relax and enrich your
mind with these books
Chauncey Mabe
Success.
(May 2016): p82.
COPYRIGHT 2016 R & L Publishing, Ltd. (dba SUCCESS Media)
http://www.successmagazine.com/
Full Text:
FIND YOUR EXTRAORDINARY
Dream Bigger, Live Happier, and Achieve Success on Your Own Terms
By Jessica DiLullo Herrin
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
She has built not one but two multimillion-dollar businesses from the ground up. Jessica DiLullo Herrin hit it rich first in 1996 (while still a
student at Stanford Graduate Business School) with WeddingChannel.com, one of the first full-service bridal websites. After following her
husband to Texas and having two children, she started Stella & Dot Family Brands, a craft jewelry business approaching $1 billion in annual
sales.
In Find Your Extraordinary, Herrin shares the wisdom gained from the stress and constant work of the first business, which did $100 million a
year by the time she left, and the easier pace she's found with the second. Entrepreneurial principles, she says, can create not only the kind of
career you want but also the kind of life you want to live. (May; Crown Business; $27)
2/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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NEVER SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE
Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
By Chris Voss with Tahl Raz
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The biggest error of conventional negotiating theory, says Chris Voss, formerly the FBI's top international kidnap negotiator, is the assumption
people are logical and behave in their own best interests. In fact, no one behaves rationally, leaving emotion to dominate pressure situations.
That's as true in business, Voss writes, as it is in the FBI. After all, life is one negotiation after another--from buying a car to starting a business to
asking for a raise.
Voss provides lists and tips throughout the book, breaking effective negotiating into nine general principles: Be a mirror; don't feel their pain;
beware of yes, master no; trigger the two words that immediately transform any negotiation; bend reality; create the illusion of control; guarantee
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execution; bargain hard; and find black swans. Voss illustrates points with anecdotes from his FBI career, lending the book some suspense--rare
for a business treatise.
(May; HarperBusiness; $29)
O GREAT ONE!
A Little Story About the Awesome Power of Recognition
By David Novak with Christa Bourg
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
During the 14 years David Novak served as CEO at Yum! Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut,
Taco Bell), he used recognition to develop the company into one of the world's biggest restaurant outfits. "If you give people the recognition
they've earned, if you show genuine appreciation and acknowledge the unique things people have to offer, then you will drive real results."
Novak is puzzled why recognition is used so little in the business world. To get the word out, he writes a parable about Jeff Johnson, the new
CEO, trying to save his family toy company. There's more story here than in earlier business parables such as Who Moved My Cheese? After
reading it, bosses might be more apt to pat employees on the back and give an "attaboy" for work well done.
(May; Portfolio; $25)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Mabe, Chauncey. "Reading list: use your downtime to relax and enrich your mind with these books." Success, May 2016, p. 82. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
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A Fine Balance: Business Books 2016
New books help readers find fulfillment in their working lives
By Jeff Vasishta |
May 13, 2016
In The 4-Hour Work Week (Crown, 2007), entrepreneur Tim Ferriss encouraged readers to reject the “deferred-life plan,” a term he used to mean waiting until retirement to enjoy life. And though critics have disputed the notion of a true four-hour work week—for example, Ferriss does not count the time he spends each week on self-promotion as work—the book has clearly struck a chord. Together with a 2009 revised edition, it’s sold more than 955,000 copies in hardcover, according to Nielsen BookScan, with 22,000 copies sold this year alone.
A spate of business books publishing in the next several months explore various ways to bring personal satisfaction to one’s professional life, whether through entrepreneurship, shunning corporate employment, pursuing one’s passion, or simply working fewer hours a day.
Go Your Own Way
Brian Wong, author of The Cheat Code (Crown Business, Sept.), steered clear of the corporate ladder when plotting his career. He graduated from college at 18 and raised $24 million in venture capital to cofound Kiip, a mobile advertising platform, before he turned 25. His book offers dozens of “cheats,” or sound-bite-ready snippets of advice for getting ahead of the competition, including “know your superpower” and “get a trademark haircut.”
“The tone [of the book] was different from what was out there,” says Talia Krohn, senior editor at Crown, adding that she expects the concept and “actionable” advice to appeal to millennial readers.
That desirable demographic is on the minds of other business publishers and authors. “Many young people feel that freelance or gig work is preferable to being at the whim of a corporation who can let you go and treat you badly,” says Ellen Kadin, executive editor at Amacom, which is publishing Diane Mulcahy’s The Gig Economy in November.
The book, which lays out 10 rules for a successful freelance career, is based on a class the author teaches at Babson College’s M.B.A. program, Entrepreneurship and the Gig Economy, which Forbes named one of the 10 most innovative business school classes in the country in 2010.
Another Amacom title, Make Your Own Waves (July), by Bay Area business consultant Louis Patler, uses surfing as a metaphor, showing how principles such as “get wet: you can’t succeed if stay on the beach” can also apply to business innovation and entrepreneurship.
In the same way that Patler’s book draws on the experiences of surfers-turned-businesspeople (the founders of GoPro and Quicksilver, for example), Vishen Lakhiani, in The Code of the Extraordinary Mind (Rodale, out now), relates lessons from entrepreneurs including Arianna Huffington and Richard Branson. Lakhiani, founder and CEO of educational technology company Mindvalley, offers what an April 25 PW article described as “a blueprint for breaking through destructive routines and unproductive feelings.”
Look Within
As titles like Extraordinary Mind show, the line between business book and inspirational title can be porous, particularly when the goal is to help readers find fulfilling work. Hustle, by business consultants Neil Patel, Patrick Vlaskovits, and Jonas Koffler (Rodale, Sept.), breaks its motivational lessons down into three parts: “The heart” teaches how to follow one’s own dreams and not those of others, “the head” covers how to prepare for mistakes that come with risk taking, and “the habits” demonstrates how to spot opportunities and create one’s own luck. The authors interviewed business leaders including Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox and the first black American woman to become a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and Hugh Forest, director of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival.
Eleven entrepreneurs tell their own stories of hustling in Movers, Shakers, Mommies, and Makers (Gibbs Smith, Sept.). They include Annalisa Thomas, president and CEO of the Oilo furnishings company, whose products are available in stores across the U.S.; and Stacey Bannor, whose Bannor Toys was a 2015 finalist for Martha Stewart’s American Made award.
“This is not a how-to book; it’s a business inspiration book,” editor Michelle Branson says. “They all took a huge leap of faith, worked hard, came up with their product and they got to the point where they had to stop or invest a lot of money and go for it, all while trying to raise their children and have a normal life.”
Similarly, in Find Your Extraordinary (Crown Business, out now), Jessica DiLullo Herrin, founder and CEO of social shopping company Stella and Dot Family Brands (think Tupperware or Avon, but for accessories), instructs readers how to “dream bigger, live happier, and achieve success on your own terms,” as the subtitle puts it. She encourages women to cultivate and pursue their own definitions of success, whether they are starting their own business, staying home with children, or working a corporate job.
And though books such as Find Your Extraordinary are aimed specifically at a female readership, the issues they raise are not of concern to women only. “There are a greater number of people interested in work-life balance—it’s no longer [just] a working mom issue,” says Erika Heilman, cofounder and publisher of Bibliomotion.
By way of example, she cites The Golden Apple (Bibliomotion, Sept.) by Mason Donovan, managing partner at the Dagoba, a consultancy. “This book is about reflecting the needs of a more diverse workforce, from working dads to caregivers of all ages and genders, in the mostly Fortune 100 firms which the author consults with,” she says. Donovan encourages corporate leaders to take an interest in their employees’ personal fulfillment, in an effort to maintain talent and promote productivity and innovation.
Follow Your Bliss
The idea of workplace fulfillment recurs in several forthcoming titles, including, unsurprisingly, those aimed at the coveted millennial generation. Chris Guillebeau’s new book, Born for This (Crown Business), has sold more than 18,000 print copies in its first few weeks on sale, according to Nielsen Bookscan. It continues the discussion he began in 2012’s $100 Startup (which has sold 104,000 print units, per Bookscan), about how to get paid for work you’d do for free. (For more on Born for This, see our q&a with Guillebeau.)
In The Long View (Diversion, Sept.), Brian Fetherstonhaugh, chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne, a division of Ogilvy & Mather, advises millennials to look at their career paths in terms of decades, taking into account big-picture work-life balance issues including personal time, parenthood, and travel, in addition to financial success.
Millennials are also the target readership for two Tarcher Perigee titles. Profit from Happiness by 24-year-old motivational speaker Jack Ducey (June) proposes a plan for, in the words of the subtitle, achieving “the unity of wealth, work, and personal fulfillment.”
The Quarter-Life Breakthrough (Oct.) by Adam Smiley Poswolsky, a former director for the Hive Global Leaders Program, “gives readers takeaways to find purpose in their career choices, by sharing the stories of many 20- and 30-somethings who did just that,” says Jeanette Shaw, editor at Tarcher Perigee.
Poswolsky advises that readers not simply look for a perfect job, but to “search where many of your motivations overlap,” Shaw says, and he makes that overlap visible through a Venn diagram citing “gifts” (as in natural abilities), “interests,” and “quality of life.”
Rachel Moore’s The Artist’s Compass (S&S/Touchstone, May) zeroes in on people who have already found their passion—performing artists such as dancers, singers, and actors—but don’t know how to monetize it. Moore is a former dancer and CEO in the American Ballet Theater and current CEO of the Los Angeles Music Center; PW’s review called the book “a smart guide for young artists entering their chosen fields,” citing her “useful tips gleaned through firsthand experience as a dancer turned arts administrator.”
Taking a different angle on harnessing creativity, Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (Basic, Dec.) advocates the benefits of simply doing nothing, disputing the idea that the harder we work, the better the outcome. Thomas Kelleher, v-p and editorial director at Basic Books, says that Tim Ferriss’s The Four-Hour Work Week was very much on his mind when he pitched Rest.
Pang, a senior consultant at Strategic Business Insights in Menlo Park, Calif., and a visiting scholar at Stanford, “surveys a huge swath of people and finds some interesting commonalities in the behavior of people who achieve great things,” Kelleher says. “One is that they don’t try and do creative work for more than a few hours a day. They take time for walks and naps—things that allow us to take a step back and let our minds wander.”
Jeff Vasishta is a Brooklyn-based writer who has written for Rolling Stone, Interview, and the Amazon Book Review.
For more on the big business books of the season, check out our spring 2016 announcements feature.
Monetizing Passion: PW Talks with Chris Guillebeau
In 'Born for This,' Guillebeau coaches readers on bagging the ultimate white whale: a dream career.