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Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass It on

by Catherine S. Mcbreen, George H. Walper Jr.

(Portfolio, 256 Pages)

Book Description

There’s a new standard of wealth today, and many people don’t realize they’re part of the club. More than thirty-three million American households are now “mass affluent,” with a net worth between $100,000 and $1 million (not including the house they live in). They know they’re doing well, but few realize that they have the potential to achieve much more.

Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass It On is based on groundbreaking research into America’s richest families. Each year, McBreen and Walper’s firm surveys more than five thousand millionaire and megamillionaire households, and conducts many in-person interviews, online research, and historical analysis. The authors know better than anyone who the megarich are, where they work, how they invest, and how they plan their estates.

The lessons they draw from their research will surprise you. It turns out that there are many ways to get rich, but only two definitive ways to ensure perpetual wealth.

This is a powerful book for small business owners, professionals, and ambitious people of all ages.

About the Authors

Catherine S. McBreen is the managing director of Spectrem Group, a research and consulting company. A lawyer and trust specialist, she’s an expert in financial strategies and a popular lecturer.

George H. Walper, Jr., is the president of Spectrem Group and has more than twenty- five years of experience in all aspects of wealth management, retirement, and trust services.

Meatball Sundae

by Seth Godin

(Portfolio, 224 Pages)

Book Description
"Gotta get me some of that New Marketing. Bring me blogs, e-mail, YouTube videos, MySpace pages, Google AdWords . . . I don’t care, as long as it’s shiny and new."

Wait. According to bestselling author Seth Godin, all these tactics are like the toppings at an ice cream parlor. If you start with ice cream, adding cherries and hot fudge and whipped cream will make it taste great. But if you start with a bowl of meatballs...yuck!

As traditional marketing fades away, the new tools seem irresistible. But they don’t work as well for boring brands ("meatballs") that might still be profitable but don't attract word of mouth, such as Cheerios, Ford trucks, Barbie dolls, or Budweiser. When Anheuser-Busch spends $40 million on an online network called BudTV, that's a meatball sundae. It leads to no new Bud drinkers, just a bad case of indigestion.

"Meatball Sundae" is the definitive guide to the fourteen trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It explains what to do about the increasing power of stories, not facts; about shorter and shorter attention spans; and about the new math that says five thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable than five million who don’t.

The winners aren’t just annoying start-ups run by three teenagers who never had a real job. You’ll also meet older companies that have adapted brilliantly, such as Blendtec, a thirty-year-old blender maker. It now produces "Will it blend?" videos that demolish golf balls, Coke cans, iPhones, and much more. For a few hundred dollars, Blendtec reached more than ten million eager viewers on YouTube.

Godin doesn’t pretend that it’s easy to get your products, marketing messages, and internal systems in sync. But he’ll convince you that it’s worth the effort.

Media Rules!

by Dan Solomon, Brian Reich

(John Wiley & Sons Inc, 230 Pages)

Book Description
A revolutionary approach to building business success through modern media.

When it comes to communicating with their target audience, businesses have more than enough tools to get the job done-blogs, podcasts, social networks, search advertising, and much more. Yet the rapid rate of innovation is increasing the fragmentation of audiences, leaving fewer opportunities to reach them, and requiring more careful planning. Media Rules! will help business leaders and entrepreneurs obtain the core skills needed to better understand this dynamic world. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book will provide in-depth insights into the realities of marketing using innovative media technologies and strategies. It will also show readers how to create a new game plan that takes these new media opportunities into consideration, and present real ways to implement the ideas outlined within these pages-by including interviews with business innovators who are using new techniques to successfully overcome a variety of modern business challenges.

Brian Reich (Boston, MA) is Director of New Media for Cone, Inc, a brand strategy and communications agency. Dan Solomon (Alexandria, VA) is CEO of Virilion, a full-service interactive agency.

Make the Impossible Possible

by Bill Strickland

(Currency, 288 Pages)

Book Description

"Success is the point where your most authentic talents, passion, values, and experiences intersect with the chance to contribute to some greater good."
--Bill Strickland

According to MacArthur Fellowship “genius” award winner Bill Strickland, a successful life is not something you simply pursue, it is something that you create, moment by moment. It is a realization Strickland first came to when, as a poor kid growing up in a rough neighborhood of Pittsburgh, he encountered a high school ceramics teacher who took him under his wing and went on to transform his life.

Over the past thirty years, Bill Strickland has been transforming the lives of thousands of people through the creation of Manchester Bidwell, a jobs training center and community arts program. Working with corporations, community leaders, and schools, he and his staff strive to give disadvantaged kids and adults the opportunities and tools they need to envision and built a better, brighter future.

Strickland believes that every one of us has the potential for remarkable achievement. Every one of us can accomplish the impossible in our lives if given the right inspiration and motivation to do so. We all make ourselves “poor” in one way or another when we accept that we are not smart enough, experienced enough, or talented enough to accomplish something. Bill Strickland works with the least advantaged among us, and if he can help them achieve the impossible in their lives, think what each of us can do.